77°Good evening
Shoppers seek bargains at Bethpage liquidator Everyday Crazy Hot Deals...

Shoppers seek bargains at Bethpage liquidator Everyday Crazy Hot Deals on the spot where a Jolly Roger restaurant and an amusement park and carousel once stood.
Credit: Rose Warren

I had to investigate the store that opened one block from my house, at Hempstead Turnpike and Hicksville Road in Bethpage. Long lines formed outside there every Friday morning.

It turned out to be a liquidation center that buys and resells merchandise returned to companies such as Amazon and Target. The lure of big discounts at Everyday Crazy Hot Deals escapes me, but every Friday morning, loyal patrons line up  for the restocked items selling for $11.99. On following days, the price is lowered until Wednesday, when everything goes for 99 cents. Thursday is restocking day, and the pilgrimage begins anew on Friday.

Walking home recently, I thought about the first businesses I remember there -- the Jolly Roger restaurant, next door to an amusement park with a carousel. My husband, Mike, enjoyed the eatery’s corned beef sandwiches. Both establishments’ runs, though, ended a few years after Mike and I moved into the neighborhood in 1971.

Mike, an antique collector, was fascinated by the carousel’s German organ -- built in 1910 with carved figures that moved with the music -- which played while kids went around. I have fond memories of the children riding the horses, painted in several bright colors, accompanied by loud music and bright lights. I was in awe of how this entertainment contrasted with my inner-city childhood in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and my new life in “rural” Long Island.

Other signs indicated I had moved away from an urban area. When I told a Brooklyn cousin that I could walk to two carousels from my new home, she stared back at me, displaying skepticism or a silent plea for me to move back to the city, where my cousins wanted to keep our large Italian family together.

Yes, another carousel indeed existed in Bethpage, also along Hicksville Road, at the Nassau Farmers Market. How many Americans could say that? Mike and I would buy fruit and vegetables on weekends. It was across from Grumman, the aerospace titan. In the market center, children held onto the poles of this merry-go-round.

Those horses were inanimate. But around 1980, Mike and I were asleep with the windows opened when I was awakened by what sounded like elephants! I was a bit groggy and tried to make sense of these sounds entering our bedroom. This wasn’t Botswana or Zimbabwe. This was Long Island! It seemed so vivid that I woke up Mike. I imagined him rolling his eyes and saying, “It’s probably the neighbor’s TV. Go back to sleep.”

But it was real. The next day, we learned that a circus had set up two blocks from our house in a lot that the teenagers called the “cornfield.” No one recalled if the crop ever grew there, but some say the teens coined the name. It was a rite of passage for them to hang out there, and my two young daughters, Rachelle and Cynthia, later joined the teens who considered the cornfield a place of their own, devoid of parents. Today it’s home to Target.

Fifty-two years ago, this was the Long Island that this 24-year-old woman discovered when she trekked east from Brooklyn.

What stores will arrive in the future?  I don’t know, but I imagine the new residents might be using moving sidewalks or flying cars to get there.

After all, isn’t that what George Jetson and his family showed us would happen in 2062?

Reader Rose Warren lives in Plainedge.

SUBSCRIBE

Unlimited Digital AccessOnly 25¢for 6 months

ACT NOWSALE ENDS SOON | CANCEL ANYTIME