index
GC youth
From age six I grew up in a suburb on Long Island. was a early railroad suburb that had been financed by Stewart department store money. It probably took its name from an earlier suburb near Chicago, not from Ebenezer Howard's book. Built on pasture purchased from an older town, it lay along the railroad, and by the time I lived there the next towns were only separated from it by a change of name and house style when you crossed the street. It didn't then have the later Roosevelt Field Mall. Most commuters used the railroad and we could still walk or bike to stores in the sizable downtown shopping area. We used the train to go to the city, and drove the expanding network of expressways to Jones Beach and to the rural parts of Long Island. It was a good place.