When I was a kid, at least once a week in summer my mom would stuff a bunch of sandwiches in a cooler, stuff a bunch of kids in a station wagon along with a blanket and a ratty umbrella and drive over the bridges to “Robert Moses” which was short for Robert Moses State Park, where we’d spend the whole day playing in the waves and digging in the sand.
Once a year we’d drive further along the ocean parkway, counting rabbits on the side of the road, to Jones Beach Theater to see a musical, Showboat or Fiddler on the Roof under the stars and next to the bay. My grandparents and my aunt and uncle would be there.
At the start of the show, bandleader Guy Lombardo would glide in to the front of the stage on an enormous wooden runabout speedboat. We were in awe. I was barely awake by the end of the show but on our way out we’d pass a big tent where Guy and his orchestra would be playing for a large well dressed crowd of drinkers and dancers.
As a kid I always wondered who this Robert Moses could be. It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I discovered and read The Power Broker and learned what had really been going on behind the spectacle. The gulf between my childhood perception and the reality of the enormous machine he operated still staggers me.