Jones Beach Island: Overlook Beach to Tobay Beach
“There is a gleaming path mid the glowing sea
Which gently sways and beckons me.” — Robert Moses, 1907*
1. Moses Supposes . . .
I keep bumping into Robert Moses. Not literally of course since he is dead. But I’m walking beaches that would probably be inaccessible to the public if he hadn’t turned them into public parks, after sitting in traffic on parkways that might have been wider and less problematic if he hadn’t ordered that they be traversed with lovely-to-look-at bridges that busses would never fit under and that would prevent them from ever being widened in one of the most densely populated places in the United States. His name keeps coming up.
So, I figured it was time for me to learn a bit more about the man whose name I’ve heard my entire life but about whom I knew almost nothing, other than he was some sort of evil mastermind who has been both credited with and condemned for making NYC’s infrastructure what it is today. On Friday, I pulled a dusty copy of Robert Caro’s 1974 tome, The Power Broker — the definitive biography of Robert Moses — from the shelf of my school’s library. As I was checking out the book, the librarian helping me told me that Quinn, a current senior at our school, had written her junior history research paper on Robert Moses the previous year. Then, on Monday, when I was less than 100 pages into the book, I learned via The New York Times that British actor Ralph Fiennes is playing Robert Moses in a new play, based on this same biography, written by British playwright David Hare. Straight Line Crazy is currently showing — and already completely sold out — at The Shed at Hudson Yards in New York. (https://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/discover/shed) What are the chances?
Our journey through Moses Land.
The book has clearly stood the test of time — it’s almost as old as me — but funny that its subject is, all these years later, finding his way to the stage just as I’m walking through Moses Land. Before coming to New York, the show played in London, also to sold-out crowds. Why would British people — or a very smart high school junior in Connecticut for that matter — even care about a cantankerous, old New York City public official from the last millennium, even if he is being played by Ralph Fiennes? I think Quinn hit on the answer in her well-researched paper: Caro’s near obsession with Moses’s power bordered on a kind of idolatry that sealed his reputation as a villain and that solidified reputation makes for a compelling narrative. But is it the only narrative there is? I haven’t gotten that far through Caro’s book. It’s dense to be sure. Maybe David Hare’s play has something new to say about Moses? If I somehow manage to get tickets to Straight Line Crazy (not looking promising; single seats are selling for as much as $3K on stubhub), I’ll let you know.
In the meantime, I’m not going to get into a whole lot of detail about Moses here — I leave that to others with more knowledge and more patience than me. I have learned that the man never had a driver’s license, which is pretty remarkable given how many roads got built under his direction. And, apparently, he loved to walk. Before moving out to Long Island from Manhattan, he walked every day from his home uptown to his offices downtown — some 4 miles each way. The ideas flowed while he was walking. I can relate to that.
And he was a poet. “A gleaming path mid the glowing sea?” Okay, wow. Did Bob Moses have some vision of a future Ocean Parkway, rolling out along this 17-mile-long stretch of island between ocean and bay back when he was a student at Yale in 1907?
Well, maybe the parkway is not “gleaming,” but it is convenient. And it’s what Stan and I, “swayed and beckoned” respectively, drove on after hopping on the Robert Moses Causeway to get to Overlook Beach in Babylon, where we would tackle another 6-mile stretch of Jones Beach Island.
2. 4x4s! Dead Ahead!
The day didn’t quite go as planned. The line at the Better Bagel in Amityville set us back a bit, but Stan needed fuel in the form of an everything bagel with whitefish salad if he was going to make this trek with me.
The wind had picked up and it had changed direction; we were walking directly into it. Sand pelted our exposed skin and embedded itself into our clothing. The tide was up, too, so there was no walking in the swash zone. Soft sand it was.
Stan outpaced me . . . for awhile.
Given our late start, I decided to forego my original plan to swing a bit further east to Sore Thumb, which would have added another 4 miles to the trip. It was a wise decision. Stan likes to walk, but is more of a “saunterer.” There would be no rushing.
Like John and Alan had the previous day, Stan noticed things that I didn’t — things like the discarded citrus slices strewn at regular intervals over a considerable stretch of beach. That must have been some party!
Aside from oranges and lemons and the cool and rather random sand sculpture of merpeople we encountered, we saw little else of note as we passed the nearly deserted Cedar Beach and made our way toward the East Gilgo 4X4 Beach. Yes, that’s what it’s called. I never really got the appeal of driving up onto the beach to hang out with a lot of other vehicles, but I have to say I was grateful for the tire tracks that had pressed down the sand into narrow, but still walkable paths, thereby offering us easier passage.
Helpful in soft sand.
It got a bit awkward whenever a new truck arrived and wanted to drive in those same truck tracks, however. Yielding to pedestrians didn’t seem to be a concept that visitors to this beach were on board with. So it was up to those of us on two feet to cede the way. I don’t think I was imagining the funny looks we got from folks as we passed on foot. “Why on Earth would you want to walk on this beach?,” their blank stares said. It’s also possible that they had sussed out that we were actually liberals from Connecticut; while I wasn’t volunteering that information, it might have been obvious. We did not linger.
Once we got to Gilgo Beach proper, we decided to make a pit stop at the Gilgo Beach Inn over on the bay side. I highly recommend the cheese fries with a nice, cold, frothy Coca-Cola. Heads up: cash only. https://www.gilgoinn.com/
With several miles behind us but with a few more to go, it was clear that Stan was lagging. It had not been an easy walk so far. We made the tactical decision to walk the rest of the way on the bike path that runs alongside Ocean Parkway. While less idyllic, it is much easier walking. We were to meet up with my brother Matt and his wife, Darryl, at their regular spot at Tobay, so they could drive us back to our car at Overlook.
Still, it wasn’t clear that Stan was going to make it. The bagel had worn off and the cheese fries were an insufficient supplement. With his flair for the dramatic, he was texting friends, including John with whom I had walked the previous day, that I was leading him on a “death march.”
Finally, we turned into the parking lot at Tobay. With Matt and Darryl’s beach set-up a bit further to the west, but well within our sights, he nearly gave up. He would walk no further.
But there was no turning back. Just 800 feet to go. It was the promise of a place to lie down in the sand, protected from the wind, that finally got him there.
He survived. Although he won’t admit it, I think he might have even enjoyed it.
3. Ground Control to Major Jones
For those of you who are following along closely and know your geography, you might have noticed that we have been traveling east to west and that I have double-trekked here, crossing Tobay Beach twice. Yes, there are another five miles of the eastern end of Jones Beach Island that I need to cover in order to claim Jones Beach Island fait accompli. Inspired by my new friends at the 4X4 beach, I am considering converting from two feet to two wheels and using the bike path to cover that Overlook-to-Captree stretch. I will walk out to Sore Thumb though. How could I resist that?
Merpeople out of nowhere.
*I found this poem quoted in a 2003 article on Moses by Josh Fishman in U.S. News & World Report. Though Moses was known to be a poet while a student at Yale and was editor of the Yale Courant — Sinclair Lewis had been given the job at the better-known Yale Literary Magazine— I have not been able to verify its source.
A special thank you to Quinn for sharing her paper with me and providing me with considerable insight for writing this blog.