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To Lazy M Ranch THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS
by Michael I. Siegel
Amber locked on point. Bird, I whispered to Mark, who was less than five yards to our left and climbing up to the narrow trail through the pines. He couldn't see yet, that the Brittany was stopped ten yards ahead, on the trail and steady as a rock. As I moved in behind, her body was frozen. I watched as she elevated her nose and fixed her gaze on a grayish grouse sitting on a limb about eighteen feet up. Her move was in slow motion until, like a fast forward, everything happened at once. When it was over, I had two spent 28 gauge shells, a perplexed dog and a view of Bonasa, cruising down into the valley amongst the trees. That day was only three years ago and the recollection vivid. I would have been happy to add it to the vast storehouse of memories of days afield, in the manner of the great upland bird hunters; but such experiences are relatively new to me. Probably, because I came from the wrong side of the tracks. If you mention Long Island, a vision of jammed expressways and parkways winding their way through endless miles of suburbia immediately jumps to mind. I was not yet four when my dad, like thousands of other GI's back from the war, moved my family eighteen miles east of Manhattan to Long Island. My first memory of this new home was a drive down a dirt (mud) road to the framed out start of what would become a cedar-shake shingled saltbox. It was a corner house, and the side road was forty feet from the tracks of the Long Island Railroad. (I can still sit with a first time visitor and after they calm down, say what was what after a train had passed by !). Across the tracks to the east lay acre upon acre of potato farms neatly divided by dirt roads and woodlots. From the chain link fence I could see two green trimmed, white farm houses and a tree line in the distance. The Long Island Expressway did not exist and within a few miles of home, were the vast estates of Vanderbilt, Hay, Whitney, Phipps and Mackay. We were the beginning of suburbia. Our's was not the farm life (nor the estate life). I wanted to live on a farm, I wanted a horse and mostly I wanted to spend time in "the woods." But we lived on the wrong side of the tracks as I watched it all disappear. I got older, and my home range expanded. I wandered wherever there were trees. Harbor Hill, was the estate of Clarence H. Mackay and home to his son John, who was thirty-nine when I moved to Roslyn. By the time I was ten, the abandoned estate became prime hiking territory and I grew up never knowing its grandeur or historic significance in the annals of the sporting life. I was aware that there was something else going on, since I had classmates in grade school who ran traplines; but they lived on the other side of the tracks. For the next several years I was content to learn about the outdoors and rural life from a local landscaper who owned a nursery and let me work with him during the warm months. Mostly I learned about planting and trees and such, and he had many (tall ?) tales about wildlife both here and in the "old country." My first rabbit hutch was a gift from him and I discovered all there was to know about rabbits. That hutch was the closest I got to farm life and I think the outside was painted with the same green paint as the trim on the farm houses. My only other look at rural life came as a result of my several uncles, who all lived within a few houses of my family. They lived to fish! If nothing else, Long Island was a haven for saltwater fishermen. By this time all the private flyfishing clubs had closed but every harbor was an access point for Long Island Sound or the Great South Bay and the Ocean. Most of our fishing was from Boston Whalers (we called them Big Bertha's) and when the weather was really bad, we encountered duck hunters. The heyday of waterfowling on "the island" was over and now many of the prime hunting areas were on private property. Gardiner's Island, where we particularly liked to fish, was leased for hunting, to (Guess who ?) Clarence Mackay for at least twenty years. Although I caught a glimpse of what used to be, I still wondered what it would have been like if I had grown up on the other side of the tracks. I took time out from thoughts of nature to allow adolescence to subside. Then it was college, graduate school and time to get a job. (End Part I)