I watched the Long Island Expressway grow from one mile long
A neighbor's house on Twig Lane, the writer’s street, where friends lived in Levittown in 1950. No lawns, sidewalks, curbs or cars. They would hitch rides on the LIE to caddy at Deepdale Golf Club in Manhasset. Credit: Mary Madden
In 1949, my family moved from Washington Heights to Levittown when I was 3. I can still visualize earthmovers, cement mixers, dozens of workmen and lots of mud. After my father left my mom with four kids in 1951, we became a struggling, car-less family. The proposed Long Island Expressway, then only a mile-long road connecting the Queens-Midtown Tunnel with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, meant little to us.
The LIE became important later, though. When I was 12, my friends and I would bike-hike from Levittown to Old Westbury Pond to fish in those quiet environs. In 1959, things changed. Giant bulldozers began clearing the way for the LIE’s eastward advancement. Bewildered, we thought, “Why are they building such a big road this far out?”
In 1962, my pals and I started caddying at beautiful Deepdale Golf Club in Manhasset, right by the LIE. Caddying was not lucrative then. At most clubs, caddies got $5. At Deepdale, we got $6, and the occasional “big hitter” paid $10. Those golfers mostly went to the older caddies, not us teens.
I did caddy for a few celebrities, though, including Edward, the duke of Windsor; Richard Nixon; 1941 Masters champ Craig Wood, and Jim Slattery, who I’d never heard of. He headed Slattery Construction, builder of New York City roads, subways, bridges and tunnels, along with the UN, Lincoln Center, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Empire State Building, World Trade Center -- and part of the LIE! There I was, carrying the bag of someone who helped build the very road we could see from most of the 18 holes, and he was a $10 bag!
Wood, 63, looked frail but hit the most precise shots I’d ever seen. The duke acted grumpy, not fun to be around. Nixon, then the former vice president, seemed like a gentleman. Although Watergate tapes later revealed many expletives, I heard none in 1964. He never said as much as “hell” or “damn” after hitting a lousy shot. He nicely answered my questions about that summer’s Republican National Convention when Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater prepared to run against President Lyndon B. Johnson. I’d met a former king, vice president, golf champ and a captain of industry, all by the LIE.
When hitchhiking on the LIE to Deepdale, we’d get rides from various characters. Once, a preacher from the Rev. Billy Graham’s exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair, picked us up in his shiny, white convertible -- and tried converting us. Other drivers were scarier, speeding dangerously to show off how fast they could go. By 1965, the LIE extended all the way to what’s now Route 110.
The funniest thing I ever saw occurred near the LIE, too. As a player on Clarke High School’s 1962 junior varsity football team, I recall a snowy game against Great Neck South. Halfback Mike Pello, a broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted Golden Gloves boxer, was fast. He took a handoff and was outrunning the defenders when his thin waist caused his pants to fall and trip him as he slid 10 yards in the snow, stopping maybe 15 yards shy of the goal line. Everyone had a long laugh as a player was tackled by his own pants.
Today, the LIE has become a 66-mile artery stretching to Riverhead. And while my family had little use for it in its early days, now, decades later, I’ve traveled it often and know all the exits heading east . . . to my favorite winery.
Reader Peter White lives in Centerport.
