Part 2 - Levittown's Mays shopping center was a focal point for our community way back when

That's Marilyn curtseying at a dance in front of Mays in 1959.

Mays under construction in the early 1950s. The Peter Pan Bakery, Times Square Stores and Pergament can be seen.

Click on photos to enlarge

By MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE

I got my first job at Mays in my junior year (1962). I believe the pay was less than a dollar an hour. This little shopping center was my whole shopping world. Everything we could possible want you could find somewhere in this little strip of stores. And Henshaw's Furniture a block east of here.

Once in a while my mom would take me to Hempstead and the A&S there. It was like going to NYC to shop. As I got a little older, we would take the bus to Hempstead. We felt like world travelers. I bought all my records at Mays and Time Square Stores (see photo).

Life was so simple then. If we couldn't find it here, we didn't need it!

Don Frese and Billy Joel, who were born to be wild, share a common interest

click on photo to enlarge

BY MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE

Class of 1963

A recent Early Levittown blog story was headlined YOU KNOW YOU'RE FROM LONG ISLAND WHEN and included the line "You have a friend who swears they saw Billy Joel somewhere in Oyster Bay." Well, count in my husband Don who is shown above.

Billy Joel has a motorcycle shop there, not to sell bikes, but to display his collection and it is open to the public. Amazing shop! Lots of bikers hang out in Oyster Bay. Don was in Billy's shop a few weeks ago and Billy was there just walking around and working on some of his bikes along with some of his mechanics.

He spotted Don's bike (he has three of them) parked outside and asked if that was his. Don said yes. It's a Boss Hoss (a V-8 with the Corvette engine... thing is HUGE!) and Billy went out to get a better look. He was fascinated by it and asked Don if he would allow him to sit on it. Don said sure, and when Billy got on it Don had to help him stand it up. The thing weighs a ton and Billy is not a big guy. They then had a great conversation about motorcycles for quite a while.

I just love Long Island.

My memories of summer fun at Girl Scouts Camp Edey

click on photos to enlarge

By MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE

Class of 1963

I recently found these pictures from 1956 and scanned them to send to Kathy Stahlman Zinn, who was in my grade. We were Girl Scouts together and often talk about it. This is the Girl Scout Camp Edey, out east on Long Island. So many of our old classmates were in Girl Scouts. My mom was a troop leader for the older girls.

The girl in the boat with me is my younger sister, Susan class of 1965, on visitors' day. We would go to camp for two weeks and the weekend in the middle of those weeks we could have visitors. The photo of the outhouse will bring back many memories and a few nightmares to those who spent their time at the camp. I'll never forget those trips to the latrine at night with only a flashlight and lurking spiders, and we had to sit on a board with a hole in it.

We had rotating 'jobs'. The best were camp fire builder and KP. The dreaded one was latrine duty. We had to wash the whole thing down with industrial strength cleaner that smelled as bad as the latrine. Notice the little basin to wash our hands after using the latrine. And the poor girl walking towards it. I just know how she was feeling.

The photo with the sign that says "BIG DIPPER" was at the swimming area of the lake for those who knew how to swim. We had to turn over our number when we went in. Then there was Little Dipper for those just learning to swim. And it was always the buddy system.

Camp Edey, which is still there, was always great fun. There were no creature comforts, so this was true camping. The best part of the day was Taps at sundown which gave me chills. As the sky was beginning to darken the campfire was lit and the night time fun began.

A tastefully expanded Levitt house which still resembles the original

Click on photos to enlarge

By MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE

Class of 1963

Here are some pictures of my little piece of heaven in Levittown. From the front there is no expansion evident, looks like the basic ranch with garage and small dormer window.

All extension was done to the back, leaving us with a bright airy room with a view out back that feels like an extension of the house. This is all that we needed, just to open up the living area and a smaller room off to the side as a place for the toys and another TV for the grandkids to call their own.

Levitt really made his homes extension-friendly, one smart man! And our builder and contractor told us that the Levitts are one of the best constructed homes on Long Island!

Modest Levittown capes and ranches still rule among the McMansions

Marilyn Monsrud Frese's neighbor's big house on Furrow Lane

click on photos to enlarge

By MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE

Class of 1963

I must tell you that although some homes are gigantic, most in Levittown are not. You can still see those little ranches and capes inside of modest expansions. But knowing some people who do own these big houses (one of those posted above is my neighbors' across the street on Furrow Lane), their desire to own a larger home had them looking at other towns, ones with larger plots of land.

However, their desire to stay in Levittown, for a multitude of reasons, led them instead to expand their little capes and ranches rather than moving out of town.

My husband Don and I also looked at other homes about 10 years ago when he began thinking of retirement, but the feeling we have for Levittown, along with a block of wonderful neighbors, kept us here. We ended up pushing the back of the house out, along with extending the garage in the back to make more room for his three motorcycles.

We also made the extended rooms with cathedral ceilings. The high ceilings made the room so bright and open and we have nine-foot tall glass windows and doors across the back of the room which sort of brings the outside in. We still have only one bathroom for the two of us. If we managed with one bathroom while the kids grew up here, we can surely manage with one now.

From the front of our house, you cannot see the expansion at all. People walk in and are surprised to see so much room. We still have our fireplace between the kitchen and living room, as most of the ranches do. I don't know of any homes that still have the black tile floors and the radiant heat in them or their oil tanks still buried in the front lawns. That is long gone. Those warm floors on a cold morning were great though, remember that? No cold feet. We could go barefoot all year in the house. Yes, the small Levitt homes still rule the streets of Levittown.

A REPLY TO MARILYN

Leslie Sands Bell

Class of 1968

Marilyn, it sounds like your extension is tasteful and kept your house looking like your house, unlike the others. If I were to ever move back to Levittown, I'd be looking for a simple house, one that retains the look across the front with surprises in the back and/or inside.

I do have a deep appreciation of your love for that wonderful town and your neighbors. I think that the changes are harder to see for those of us who've moved away, and didn't have a chance to adjust with the times as the years went by and you continued to live there. We did move to a much bigger house in East Meadow and it was not a good experience.

I missed everything about Levittown, but I was a kid and had to go with my parents, although I begged to live with my mother's best friend and her daughter who was my best friend until graduation.

COMMENTS ON PREVIOUS STORY: LEVITTOWN HOUSES ALL GROWN UP

Dave Cahn, early Levittowner. Around here (Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC), we call these McMansions. Although they appear nice in well-cropped photos, they are too big for their lots and look ridiculous in real life. They scream of new money poorly spent. We're not in Levittown any more, Toto!

___

Photos by Marilyn Monsrud Frese

Part one: LEVITTOWN (NEW YORK) HOUSES ALL GROWN UP. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE CHANGES?

click on photos to enlarge

Question: What is your opinion of the major expansion of Levittown houses? Photos by Marilyn Monsrud Frese '63.

Kathy Stahlman Zinn '63

Toto, I don't think we're in Levittown anymore! Wow - these photos take my breath away, and make my father's additions to 99 Butternut Lane look paltry in comparison. I don't think I like them, but I think it was inevitable. Fashions and desires change.

I wonder, also, if Levittown's early reputation as a place where the houses "are all made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same" led to folk's desires to make their houses look more distinctive. Still, every time I see a classic Cape Cod, usually somewhere other than Levittown, I get a smile on my face. My son lived in a house in Charlottesville, VA which had the very same floor plan as my old home. I told him I knew where everything was in his house the moment I got in the door!

Toni Crescenzo Gelfer '68

These photos of expanded Levitt homes produce a dichotomy in my mind. My home life, since marriage, has been chock full of remodels and restorations. I appreciate all the hard work, time, thought and money that was expended to accomplish the finished project and the accompanying pride and self-satisfaction in seeing that huge undertaking to fruition.

On the other hand, I mourn for the charm and innocence of those beautiful, basic capes and ranches. Touring some streets of Levittown now, passing one behemoth after another, smothering those basic lots, crowding out the foliage makes me feel I'm in a giant Pulte neighborhood. There is a fine line between love and hate and sometimes crossing a Levittown street can put you over that line.

Wendy Max Dunford '68

Levittown? Surely not! Oh, but it is. These homes that began their lives as humble Cape Cod and ranch models, now towering above the sidewalks and streets of our beloved home town.

While some are done tastefully, and others not so much so, they still tug at our heart strings as we struggle to hang onto precious memories of the homes in which we grew up. Homes where we fought with our siblings. Homes where doorways were marked in pencil as a testament to how much we’d grown in a single year.

Those little homes where families struggled to get ready for work and school, sharing the single hall bathroom. We marked so many milestones in those small, sturdily built houses -- birthdays, proms, weddings -- often shared by multiple generations. Small? Yes, but they were full of love and warmth and happiness of a simpler time.

I’m sure the newly remodeled homes are nice and accommodate their families well. Still, one can’t help but sigh inwardly at what our beloved home town once was.

Arnie Galeota '61

What sticks in my mind about early Levittown is the sameness of each piece of property. Not only of the house, but of the entire property layout. The back yards had the same apple and peach trees, but not much more in foliage. The trees lining the streets were young and still small by today's standards.

There was the feeling of being content with what we had, not the feeling of trying to one up your neighbors by changing the appearance of your house. It just didn't seem that important then. I'm not sure when all the reconstruction of the homes and the community went into full gear, but it wasn't changing that much while I was still in high school. A few years later, first a garage, then a dormer, then new windows and then the more drastic changes began steamrolling until how it looks today. No two houses look alike!

____

Part two, with more mansion photos, will be posted in a few days.

A shake, rattle and roll vacation experience in Montserrat

Click on photo to enlarge

By MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE

Class of 1963

My husband Don and I vacationed on the island of Montserrat in 2007, just before Christmas. The island, which is in the British West Indies, had a terrible volcanic eruption back in 1995, which wiped out about one third of the island and buried its port city capital of Plymouth. Of the 13,000 people who lived on the island, 8,000 left and never returned.

It's a beautiful and super friendly island, black sand beaches mostly, and the people who remained on the island are just wonderful. This volcano is in the Sourriere Hills area, overlooking their port of entry and capital. The island is only about nine miles long and about six miles wide. The volcano erupts every few months. It sometimes just covers the island in volcanic ash, other times larger and with more damage.

The latest large eruption, re-burying much of the "exclusion zone", which is miles of dangerous area around the volcano, occurred on 2/11/10. The islanders live with this threat on a daily basis, but the new volcanic observatory built after the 1995 eruption has a warning system now in place on the island. The volcano is constantly monitored by the observatory.

One day we were sitting around the pool of this beautiful private villa we had rented. It had acres of land with amazing gardens and it was right on the top of a cliff with a 300 foot drop into the ocean. Suddenly everything started rolling and shaking. Waves started breaking across the top of the pool.

One reason we had rented this villa was because it was as close to the exclusion zone as was permitted, just on the edge of the danger zone. It has a view of the volcano, which is beautiful at night. Light from the fire inside makes it glow in the dark. We thought we were having a good size eruption and ran to see the volcanic mountain erupting (in hindsight, not too intelligent), only to find out it was an earthquake instead! A very different kind of vacation experience. Nature at its finest.

This is a link to the story and video of the eruption(s):

http://www.youtube.com/user/ptvmontserrat (may need to be copied and pasted to view.)

The favorite holiday songs of the famous Levittown Mickey

Dressed for the season is Mickey, who lives in Levittown and is the companion of Marilyn Monsrud Frese, class of 1963. He is a three and a half year-old Yorkie.

How did Marilyn get Mickey to pose like this? "I put a red blanket on an armchair, then wedged the wreath in between the arms. Then I dropped Mickey in between the blanket and wreath and just talked to him so he would look at me. He really is quite cooperative."

These are his favorite holiday songs:

10. Grandma Got Run Over by a Rottweiler

9. We Three Canines

8. Oh! Holy Fire Hydrant!

7. Duke, the Red-Nosed Doberman

6. Sniffing Around the Christmas Tree

5. Jingle Bones

4. Wreck the Halls

3. I Saw Mommy Licking Santa Claus

2. Away in a Dog House

1. All I Want for Christmas is My Two Chew Toys

Our Levittown house was a very, very, very fine house with a cozy fireplace

Marilyn Monsrud Frese in front of her family's rental, 45 Cornflower Road in 1948

Click on photo to enlarge

By MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE

Class of 1963

I remember the warm and cozy fireplace in our Levitt house. I believe it was in 1948 that my parents purchased a new Levitt ranch, but we had to rent a Cape Cod model (see photo above) while the ranches were being completed. The Capes were put up first because of the extra time it took to install the fireplaces in each ranch house, and speed was a necessity as so many people needed to get into a house ASAP.

Rentals were arranged for those who purchased ranches and had to wait. No Levittown house stood empty for more than a week or two.

In the ranch house, the front room kitchen (which was larger than the Capes' kitchens) is separated from the living room by an unattached standing brick wall with the fireplace opening on both sides, so it's enjoyed from both rooms at the same time. You could circle the brick wall from either side into the other room.

There was a movable cabinet that swung open like a room divider at one end of the fireplace wall. The divider had shelving/display cases, great for books, and a built-in closet to hang up coats. You could swing the whole unit away from the wall to create more privacy to either room, or swing it open to create a large opening between the rooms, great for when you had a party, which many of the neighbors did back in the early years.

No one had money to go out much, so home parties took place on many blocks each Saturday night. And the kids usually got some friends to sleep over because there weren't many older kids to babysit back then. We would hover on the top step to listen to what our parents were saying and watch them dance (always music and dancing) and my mom would always bring up plates full of snacks for us. No one ever told us we had to get to sleep. It was great fun.

That little brick fireplace brought such a sense of warmth and hominess to houses which were sparsely furnished with many hand-me-downs. It truly made the house feel like a home. I still live in the Levitt ranch, only now it's pushed out back and up. We still use the fireplace although the heated floors have been gone for decades. I am forever a Levittown girl!

Memories of the Jones Beach pool and Mello-Rolls. It seems like yesterday, but it was long ago.

Click on photo to enlarge

By FRANK BARNING

Many early Levittowners have fond memories, some 50 or more years later, of fun times spent at nearby Jones Beach. The picture of four-year old Marilyn Monsrud Frese triggers remembrances for the 1963 Division Avenue High School graduate.

"The photo of me in the Jones Beach chair (note the sea horse JB logo), eating one of those ice cream cones they used to sell with the ice cream roll wrapped in paper, was after a little mishap I had in the Jones Beach pool," she said. "I knew how to swim thanks to the Levittown pools, so my parents decided to enter me in a swimming race at the Jones Beach pool."

Marilyn got into the water, as the race began, and discovered that she could reach the bottom with her little feet. "So I decided I would walk my way across the pool. Being I wasn't a fast swimmer, I figured that would be a better way to get to the other side quicker. What I didn't know was that the pool got deeper in the middle."

So away Marilyn walked with all the parents cheering their kids on. "As my head went under, I remember thinking, okay I'll come up again soon. So I kept right on walking and walking and walking until my dad jumped in and pulled me out. I guess the lifeguards didn't notice I was missing. Then mom and dad bought me that ice cream because I was crying that they didn't let me finish the race."

That picture was snapped about 60 years ago. "Funny how I can remember stuff like that, but can't remember half of my graduating class," she said. Bob Seger summed it up when he wrote and sang, "It seems like yesterday, but it was long ago".

MORE ABOUT MELLO-ROLLS

Our next blog post will provide some Mello-Roll history and its tie-in to the hit 1970s TV sitcom, "Welcome Back, Kotter" which starred Gabe Kaplan.

Cosmo, Levittown's legendary ice-cream truck driver

Click on photos to enlarge

COSMO IN LIVING COLOR

* Cosmo at 2010 class of 1975 reunion at Eisenhower Park. Picture courtesy Larry Loewy.

* Cosmo and Samm, April 1998 when he was 81 years of age. Samm is the grand daughter of Marilyn Monsrud Frese.

* Cosmo with Samm, October 2000. She will be 16 this month.


By MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE '63

What I always found amazing is that Cosmo (or Cozzy as we called him) had the ability to remember every kid's name. He drove the streets of north Levittown for nearly 50 years.

I swear he must have had a map of each street and house with the kids' names on it hidden in his truck. I moved around the corner from where I grew up and Cosmo was still working as our ice cream man. My kids got to buy their ice cream from Cosmo throughout their childhood too. That was one of the many benefits of staying in Levittown all these years.

There is a photo of mine posted here of Cosmo at age 81. I wrote on the back, "Taken in April 1998". He's selling ice cream to my oldest granddaughter, Samm. She was the third of three generations of us buying our ice cream from Cosmo, never from anyone else. This was on our block, Furrow Lane.

Cosmo also remembered all the kids birthdays as well as their names. And as a parent, I know he didn't ask the parents. He really cared about the children on his routes, and he always took his time with them (or I guess I should say "us"). He would never rush the kid who couldn't decide what he wanted, and if any other kids would start getting annoyed with the one who was taking so long and holding up the line, Cosmo would make sure that kid never got to get nasty with the little undecided. A truly kind and gentle man was our Cosmo.

So many Levittowners adored Cosmo, including Sally Mann '61. She commented recently, "We waited for him and the special ring and I got my cup of butter pecan but more important was the contact - so positive, so caring."

According to my classmate, Tom Filiberto, "Cosmo is still alive. He's in his early 90s, lives in Bethpage and grows tomatoes."

1957 Summit Lane School: Mr. Ben Murphy's sixth grade class

Click on photo to make it larger

First row: Marilyn Monsrud, Tyler Asdorian, Peter Barnett

Second row: Noreen Donlin, the late Bob Benn, Leslie Wohl, Judy Lewis

Third row: Aaron Gurwitz, John McCormick, Leslie Wohl, Brian Williams, Joanne Leib

Fourth row: Darrae Cabre, Richie Ligouri, Kathy Stahlman, Bob Leporati, Jeff Harriton

Back row: Charlie Kawada, x, x, Mr. Ben Murphy, David Lounsberry, Ricky Hofer

MARILYN MONSRUD'S MEMORIES

Remember how all the girls had to wear skirts to school, pants were not allowed? With those stupid garter belts to hold up our stockings. And fixing 'runs' with clear nail polish. And we still had stockings with seams up the backs, while now it seems that only the ladies of the evenings wear.

Imagine how great it would have been to wear jeans and sneakers to school every day instead of skirts and stockings? Tough riding a bike to school in those skirts...either tightly fitted slim skirts or full skirts with lots of crinolines, as many as we could get under the full skirts. And remember the socks we wore? The more pairs of socks you could get on your feet, the better. We all looked like we had casts on our ankles, and they made our shoes so tight. And our quilted full skirts and poodle skirts.

Our styles in Levittown were so influenced by American Bandstand. I remember ironing only my collars on my white cotton shirts, because we only showed our collars under a crew neck sweater. So why iron the whole thing? And the backward cardigans, buttoned up the back with a scarf tied around our necks? Hey, the kids today have nothing on us.
____________________________

Many of these kids eventually graduated in Division Avenue High School's class of 1963. Photo courtesy of Marilyn Monsrud Frese. We could use help with the names of kids marked with an x.

Levittown NY ranch houses sprung leaks after 40 years

By Marilyn Monsrud Frese '63

I lived in the model #4 Levitt ranch shown in yesterday's blog post, the one with the pointy roof. It had a pretty good size kitchen just inside the front door compared to most Levitt Cape Cod houses. This ranch also had the stairs that started at a back door not at the front door while many or all Capes had side doors as a second entrance, not the back door that ranches have.

As you may remember, the ranches had a fireplace between the kitchen and the living room. That was a wonderful thing to have in the winter. And all the houses had radiant heating in the floors! You could walk around the house barefoot and your feet were always warm. Dogs loved them too. They would always find the warmest spots.

It wasn't until the Levitt ranches hit about 40-years old that those radiant-heat coils started spouting leaks. You couldn't tell where the leaks were starting. Sometimes they would remove tiles and cement and have to dig around until they found the leak in the buried pipe. For a while many homeowners just had them fixed and patched the floors, but then multiple leaks would start up so a change to baseboard heating were made to almost all Levitts.

Also, most oil burners have been moved to garages and the tanks buried in the lawns had to be filled with cement and above ground tanks moved to the sides of the houses or into the garages. If an old buried oil tank sprung a leak, the homeowner was responsible for an 'oil spill inspection' and the removal of all effected soil, which many times would have leaked underground into neighbors' soil too. That inspection and cleanup was very expensive so people started filling their tanks with cement to prevent that from happening. And this all had to be done and documented by inspectors.

I still live in a Levittown ranch, have for about 60 years. Overall, Levitt and Sons did a spectacular job of creating and building our community, a few leaks aside.

Levittown Mickey's favorite Christmas songs . . .

Dressed for the season is Mickey, who lives in Levittown and is the pride and joy of Marilyn Monsrud Frese '63. He is a 2 1/2 year old Yorkie. These are his favorite Christmas songs:

10. Grandma Got Run Over by a Rottweiler

9. We Three Canines

8. Oh! Holy Fire Hydrant!

7. Duke, The Red-Nosed Doberman

6. Sniffing Around the Christmas Tree

5. Jingle Bones

4. Wreck the Halls

3. I Saw Mommy Licking Santa Claus

2. Away in a Dog House

1. All I want for Christmas is My Two Chew Toys

Our Levitt house, is a very, very, very fine house...

click on photo to enlarge

By Marilyn Monsrud Frese
Class of 1963

I remember the warm and cozy fireplace in our Levitt house. I believe it was in 1948 that we purchased a new Levitt ranch, but we had to rent a cape (see photo above) while the ranches were being completed. The capes were put up first because of the extra time it took to install the fireplaces in each ranch house, and speed was a necessity as so many people needed to get into a house asap. Rentals were arranged for those who purchased ranches and had to wait. No Levittown house stood empty for more than a week or two.

In the ranch house, the front room kitchen (which was larger than the capes' kitchens) is separated from the living room by an unattached standing brick wall with the fireplace opening on both sides, so it's enjoyed from both rooms at the same time. You could circle the brick wall from either side into the other room. There was a movable cabinet that swung open like a room divider at one end of the fireplace wall. The divider had shelving/display cases, great for books, and a built in closet to hang up the coats of your visitors. You could swing the whole unit away from the wall to create more privacy to either room, or swing it open to create a large opening between the rooms, great for when you had a party, which many of the neighbors did back in the early years.

No one had money to go out much, so home parties took place on many blocks each Saturday night. And the kids usually got some friends to sleep over because there weren't many older kids to babysit back then. We would hover on the top step to listen to what our parents were saying and watch them dance (always music and dancing) and my mom would always bring up plates full of snacks for us. No one ever told us we had to get to sleep. It was great fun.

That little brick fireplace brought such a sense of warmth and hominess to houses which were sparsely furnished with many hand-me-downs. It truly made the house feel like a home. I still live in the Levitt ranch, only now it's pushed out back and up. We still use the fireplace although the heated floors have been gone for decades. I am forever a Levittown girl!

CROSBY, STILLS and NASH
I'll light the fire, while you place the flowers
In the vase that you bought today.
Staring at the fire for hours and hours,
While I listen to you play your love songs
All night long for me, only for me.

Our house, is a very, very, very fine house.
With two cats in the yard,
Life used to be so hard,
Now everything is easy 'cause of you.

Come to me now, and rest your head for just five minutes,
Everything is done.
Such a cozy room, the windows are illuminated
By the evening sunshine through them,
Fiery gems for you, only for you.

Our house, is a very, very, very fine house.
With two cats in the yard,
Life used to be so hard,
Now everything is easy 'cause of you.

Senior prom couple now senior citizens; oh my how time flies

Gary Parker 1962 and Marilyn Monsrud Frese 1963 all dressed up for his senior prom. He was a star athlete, she was a cheerleader. Now they are senior citizens with about 10 grandchildren between them. Marilyn lives in Levittown, Gary in Georgia.

Marilyn Monsrud Frese, 1963, and the grandkids

Marilyn Monsrud Frese and her grandkids on Mother's Day 2010. She has a son and a daughter and for many years worked at our old high school. She still lives in Levittown.