A Night At Snug Harbor

We did not always rely on the ferry to get to Fire Island however. Sometimes my father would take us over by small boat himself, landing us just down the path from my grandmothers house. My mother would absolutely refuse to go on those occasions. Dad would rent a twelve or fourteen foot wooden rowboat from Snug Harbor, a bar and salty talk haven on the bay in Oakdale. Several row boats turned upside down lined the small beach in front of the place for just that purpose. Dad owned an Elgin outboard motor which he bought at Sears. Actually, he had two of them but one was broken down for spare parts. He kept them in a barrel in the workshop area of our cellar and the barrel always had oily water in it. He would run the engine and work on it down there when maintenance was required.

A few of those trips over to the beach occurred in what my father called “choppy seas,” but what I would have described at the time as “typhoons.” On these occasions it always looked as if the water was going to rush over the transom of the boat after we slid over and down to the bottom of a wave. Years on the beach and in the Coast Guard made my father impervious to the rough journey, but I would find myself glancing at him from time to time to assure myself that he had not lost his mind.

One calm and sunny Fire Island day my father appeared with two poles and between them had been attached approximately twenty feet of fine netting. He led me down to the bay and we waded out into the water where the net was unraveled. He handed me one of the poles and when we had spread it out, instructed me to walk it in towards the shore. Sure enough, when we reached the shoreline the net was full of bait fish. Mummies and shiners were excitedly flopping around all over the sandy shore and we scooped them up and put them into large buckets. We filled two of those buckets in short order. It turns out my father had his eye on a night out but needed a good excuse and some extra cash. He was going to take the bait over to the mainland using the rowboat and his trusty Elgin motor, to Snug Harbor to be precise, and sell it for what he called “pin money.”

The trip over to the mainland from Fire Island occurred in early evening daylight and the bay was relatively calm. I’m not sure if I was along for company or as part of my father's cover story, but after the hour long trip we arrived and the sale of bait fish was successfully completed. Dad found a seat at the bar to his liking and indicated a seat at a nearby table for me. He ordered a beer for himself and passed over a soda and bag of potato chips to me. At that time the bar was situated so that the patrons sitting at the bar could look straight out at the water, an interior design which has since been altered. We stayed for a few hours, and my father conversed with the men at the bar, some of whom he seemed to know. I guess eventually the old man got the buzz he was looking for and around midnight it was time for the boat trip back to Fire Island.

The lights from the bar and those on the dock were enough to get us settled and on our way, but soon I became aware of the total darkness we were heading into and even the lights from the mainland behind us were becoming more dim and distant. The South Shore of Suffolk County, Long Island was not exactly a beacon of light in the 1950’s. Lights on Fire Island were virtually non existent. There was no moon visible and the stars were sharply contrasted against an otherwise pitch black canvas sky.

I'd be willing to bet it was exactly half-way between the mainland and Fire Island when the sheer pin on the propeller snapped from fatigue. When the engine quit it felt like brakes had been stomped on. Immediately the wake the boat had carved in the water rolled up on the transom, raising the stern and it turned us around in what felt like a half circle. My father reached down in the water and feeling that he could turn the prop without resistance knew that a sheer pin was indeed the cause of our dilemma. But it could not be fixed out there, so he set to rowing.

I was sure when he set a totally unexpected course that we were headed in the wrong direction. I thought it unlikely that we would ever see land again and I had to ask the question; “Dad, how do you know we’re going the right way?” “Don’t worry Robert, the old man knows where he’s going,” he said trying to reassure me. Yes, confidence can be catching, but I still sat there with a wait and see attitude. It was a funny feeling being out in the middle of the Great South Bay at midnight in pitch dark and in a rowboat with a broken down motor. All sorts of things go through a kid's mind. Was I was going to meet the same fate as those poor folks on the Andrea Doria?

I needn’t have worried for about an hour later I could make out the shoreline. A few minutes after that I was greatly impressed when I realized that even in pitch darkness the old man did know where he was going. He had brought the boat right onto the beach at the end of the path to grandma’s house.