Growing up at the Fair

     One odd thing about being New World fauna is that you feel that the term "native American" should refer to you, but of course, it belongs properly to those of the Indian nations.  So what do we call ourselves, who were born in the place where we stand? 
     As a native-born Rego Parker, I have heaven and inertia to thank for my condition.  I think I was fortunate to grow up when and where I did.  In some ways, I was better off than the kids nowadays.
     Back then, the neighborhood was less crowded, and the traffic less daunting.  Rego Park still had some of that village charm that comes from small businesses where the proprietors know you by name.  Parents did not have to subject their kids to a long car ride to another state, just so they could ride a roller coaster.  There used to be an amusement park right here in Rego Park--Kiddy City.  And when that closed, there was Adventurers Inn, near the Whitestone Bridge, where I won many a free miniature golf game by scoring a hole-in-one on the final hole.  There were indoor arcade games, too, and the usual burgers or hot dogs for refueling between games.  Parents didn't have to take out their credit cards, or a second mortgage, to pay for it all, either.
     Rego Park has developed, Transformer-like, in the years I've lived here.  Every open space has been taken over by apartment houses or malls, and the green--as in trees and grass-- has quite disappeared.  Queens Boulevard once fit the dictionary definition, and was divided not by fences, but by trees, which gave back a bit of the oxygen sucked out by the traffic.  But cars run into trees, don't they?  Alas for Rachel Carson followers and our carbon footprint.
     Futuretown always looks better when it's up the road apiece.  I remember a great contribution to life's enjoyment here being proximity to the 1964-65 World's Fair in Flushing Meadow Park.
     The Fair's theme was "The World of Tomorrow", and every kid was fascinated by the visions of the future.  The Illinois Pavilion had a moving mannequin of Abe Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, courtesy of Disney.  General Motors Futurama displayed undersea living quarters and vehicles roaming the yet unseen lunar surface.  DuPont's multimedia magic show promised Better Living through Chemistry.  Bell Telephone's exhibit highlighted the picturephone, but missed entirely the real future of smartphones and the Web.  General Electric offered to power all this progress with clean, safe nuclear energy.
     A moment's pause to appreciate the canyonesque gap between expectations and reality...
     The message to us children of the hour was clear: The future works; technology is our unwavering friend; before us spreads an expanding horizon of forward progress and shadowless good.  Robert Moses's beautifully laid out fairgrounds inspired in us an eagerness to discover the wonders science would bring.
     If that bounty has turned out to be a mixed bag, so has everything else in life, it seems.  The lunar adventure was short-lived; the undersea colony never came to pass.  But one exhibit from the Fair, too homely to attract my overexcited attention at the time, proved to be the key to the future that made the transition out of dreams.  Looking like a failed model for the New Years ball, Telstar, the communications satellite, was the forerunner that made our present possible.  Its progeny bear the e-mails, streaming videos. and web searches that connect our global society today, inspiring a new dream of a world without borders.

Gustatory recollections

     One aspect about remaining in one place all your life is that you alone know how the neighborhood used to look.  My earliest recollections tell me there once was an amusement park where now are an expressway ramp and a mall.  Who remembers Kiddy City?  Back then, Queens Boulevard looked like a boulevard, with tall shade trees along the median and wooden lampposts.  Now it resembles a junior league superhighway, a concept that goes badly with the heavy pedestrian traffic of an endless shopping street.
     Children would never believe that there were two chocolate emporiums right here in Rego Park--Barton's and Barricini's.  There was a small restaurant called Hamburger Train, where every burger order was delivered on a Lionel train.  "Order a burger, will you?" the tiny tyrant in me would silently mutter, as tuna sandwiches did not get to ride but were handed over conventionally by a fellow resembling the short-order cook in Dagwood's favorite eatery.
     Speaking of food, the tank in Scott's Seafood Restaurant's window provided not-so-lively entertainment for a child who never could have dreamed up a creature as ugly as a lobster.  I watched fascinated by two crustaceans wrestling in slow motion--was it amatory or competitive?  The winner would reappear, broiled and red, a trophy for the diner.
     Of course there was Howard Johnson's, with its famous orange roof, where I consumed many beef burgundy dinners without knowing they were created by the then new immigrant Jacques Pepin.  I had a friend who would wolf down the fried clams, and I fondly salivate in memory of the Indian pudding, served warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream.  Whatever happened to menus like that?
     My stomach has a memory of its own.  It reminds me of the posh Stratton Restaurant in Forest Hills, which had the best coffee I ever drank to excess.  And the Horn & Hardart's, where you could buy a good takeout meal for small change.  And back in Rego Park, Evelyn's Bake Shop, where the gypsies were edible and the rum babas, chestnut cakes, and indianas formed the fifth major food group.
     Whatever happened to all the bakeries in New York?  What economic environmental disaster forced them all to dry up like farms in the Dust Bowl?
     One more gustatory remembrance is reserved for the passing of the Homestead Delicatessen, which left a black hole in my life still unsatisfied by anything else alimentary.  A moment of silence, please, in recognition of the contribution made by their apple strudel, their black forest ham, their napoleons!  I am now too depressed to continue, but all those who lived and still reside in Rego Park/Forest Hills will know the same pangs of nostalgia--or is it hunger?