Orchard Beach (Bronx, NY, about 1951)

From a New York Times article a few years ago, At Orchard Beach, people remember summer days when their apartments felt like steam baths, and how a trip here meant not just relief but an escape from a harder-edged world.

Among my most enduring memories from my childhood were trips that my parents and I took across the Bronx to Orchard Beach. These always involved lots of my parents' brothers and sisters, and were usually arranged on very short notice. Sometimes it would be after dark, unbearably hot, and no one could sleep, so we would pile into whatever car could be scared up (usually one of Bud's). We'd sleep on the beach.

I don't know who is with Willa here, but you can see Paul and me in the background. Also in the background are the colonnades, the front of the bath house, now a NYC landmark. Here's a current picture on Flickr. Orchard Beach is in Pelham Bay Park, yet another Robert Moses megaproject from the 1930s, and NYC's largest park.


With one of my omnipresent comic books. I had a vast collection of the humorous kind: Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, etc. My 20 year old parents read them too, and embarrassedly insisted they were doing it to vet them for me. I believed them at first.

My mother at about 23.

And two pictures of my grandmother, with Willa, and then with me.