With both apologies and my most grateful thanks to Billy Joel, one of my favorite New Yawkas. He and I grew up about the same time not too far from each other on Long Island, although later on our lives certainly took different directions.
Some of my best memories as a youngster are of my forays into the city. In those days and at that age the Big Apple didn't seem
too scary, rides on the subway into Grand Central or Penn Station were an adventure for this twelve-year-old. Visiting an aunt, we'd go to the Automat Cafeteria for lunch.
Dad had become a most nautical-minded skipper since his days aboard Navy ships during WWII, and later when he built several boats I was there helping him, soaping the screws and changing the bits in his brace. As time went on the family had a couple of Owens power boats on which we gunkholed both the north and south shores of the Island, and even some forays across the Sound to Connecticut.
The little towns and villages along both coasts of the Island held many treasures for me, the little diners, the fish mongers selling clams by the bucket. Billy Joel's first album, Cold Spring Harbor, is the name of the town where, coming home from a day on the water, Dad and I would stop for a bucket of clams.
Even though I've been away from New York for a long time now, I still feel the tug of heartstrings for my childhood home. "I don't have any reasons, I've left them all behind, I'm in a New York state of mind."
