Little Old Canarsie
When Everything Was Done By Hand

In the early teens, when the village here had only two routes to go to and from the city, one of these was called the main road (later known as East 92 Street). The other was Rockaway Avenue, which became later known as Rockaway Parkway. In those days we had street lights of gas, which had to be turned off and on by a long stick.

I can still recall when one of the men who would come around about 4 p.m. each day and then about 7 a.m. to service these lights, which were about two or three blocks apart, was Mr. Belford, of an old Canarsie family and also two brothers who in their early days here also went around with a long stick to put the lights on and off - the Ferraioli brothers who raised large families. One lived on Conklin Avenue and East 96th Street, the other lived over on the East 105th Street section.

When these lights were discontinued and replaced with electricity, a man used to come around with a small ladder and turn a crank on the pole to let down the lamp. Then he would replace two carbons which met together to burn all night. After a few years they started to use bulbs and then the lights operated by a clock, which was set for them to go on and off automatically according to the length of daylight and darkness.

When they no longer needed a man to come around every day to service the lights in the late teens, we also saw something new come to town. When some of our earliest Italian men rented a cellar in some store and would put out a sign "Tony-Ice-Coal and Wood" or "Dominick-Ice-Coal and Wood" where they would sell you a hundred lb. bag of coal or a ten cent piece of ice or a bag of wood. One of these men I recall was Tony Battaglia who had his place on East 92nd and what is now Avenue J. Then there was one on Conklin Avenue and East 93rd Street. Another was on Rockaway Parkway near Avenue L owned by a Mr. Accardi.

When the building boom ended in 1929, an ice dock was opened by a well-known former oysterman and builder Harry Dickens, right alongside of the famous Fortmeyer Candy Store, next door to P.S. 115, where he sold lots of families ice, until the frigidaires came out and all of these places closed down.

How this generation would have loved to walk down East 92nd Street in the summer months and hear the croaking of bullfrogs in the swamp area and the strains of music from the Murphy Carousel at the shore where the tune of "Sweet Dardinella" could be heard as soon as you passed P.S. 115 at Avenue M.

And so we end another chapter of Little Old Canarsie of the days of long ago.

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