Autobiographical Sketches

As a car’s headlights appeared on the horizon, I jumped up to open the toll booth door. The driver pulled into the lane going to Jones Beach, his car packed with partying young men and women, and he asked if it was the road to New York City. I told him he had to go on the other side of the booth. He backed up, then shot straight through the other lane, without paying the toll. I copied his license plate number and called the Long Island State Parkway police, telling them that a car had “run the toll” – I gave a very official report: it was a dark-colored passenger car, with a NY State plate number “7 UP.” At first, I thought it was related to the United Press. Only later did I realize it was most likely connected with the owners of the famous bottled drink. At 1:00 AM I closed down my operation at the booth, as there were no tolls collected until 7:00 AM. The next afternoon when I reported to work, the supervisor said that there was a note from the Parkway police; they had apprehended the toll-beater on Meadowbrook Parkway and had brought him back to the closed toll station. They had collected the thirty-five cents and put it in an envelope. I told him I had already turned in my collections at the revenue office and had no way to add another thirty-five cents. He didn’t want any part of the episode and suggested I toss it into that evening’s collection receipts.

 

An interesting aside: this toll both would be the same one depicted in Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather, where Sonny Corleone was brutally gunned down by rival mobsters, after leaving the family compound at Long Beach. But I was disappointed that in the movie version, the booth didn’t look like the one where I had spent many a lonely vigil, waiting to collect those paltry tolls that often didn’t cover my hourly pay of ninety cents.

 

October 25, 2005

 

 

Moses Arrives at the Shore – 1952

 

When I started my summer job in 1952 as a toll collector at Jones Beach State Park, two chief responsibilities were stressed:

--Keep the traffic moving!

--Be on the lookout for state cars with special license plates.

 

The long list of plate numbers to watch for included officials from the New York State government, the Long Island State Park Commission and other agencies. As soon as one was spotted, we were to call the Jones Beach operator immediately so that appropriate actions could be taken in the several minutes it would take the car to travel from the tollbooth to the administrative offices near the beach.

 

One quiet weekday on the Meadowbrook Causeway, a car entered my lane, driven by a chauffeur, with a man and a woman seated in the back. As soon as the car left, a more experienced collector quickly jumped over the counter to get to the nearest phone. Excitedly, he told the operator that Mr. Robert Moses had just passed through in a state car that was not on the list. I could imagine the panic as the staff scrambled to get ready for a surprise visit from the powerful Commissioner. Moses (1888-1981), the “Master Builder,” was responsible for the construction of Jones Beach, the crown jewel of the park system, considered one of the best beaches in the world. He also created most of the state parks on Long Island, along with the hundreds of miles of limited access roadways leading to them – all built during the Great Depression of the 1930s. These were in addition to the many urban planning projects he handled in the state. A major deconstruction of the Moses myth began with Robert Caro’s scathing biography of 1974, The Power Broker. Interestingly in 2007, a comprehensive retrospective, nicknamed “Rehabilitating Moses,” took place at three museum venues in New York City.

 

For the excellent early warning, the collector should have received some kind of special commendation, but I suspect his “heads-up” went unrewarded. Bureaucracy takes care of its own, and we were, after all, only summer hires.

 

2007

 

 

That’s Show Business – 1952

 

While going to college in the early 1950s, my summer employment was as a toll collector at Jones Beach State Park on the southern shore of Long Island, New York. It was mostly a boring job, standing in the broiling sun for eight hours, breathing noxious carbon monoxide fumes. One of the job’s advantages was wearing a crisp white deck officer’s uniform, designed in the park’s marine motif.

 

In my first summer at work, 1952, there was an evening performance of a musical, “A Night In Venice” at the newly constructed outdoor Jones Beach Marine Theater. All the toll collectors were to support these shows by handing a 6-1/2”x11” advertisement flyer to each patron as they paid the sixty-cent toll. Most people paid with a dollar bill, so the collector was required to give back the change – usually a quarter, dime and nickel – as well as the flyer. When cars were backed up by the hundreds at the tollbooths and perhaps a small child made a payment with sticky hands, the flyer clearly was not a high priority.

 

One day early in that first summer, the collectors noticed a man standing behind the toll plaza, watching the cars passing through the booths. He was the show’s producer, Mike Todd, a successful Broadway showman. He demanded that we hand out flyers to all cars.