ExploreLI: Jones Beach

Share your favorite memories, stories and more about Jones Beach.

My memories will allways be there. I grew up in
Queens Village NY and the beach I always went
to was Jones beach. I remember seeing The Sound
Of Music at the theater back in the early 70s.
And how can I forget a romantic date by the
dunes. I experienced the boardwalk resteraunt,
the beach shop, the softball games, and the
dance floor. It was my summer get away in the
late 60s and 70s. I do miss it so.

Bruce Groh July 6 2007
Strasburg Virginia

I grew up on Long Island - late 60s and early 70s. Going to Jones Beach was fun. My friends and I would take the bus from Hempstead to Freeport, transfer onto a Jones Beach bus. The bus was always packet to capacity. We always yelled "hello" while we walked through the tunnel to get to the beach. The walkways were clean and full of colorful flowers. We hung out at the beach all day! We body surfed or jumped the waves, and we visit the pool (we'd sneak in) and jump off the high dive. When hungry, we at calm chowder soup and oyster crackers at the large concession stand. Jones Beach had the best calm chowder. We'd all go home sun burned and exhausted while traveling on the bus back to Hempstead. I'm glad I had the opportunity to have so much fun.

Kathleen Tyrrell
Solomons, Maryland

Kathleen Tyrrell wrote:

I grew up on LoIsland - late 60s and early 70s. Going to Jones Beach was fun. My friends and I would take the bus from Hempstead to Freeport, transfer onto a Jones Beach bus. The bus was always packet to capacity. We always yelled "hello" while we walked through the tunnel to get to the beach. The walkways were clean and full of colorful flowers. We hung out at the beach all day! We body surfed or jumped the waves, and we visit the pool (we'd sneak in) and jump off the high dive. When hungry, we at calm chowder soup and oyster crackers at the large concession stand. Jones Beach had the best calm chowder. We'd all go home sun burned and exhausted while traveling on the bus back to Hempstead. I'm glad I had the opportunity to have so much fun.
Kathleen Tyrrell
Solomons, Maryland

Dear Kathleen:

You also have sentimental memories about Jones Beach like myself. It's not the same here in Virginia. No beaches. I do miss it. I always enjoyed going into the water where the breakers were, not out further, you didn't get splashed. I rememebr the soft ball games they had at the fields. Lots of the township teams played. I remember buying a Long Island towel from the beach shop. It had a picture of Long island on it. It's probably a collectors item now. here, it's cows and horses. have to get use to it. Take care. Bruce. Always be a city boy.

I grew up in Hollis Queens but every saturday my Mom & me would go to my grandparents home in Bellmore & pick up Grandma & go to Zachs Bay --I also remembering going to the theater & Guy Lombardo coming in his boat-those were great days

I guess, as I look back, I was more fortunate then most of your writer's comments. First of all I lived only two block from the Wantagh State Parkway, just off Merrick Road. My brother and I would sit many times on the roof of our house and just look over and see the Central Mall Water Tower. So from the time I was thirteen to sixteen I was at the 'beach' most everyday except Saturday and Sundays (too crowded with city people). Guy Lombardo, well my Dad was his boat mechanic for his racing boats, his Tempo 5 (which was a sleek highly polished wooden pleasure boat and quite fast for the time). And then there was his 50'+ yatch which was tied up in the Freeport Canal in the 40s and early 50s. So we got to spend some time wth him in Freeport.

Then I went to work for the State, from picking up trash on the beach at 7 a.m. to partying late into the night under the overturned lifeboats with the State Police (who were our schoolteachers during the school year),the girls from the Brass Rail Restaurant atop the West Bathhouse and other empolyees.

Then there was the Jones Family who gave the beach property to the State of New York. They lived on the north side of Merrick Road adjecent to the Mill Pond in Wantagh. I used to sit and lisen to the stories of the family's sea faring exploits from the last surving member of the family.

So 'the beach'(as we always called it) was the place to be. It was 'ours' so to speak. We gave it over to the 'city people' on weekends but we knew who owned it, the kids from Bellmore, Wantagh and Seaford. We never even considered Freeport as having a claim to it.

After being gone for 40 years I returned to see the beach had changed so much. And now that Mr. Trump is on scene I suspect I shall not reconize the Central Mall anymore. And I am reminded that the only constant in life is change itself.

My first job (age 14 in 1968) was as a hot-dog griller at Central Mall for JBCC. An older gent (Mr. O'Brien?) used to pick us non-drivers up at the Freeport LIRR station at 7am each Summer day, and would drive us to work at the beach. The more daring of the high-school employees would sneak into the beer cooler, and "accidentally" open a few cans for secret consumption (needed an opener...before pop-tops!)I remember my friends the Maksym twins from Freeport, the Greene sisters, and my manager was a young guy named Connie...Because of my size, I was promoted to "Security"...I had to intercept those beach-goers who ate their food before they paid at the cashier. Boy, did I get into some fights over illegal hot dog consumption those summers! Great memories. Came back to Freeport and Jones Beach
for a visit last Summer...Thomas Hardy was right....

Some of you who haven't been there in years should go now. Not quite what it used to be.

My Mother, my Dad, my maiden Aunt , my other Aunt with my younger cousin would go to Jones Beach for the day from Queens.
I remember the ice cream man walking on the beach selling ices and ice cream. Lunch on the sandy blanket, renting chairs and an umbrella to keep out of the hot sun.
The franks were super good there as well.
Life was a different pace then and lots of fun in the 50s

I grew up in North Bellmore. I was one of those bad kids that had to go to summer school every year. We would take our towels and bathing suits and hide them under the bushes at school, so when we got out of class we could hitch hike to the beach.
We did get lucky once in a while to get enough money to ride the bus, but money or no money, we were getting to Jones Beach.
Those were the days, late 60's and 70's.

Oh man, I love New York so much, I grew up in New York queens to long island, an it is my favorite place in the world,I moved from New York with family, and i can't wait to come home were my heart has never left, i have tried living in other states, but theres no place like home, theres no place like home, there's no place like home. Jones beach is the best place to spend your free time, and long beach, i used to club it,and long Island has the best fruit and sea food than any where, can we shop?, lets shop the clothes are better, i still love to shop in New York, and never move to Delaware , that is a warning.,I cant wait to get home where i belong ever.

OMG Jones Beach was the place to be! My girlfriends and I would take the bus, and see who could get the best " tan", rather " burn". Baby oil and the transitor radio. I also remember being younger and going with the whole family, coolers filled with salami sandwhiches and snacks. A wonderful time in the water and sun, and getting all that sand out of the bathing suits when we got home, yuck, but it was all worth it. Thank God I lived in Levittown, not to far. I'm still not that far away now. I love the shows at the theater also.

O! Those handson life guards. Also Jones Beach Hotel, the bar not the rooms !!!! Wonderful times with my future handson husband. Bob.

great life

Living in Scotland now, the memories are still so vivid....those orange striped canvas umbrellas you could rent, everyone's radio playing a different station, Devil Dogs and Pepsi in glass bottles that Mom would pack in "the cooler"...and Dad's old army blanket for us to sit on. When I got older, driving down early to watch the sunrise and just walk along the edge, with the waves tickling my toes. <sigh> those were the days.

I've lived in Houston for the past 13 years and miss "the beach" more than just about anything else that I left behind. I grew up in Westbury and couldn't wait for those summer weekends at the beach. Didn't care if I got sand in my PB&J sandwich lovingly packed by my mother (along with Oreos, lots of fresh fruit and home brewed iced tea). Of course, we often visited the Central Mall concessions for hot dogs, ice cream, and soft drinks dispensed from a machine into a paper cup. In the early days when I was very young, my parents would get us up very early in the morning and we'd go to the beach and Dad would make us breakfast on a little habachi in the dunes. As we got a little older, we became a family of swimmers/divers from the Levittown Swimming Association ("LSA"), so we took diving lessons at the pool at Field 5 from Hazel Barr, who was known to be one of the best coaches around back in the early 70's. That pool was really huge compared to our local Levittown pools, but I always thought was so strange because the water wasn't like our local pools -- it was salty! But those lessons got me to the beach every weekend for years. I remember going with large groups and other families on our swimming/diving team and just having the time of our lives. We'd listen to Don Imus or Cousin Brucie on our transister radios and our moms would have to pick splinters from our feet from the boardwalk. Of course, when I was finally able to drive, we were at the beach at every possible opportunity, and we were usually up to no good at night! I remember we'd go in the winter time and sneak into the pool, which by then was drained of all water, and make out with our boyfriends. Being a mother now and living on the nasty Gulf of Mexico, I have nothing comparable to share with my son. If I close my eyes, I can still remember the sounds and the smell of the ocean breeze. Man, I miss Long Island in the summer!!!

I grew upon LI in the 70's, Queens in the 60's
I miss the beach and Long Island in the summer. All year long really. Living in Houston area now is just not the same. I used to go to Mastic Beach all summer in the 60's. We were lucky enough to have a summer home away from Richmond Hill, NY. My brother and I used to ride our bikes down to the beach in Mastic and fish all day long for snappers with a bamboo pole and some bait.
When I move to Lynbrook in the late 60's we would go to Lido Beach and Atlantic beach.. Miss it. But i just could not afford to live up ther these days...What do you have to make to live there...Like a million dollars a year now. But hasn't every thing gone up??? Right. All americans can afford now is to stay home. It sucks?????

Jones Beach...what's not to love and remember! Living in Merrick until 1977, as a pre-teen in the 60's,one of our mom's would drive us to the West Bathouse, another would pick us up to get home just in time for dinner. Next day, same thing..the beach, Zachs Bay, the arts & crafts at the central mall, and the COLD showers in the bath house! And many jars of Noxzema! A few years later, the bus from Merrick to Freeport then to the beach. Piling into a Taxi from Freeport on Memorial Day Weekend...HAD TO GET TO THE BEACH!!
And to this day, I still try to make it to the beach a few times each summer. Unfortunately, that really good ice-cream that came wrapped up and you would peel off the paper and put it in that cone isn't available these days..It's just a great place to go...it's not the "Shore"...it's the beach, Jones Beach...what could be better than that!

Maybe some of you will remember me and the Sue and Alice - we all ran in our bikinis in the early 70's. We were part of Field 6. Day and night we were there. This was when you could go in the restaurant and have a drink in the winter and no one was there. This was the time of 9 East between the old Field 9 and Tobay. Hanging out at Field 6 on the cement and in our cars and Jay the Lifeguard who might still be there. Then there was Joe the Fisherman with his outrageous wit. Joe looked like Ernest Hemingway. For those of you who might remember Joe from the 70's and 80's Joe passed away about 2 or so years ago. He was living in Hawaii. He always said he was going to retire there.

These were the days. If there is anyone out there who might remember me or other people from this time please e-mail me at fran1154@optonline.net.

We lived in Larchmont in the early '60s. During the summer our ritual every Saturday was for me to check the weather forecast at 5:00. If favorable I would get the family (wife and 3 kids, 5,3 & 1) up and be on the way to Jones Beach by 6:00. By 7:00 we would be at Field 9. Having stopped for buns along the way I would cook breakfast (we brought our skillet and charcoal). The sand was still cold and bacon, eggs and sand never tasted so good. By 2:00 we were ready to pack it in, and the kids slept soundly all the way home. I've been to beaches in the states; the Cape, Nantucket, San Diego; and Europe; Greece, Italy, Spain, France but none compare to Jones. Fond memories of Field 9.