A writer relives the making of lifelong memories just 20 minutes from home
I’ll bet that when most people drive by the Port Authority bus terminal at the George Washington Bridge in New York, the word “bungalow” doesn’t pop into their heads. Covered in a layer of grime and hazy from exhaust fumes, the terminal has been described as “notorious” and “a crumbling eyesore.”
But when I drive by on my way from my Monsey home into the city, I notice something else: the terminal’s unique roof, a row of concrete triangle pairs. The first structure built in the United States by Italian award-winning architect and engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, the terminal’s roof is noteworthy. Most appreciate the aesthetic, but my father always thought it looked like a mustache, and that’s what he called it every time we drove past. The name stuck with us kids and even today, when I catch a glimpse of “the mustache,” I’m five years old again, sitting with my brother and sister in the backseat of our ’64 Rambler, returning home to Kew Gardens Hills in Queens after a day spent checking out bungalows for the upcoming summer season.
Back in the 1960s, men in our circles didn’t spend their workweek in the city while their families summered upstate. My parents and their friends chose bungalows based on their proximity to Manhattan so the husbands could return to their families every night.
Finding a colony within a 60-mile radius of Manhattan wasn’t a problem, and our first two years of bungalow life weren’t even near the Hudson Valley or the Catskills. Instead, we soaked up the sun and made memories of a lifetime just 20 minutes from home in Far Rockaway, at the southern end of Queens, steps away from the Atlantic Ocean.
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