ALLAN ROGERS VISITS LONG ISLAND FOR PUMPKINS, HALLOWEEN & LIGHTHOUSES

There’s no doubt that the Americans make a big thing out of Halloween but nothing had quite prepared us for the sight that greeted us as we drove along a quiet country road on Long Island., Near Peconic we found Krupski’s Pumpkin Farm and what was really a kind of Halloween and harvest super market.


We stopped to admire the stands full of enormous pumpkins and corn decorations.

They were punctuated by life size figures from The Wizard of Oz. The owners, The Krupski’s were friendly folk and after posing for a picture alongside the ‘Tin Man’ they told us and about their Halloween hay rides in which the children are towed on trailers through the farm and fields.

We had arrived at the tip of Long Island by car ferry. The bustle of New York lay a hundred and twenty miles ahead, but at Orient Point all was quiet and peaceful.
After stopping for fuel at a gas station, it cost all of 92p a gallon! we followed a little side road.

Beyond the willow trees lay a long flat landscape dotted with Dutch barns.

I was tempted to stay and explore for at one lane end a sign offered “horse riding” and then as we followed the coastal back waters, there was even canoe rental, but we had miles to go and promises to keep.

As we entered the little town of Orient the smell of new mown grass mingled with the tang of salty air.

There was a wooden schoolhouse dating back to 1888, the American flag fluttered above the lawn and beyond the smartly painted timber houses we found the Orient Country Store. It was an old style shop and looked rather like a set from The Waltons .

The shopkeeper jokingly told us that it had been modernised in1890.

He broke off from helping his son with his homework to cut us some sandwiches.

As he piled on the pastrami, I read the community notices. and found that the best catch in the local fishing competition had been six Snapper and a Sea Bass.

Half an hour along the highway we pulled in for coffee to a roadside diner called the Hubba Hubba Drive In and found that nostalgia for the ‘fifties’ was alive and well.

The waitresses were the kind of girls that could bowl you over.


Clad in short red skirts and wearing roller skates, they shot down a wooden ramp at high speed delivering trays of hot dogs or plates of shrimps to the waiting cars.

We eventually reached Greenport, a whaling village from the 1800’s where we were welcomed on board the good ship "The Mary E" by Teddy Charles.

For fifty years the 72 foot clipper schooner sailed out of Block Island as a sword-fisherman and then she carried mail and cargo during World War Two.

The ship was capable of carrying six sails but with just the four hosted we fairly clipped along. It was restful with just the sound of the water, and the occasional creak of timber and the flap of canvas as the course was adjusted.
Cruising with the sun on our faces we couldn't have been happier. The trip lasted two and a half hours.

There are thirteen lighthouses on Long Island’s Suffolk County and the first one that many immigrants to America would have seen is on Fire Island.

There are seasonal ferries that will take you out to Fire Island with it’s sand dunes and busy bird life, but we drove out taking the causeway over Captree Island where wireless inventor Gugliemo Marconi once experimented.

A startled deer ran off into the scrub and large butterflies fluttered by. This along with the view from the lighthouse and an interesting talk from the park ranger made it a really worthwhile trip

On our last day on Long Island we visited Glen Cove. Originally it was called Mosquito Cove, now the locals didn’t know ‘Mosquito’ was an Indian tribe, and not wanting to be called after a bug, they renamed it in honor of Glencoe but they took the name down wrong and it became "Glen Cove." Well despite it’s confused beginnings it is now very plush.

We drove along Highland Road, out to the yachts and the marina where we went on board The Thomas Jefferson. She was a replica of the paddle steamers that used to take the rich and well heeled merchants into Manhattan.

On our excursion we could easily imagine the elegant lifestyle in the luxurious mansions. In the distance we glimpsed the location where Audrey Hepburn, and Cary Grant filmed Sabrina.
There were darker moments too and when our guide pointed out Execution Rock in the middle of the channel, where the British commander left his American prisoners to drown. It seemed like a good time to keep quiet.

In the distance we could see the skyline of Manhattan and the next stage of our travels was beckoning.

I enjoyed the journey through Long Island but things seldom turn out as you imagine them. I knew that Charles Lindberg had taken off from Roosevelt Field in 1927 in his historic non stop flight to Paris and I was determined to visit it . When we got there we found that the planes had long gone and that ‘Roosevelt Field had become the largest shopping mall in the north-east United States.

Report by Allan Rogers

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