Montauk or Bust

I originally had planned on writing about automobiles first. However it would be more interesting if I started with the bicycles and the transition between the too. Actually the first two wheel bike we had was a lost 2 wheel bike that had 12” wheels it was just about the right size for my sister Nancy. Nancy had a 2-wheel bike before I did. This little 2 wheeler was the first bike we had and that was in 1942 it wasn’t until 1944 that the first balloon tired bike appeared at our house. My brother would on occasion come home with another bike. He gave me the last one he brought home in 1948. This bike was a 1932 Elgin. I remember it had 3 bars that curved down from the seat up to the handlebars. It was an odd looking bike with those 3 bars it might have been a girls bike I didn’t care. I liked it and it was the fastest bike in town. I had that bike for five years. It always struck me funny that nearly every kid in the neighborhood had a bike but they usually got bored with them. Most of the kids this far out took the bus. Ray and I stopped taking the bus about 1945. The Greenport school had a strange bike cellar you went down a cement ramp about 45 ft and depending how wet the ramp was that is how much you slammed into the double doors at the bottom. Sometimes there was a slight panic as several bikes got stuck together. You had to be familiar with the” dark“ because the room was and equipment room that had not light. You had to make a right turn through a unfinished 8 ft wide opening into the bike stanchion area. This room was about 28 ft wide and dark but not as dark as the back half of the room where most of the bikes were kept. You just wanted to get home without getting mugged, so grab the nearest bike and go. My first bike was stolen so I borrowed another from the bike\cellar.

When my brother quit school about 1948 he brought home the Elgin and said he would give it to me for $5.00 that was a bargain, I guess we both stole it. I had the Elgin for 5 years until 1950. I was still a bike person I know for a fact I spent more time on my bike than anybody in Greenport. I was interested in cars about as much as riding my bike.

Ray and I went to Orient St Park, Patchogue, Shelter Island and the Brecknok Hall. Of course you have to realize living on Sterling Creek, we committed half of our time to fishing, crabbing, camping and exploring. 1950 was a banner year for both Ray and I. That spring I was offered a job on Speeches farm. I had no desire to work any farm job and Speeches farm was not rated too high in places to work. Its not that they didn’t pay well, that didn’t even occur to me. I was getting
75 cents an hour, you cant beat that. Anyway I worked there for about 3 weeks. The owner said I wasn’t picking fast enough. Anyway he let me go after the third week. I found out that they were paying the migrant workers 50 cents an hour and they were mistreating them. I guess at the time they could get away with any thing. The only thing that if I was worked there all summer I would complain to the owner about his boss man. This boss man would go down under a big apple tree with a big bottle of water. This was in the hot part of the day the temperature was over 90 out in the field. We were to hoe about 500 ft of plants (the length of the field) and it took nearly an hour. When the first one work got back to where the boss man was waiting he would make everyone wait for a drink until they all got back. Then he would go out and check about 50 ft of each row the one that had the most weeds he could find would not get any water that time. If that happened the next day we all said we would walk out!

Anyway that first job let me finally buy the dream bike I was dreaming about. This bike had it all. It was called the Roadmaster Luxury Liner. Terry’s bike shop in down town Greenport had got the first one in the area. It was just a dream. I had no way of getting that bike. The bike had red and black tank with metal ribs in the back, the biggest headlight in the bike business, a dual horn with 2 6-volt batteries, a stoplight and flashing rear directional, and a luggage carrier over the back fender. This particular bike had two additional bomb shape lights on rear fender supports. I bought it and had a Stewart Warner speedometer and odometer and rear view mirror added. Lets not forget the big dual springs in place of the front fork that was a conversational piece as long as I owned it. The Roadmaster Company only had one complaint from customers; it was that the kids were staying out later at night because light. A funny thing about that is I remember doing that same thing. I went down town, to the library and just about all the back streets on this side of town with all my lights flashing. I must have looked like a Christmas tree coming down the road.
Just a point of interest that I researched on the internet, in 1998 the company Hammecher & Schlemmer bought the tooling to make 5000 new bikes and sold every one for $3000 there are several un-restored bikes for $ 1500.
Ray and I had taken quite a few field trips on our older bikes. We actually had more dangerous trips out in the wild and windy seas in the hunting seasons in the early 50’s. It’s amazing we lived through those 3 years, but this about our Montauk trip.

We had a little work and planning for this trip. The good thing about it thought so far is that both Ray and I got new bikes about the same time. Rays bike was a Columbia a blue tank bike. We had been to Riverhead once as an experiment with the new bikes just a turn around to see what it would be like. What made us pick this little gas station in Riverhead for a stopping place we never knew? A young man came out and greeted us.
“WOW” he said, “will you look at the bike out there, you’ll never seen anything like it.” He yelled for the guys in back to come see. They were amazed; he said, “They just came from Greenport. How the hell can you pedal that much weight, how much does that thing weigh. I think I read somewhere around 70 lbs. We should weigh it on our old scale in the back. ” T

They apparently didn’t have any thing better to do so we let them enjoy themselves. The Roadmaster weighed 79 lbs and Rays Columbia 63 lbs. They were both too heavy; an English bike of the same era was about 30lbs, and a lightweight racing bike about22 lbs.

We did one timed run from Greenport to Riverhead without going all out we did the 25 miles in 1 hour 8 minuets. With our English bike the best time was 56 minuets. Peter Reyes did the time of 52 minutes Pete was flying low.

We wanted to take a weekend that the schools would be still in session because we didn’t want to compete with the traffic. The second weekend in June seemed the best, which gave us 10 days to get every thing together. We had bike camped before so we new what we needed to a point. We usually just bird watched so we would leave like Friday afternoon about 6 o’clock. We would set up a primitive camp usually within 5 or 6 miles of home. We would wander around until dark.
It stayed light in June until 8, we were worn out by then,
The next day we explored the area and checked out the birds.

This trip to Montauk will be totally different it would be more road time. We plan on leaving the house 7 o’clock, a stop at the first checkpoint the gas station (Riverhead) for coffee about 8:30. June 10 1951, I checked to see if he was up this was up there were no lights on in his room and my Bell tone incabloc watch said it was 6:45. I figured I would check my bike over one more time. I did sort of last minute come up with a better way to hold things on the luggage rack in the back. There was a couple of old inner tubes from the Elgin bike I had. They were kind of holey but by cutting them in half I had couple good pieces that could really stretch tight. You could knot it and stretch it around the luggage rack and the seat. I had the 2 6volt batteries in the tank, 8 D batteries for the backlights and 1 flashlight in the tank. I, also, had 4 packages of cupcakes, split homemade loaf of bread, and 2 bottles of soda with paper towel wrapped around them so they would not brake. Other than that I had my favorite army knife and scabbard, behind the seat. I had a handmade sleeping bag, Rays Grandmother made them when we first went camping about 4 years ago. They were made out of canvas so they repelled water (some times) rolled inside was a blanket and 2 towels along with a change of underwear and socks. Both Ray and I pondered over any thing else we would really need.

Ray finally came to the door what time is it, we were supposed to leave 15 minutes ago. Rays bike looked like a fugitive bagman’s in N.Y City. Ray had a large over size roll behind the seat it was double the size of mine then behind that was another roll that might have been a plastic table cloth with various strings and ropes holding every thing down. That was bad enough he had a burlap bag on each side over the fender tied with a couple more ropes.

Ray said, “wait a minute he let me hold his bike while he went back for more food”

What the…. Ray had two boxes of Dugan donuts. Rays sister had a party the night before and they had all kinds of crap left over I hoped this wasn’t a going away party for Ray…because I sure couldn’t eat all that. I held the bag open as he threw inn 4 cans of Vienna sausages one of his favorite things, just one more thing there had been a pumpkin squash meringue pie that no one would eat. I was pretty sure that same pie was still sitting there from a week ago he wrapped a towel around the pie and jammed it in next to a big jar of grape jam and peanut butter.

“Lets get going” I said “those guys in the garage are gonna think we backed out.”

Ray said “don’t worry about that we will get there.”

As we shoved off before Ray even got on his Columbia. ” Boy this pushes hard I wonder why?”

I stammered, “I don’t think we were going to the Sahara desert where you couldn’t find food”

“I just don’t want to be hungry.”

Every camping trip we took, we always had double what we needed. I just hope that every place we go is down hill it looks like we are gonna do a lot of walking. We hardly got to the main road Rays bike was wobbling back and forth the load he had was top heavy and looked like it was coming apart already.

I said. “ STOP…. your gonna lose everything!”

So begrudgingly we retied most of the mess. My incoblock said it was nearly 8:30. We finally were moving we passed Moores Woods and were about to pass the labor camp on the hill; this was still the Main Road. We started down hill before we got down to the Main Rd Ray stopped.

We had every foot of this trip planned. We could keep going on the North road (Middle road), which was a mass of potholes and construction all the way to Riverhead. Or, if we cut over to route 25 hear on Chapel Hill Rd. (its only about a mile south). Then if we stayed on the North road to Riverhead, the Island is wider at that point so its only a mile if we cross over here but 5 miles to cross at this point so we took Chapel hill rd (next to drive in movie) no longer there today.

We finally were sailing along past what was then Sills Dairy where Ray and I Both worked in 1952. However we just can’t seem to go a mile without some fool thing…Of course this was not in our plans and we forgot one major thing it was major to us anyway we forgot that famous RR bridge. The dumbest RR over pass on L.I.. The road to it was quite flat there should have been a gradual up grade for a car it isn’t even noticeable but on a bike it was pretty tough to make that grade in that short distance. We bike to the bridge on our lunch breaks school it was about 15 minutes from school about 5 miles we probably biked there once a week. It was a neat place (under the bridge) no matter what the weather. Of course, somebody always has to add the worst graffiti on the 25 ft of walls some was artistic most gross some due to a overactive imagination. The worst Ray and I did on the bridge was to try to drop pennies in the smoke stack of a steam engine. Yes there were still steam engines, we caught 7 or 8 going under the bridge when we were on top. We biked quite a few times over the bridge because Rays father worked at Goldsmiths on our lunch brake it was not to hard, but with a bike with 60 lbs too much no way! Of course, going down the other side you had to brake even with a normal load.

I let Ray go first. I warned him to use his brakes all the way down. Well he braked about half the way down, he was doing about 30 near the bottom he was weaving back and forth finally with all the crap he was carrying there was a crash and Ray went over the guard rail and his Columbia followed. When I got to him he was on the top of the Bike.

Ray said, “I think I broke my leg it’s bleeding all the way down to my foot. “
He did have some pretty bad bruises (we didn’t find until the next day). His leg how ever if it was bleeding that bad, we had better get help. “
My leg feels ok he ran his fingers down the side. Wait!” Ray replied “I think its grape jelly”

When we finally got the large broken jar of grape jelly it was stirred in with two dozen jelly Dougans finest not to mention that pie that would remain forever a mystery…At least I didn’t have to worry about hurt anybody’s feelings. After we got every back together, Ray had purple pants and a purple shirt. The smell of peanut butter was sickening. We were ready to hang it up But there was a miracle Goldsmith Boatyard was just ahead only about a half mile. We were lucky none of our spokes broke there were about 10 badly bent and 10 more that had to be, fixed eventually. When they found out what we were doing all three of the workers there helped us. We were off again about 1:30. Ray called the garage and told them we were going to be a little late about 6/l/2 hours late.

We got to the gas station bout 3:30. They still had a coffee pot on their camp stove and one of the gas station attendants had his girl friend with him. Its funny we had only met these guys a couple months ago but they treated us like long lost friends. They even had cake and cookies. They gave us each a flag to attach to our fender. We felt like big shots going through Riverhead. We went through town and hit Rte 24 Riverhead Hampton Bays Rd.
We continued east on Route 25 (Sunrise Highway). We just followed the main road signs, we didn’t have much choice since we had no maps. I don’t know what we were thinking. We weren’t that’s the problem we went thru Flanders about 4bally didn’t know what to expect. I hate to travel the main roads in the gutters in the early 1950s most of the roads were in pretty poor condition. The roads in the business districts were kept fairly neat but the outlying roads deteriorated as you left the business districts some of the back roads had the look
Of some one just dropping everything and going to war. We saw some minor construction but it looked like a poverty area for sure. We got to the Big Duck. It actually wasn’t open because it was past 5 o’clock. However, there were 5 or 6 cars there so seeing us was probably enough curiosity for one day.

Stay Tuned for the rest of the trip.

Bike's
Red one is Bill's
Blue one is Ray's
Brown is a 1936-38 Elign Robin
Other Red one is a 1938 Mercury