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Showing posts from July, 2014

Haypath Park

We didn’t have social media.   No Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram.   In fact, we didn’t have the internet, cellphones or cable TV. But we had Haypath Park and that was pretty damn good. I have a vivid mid-sixties recollection of my father at the kitchen table with the Long Island Press reading an article about plans to build a park on Haypath Road.   Almost like literary foreshadowing, I sensed this was a more important nugget than whatever was on the first few pages of the paper that day. Carved out of the woods between three housing developments, our park immediately became the beating heart of a generation of local kids.   Two baseball fields, a basketball court, tennis courts, handball and some scattered diversions for younger children.   From the day the gates swung open, it rendered the question, “what are you doing after school?” obsolete. In my decade or so tethered to the park, I tried just about every game known to man.   We played football, basebal