Playland: Boat and Swim

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1. Sometimes in the early 1960’s there were two boats daily Jay. Lots of thick black smoke broke out of the stacks as they throttled down off of Pine Island from their run up from NYC.

   Packed on all levels with day trippers you could hear the deep engines, the onboard music and the excited voices clearly from shore were I sat in my sandbox in our yard watching them, expecting them. Those were the days of the menhaden fishing trawlers in great numbers crisscrossing the Sound with giant nets angled for our plentiful local “finned fertilizer” and constantly crossing paths with the Playland Boats causing loud deep prolonged steam powered warning whistles from their pilot houses.

   Even without the trawlers playing havoc all Playland Boats ‘sounded off’ on cue when they were about a mile from the pier as an alert to pier dockhands and ride operators that the masses were poised to disembark. Later in the afternoon those same Playland Boats would again sound their steam whistles – this time as a warning to those day trippers that had not remembered departure time – and then in a half hour or so I’d see the reverse journey underway again as they approached full cruising speed off of Pine Island headed back down to NYC.

   What an enormous wake they threw! And how starkly the black smoke lingered in the sky over the Sound on windless days. Many can speak nostalgically of a bygone era for Rye, this certainly was one.

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