Melville by Stuart McCallum

I grew up in Melville and have many fond memories of that special place. My parents raised five of us during the postwar years in an old Civil War era house on Old Country Rd. They still reside there. Dad is 90 and Mom is close behind. Paul & Dorothy McCallum. They have slowed some, but still maintain their home and friendships in the area. I recently shared a most pleasant dinner with my parents and Fran Kerr, another long time resident up the street.

I recall Bill Thomas' Blacksmith Shop when I was a boy. It stood at what is now the intersection of Old Country and 110. Old Bill still worked it. He lived with his sisters, Emma and Minnie, in the old family home next door. I remember the fruit pies they would make from scratch. Chickens roamed the yard. The house still stands, but was moved some years ago a few thousand feet west.

I recall Mr. Freidank, who was an old man when I was a small boy, and lived across the street, describing how when he was a boy my age, prior to the turn of the century, Old Country Road was dirt. He said that in the summer, as he went about barefoot, he enjoyed the cool feeling of the fine dirt squishing up between his toes. I remember him selecting a chicken from the brood in his coop on a Sunday morning for that afternoon's table. That was the way it was back then.

I grew up there in the late forties, through the fifties, and into the sixties. I saw that little hamlet of the forties grow into the commercial hub of today. There were five kids, a few dogs, assorted cats, turtles, frogs, endless friends arriving on patched together bikes. Catch a Fly Yer Up was the next best thing to a real game behind the school, now the library. Route 110 was not there, only Walt Whitman Road.

No Northern State, no Expressway, no Mall, no offices. There were woods all around, no trash. Sweet Hollow Road was dirt. Oakley's Pond was the place. In summer my older brother Paul, and our assorted friends would play Huck Finn there, catching frogs, tadpoles, salamanders, and turtles. We did not hurt them, only made pets of them, eventually returning them. Like Mr. Freidank, I liked the way the dirt squished between my toes on that dirt road to the pond. In winter we skated on the now frozen Oakley's, warming ourselves by a fire at water's edge. The boys played hockey, the girls swished about on their white pom-pomed skates.

Those same woods and ponds that Whitman evokes in his brilliant poetry were the same we explored. Jayne's Hill, Oakely's, Sweet Hollow, Melville Cemetery, the Melville Church (which my whole family attended, my father a Sunday school teacher, I occasionally having the honor of ringing the bell to call the locals to services, no doubt the same bell heard in his time by old Walt) May's Hill, etc..

My father, at one time a photographer, was in partnership with Craig Van Velsor, a direct descendent on his mother's side of Whitman. My mother's family goes directly back to the Dutch settlement. First appearing in the area in 1673, the Coorsens were linked by marriage to the Van Sices's, another prominent name in LI history.

There was Bookman's Hotel at the intersection of what is now Pinelawn Road and Rt 110. Cooney Herman, a local restaurateur and colorful character drove around town in a fiery red early fifties Buick convertible. He was the proprietor of the bar/restaurant now next to the firehouse which in those days was Herman's Lounge. On Walt Whitman Road was the Clock Tavern, opposite of what is now Frederick's. I used to deliver Newsday in the fifties, and had to enter and place the paper on the bar of this establishment which smelled of beer, cigarettes, stale air, old men, flirty women.

My father was a founding member of the Melville Fire Department in 47. John Hauser, Bill Grazor (original builder of 931Walt Whitman Road - Dr. Richard Weledniger's dental office), now resting in Melville Cemetery, were too. That was a big event in town. It gave a focus to the little community. There followed Christmas parties in the firehouse where Santa (I always believed it was Mr. Hauser) would arrive by fire truck to the delight of most of Melville's children. Every kid went home with a gift, especially called by Santa to receive it. In summer there was the Fireman's Fair. It was held in the lot between the firehouse and the Clock Tavern.
 What excitement!! Flashing lights, loud music, roulette wheels, kewpie dolls, ice cream, seductive smells of hot dogs on the grill, sizzling burgers, sweet drinks of garish colors, cotton candy, laughter of grown-ups, Mom looking girlish, summer nights.

Handy's Hideaway, now Frederick's. In the fifties it was a luncheonette. Before that, May's Store. (penny candy) Young people, including me, spent our time there meeting and devouring ice cream sodas, discovering that incredible thing called the "opposite sex." "The Yellow Rose of Texas" was the song of the year, played endlessly on the jukebox, when "Sixteen Tons." was not.
Mulvey's gas station, still there since I believe 52, remains a fixture of that earlier time just described. Jim Mulvey, there since the beginning with his father, a life time of watching the world go by his corner, remains. He is a repository of knowledge of Melville. If you have not met him, do so. Mention my name. You just might meet my father who walks the neighborhood and often stops to chat with Jim.

And there were the old men from a previous time who inhabited Melville, characters from the nineteenth century, such as John the grave digger, or old Matt Ruppert, or Phil Schnieder, who are a story in themselves, perhaps for another time.

Oh, my father met a woman who knew Whitman personally. She was an old woman and Dad was a young man. Would that be 2 degrees of separation?

No reminiscence of post war Melville would be complete without mention of the Sweet Hollow Presbyterian Church's annual strawberry festival. For me, this was probably the height of the season, signaling the end of school, the endless summer before us, and to a kid's mind, a very real example of the recently celebrated Easter reaffirmation of life.

The church, then Located at the northwest corner of Old Country and Sweet Hollow Roads, would host this yearly community wide event. The good folk of the church would set up tables, chairs, and generally create a festive atmosphere in celebration of the current crop of this delicious fruit. It was simply about strawberries and ice cream and whipped cream and cake. In those days the extent of the offerings of ice cream were limited to vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. And they often shared the same container.

Well, in my memory, those days were sun drenched, dry, and full of color. Sweet Hollow and Old Country Roads were lined with cars, as the church parking lot was filled with tables and chairs and and booths where that wonderful creation "strawberry shortcake" was served up to eager appetites. I recall the men and boys, generally cleaned up and dressed in polo shirts (remember them?) and dungarees (them too) the men generally casual, the women and girls summery, (perhaps a crinoline or two). We were there to meet as a community and honor in a very immediate way the passing of winter to summer, with all it's promise. I did not know these things then, but looking back, I now see this clearly.

It was a small, church oriented event. Probably typical of many throughout the island. Not a carnival atmosphere where the sheer numbers of tourists, seeking to savor some of that bygone tradition, converge in excess astride SUV's and with an air of impatience.

I particularly remember one year when I wore a pink and white checked shirt, just like my brother Paul, which our grandmother had made for us. Yes, some people actually made clothes for their family members in those times. Of course, Paul and I sported our new "Sneakers" (Keds) which had to last the summer of ball playing, hiking, catching frogs, riding bikes, king of the mountain, and endless foot races.

The only place to get those Keds was in Huntington, a bus ride from Melville which was a direct link to it's stores. We would get our new footwear, usually black or dark blue, and test them out on the sidewalks of NY Ave, racing each other, turning, and stopping short. No designer anything in those days. All this reminds me of "White Bucks." Another time

I have many many more memories of "Old Melville."