Arthur Garfunkel and me at CAPRI

 

In the 1950s, the best place to spend the summers were the Long Island beach clubs built along the shores stretching from Atlantic Beach to Lido Beach. There was El Patio, the Colony, the Sands, and Malibu and .... Capri. My family rented a cabana at Capri with two other families for several summers until we moved to a few fancier beach clubs further east. 

I adored those lazy carefree summers of long ago. My mother would sit all day and play mah jong or canasta... and there she is in the black bathing suit on the right of the photo above. 

There were three huge swimming pools which everybody used as toilets. I know that to be a fact because nobody even knew where the rest rooms were. There was a snack bar which at 2 PM all the kids stormed to get ice creams and other sweet delights. There was a theater which presented plays featuring famous actors. And there were "teen clubs" (for the over eleven year olds) where we could go to dance the lindy and flirt with the cute boys. I actually preferred to fantasize about the cabana boys, and when one summer in late June I left Long Island for 2 months to attend a performing arts summer camp up on Martha's Vineyard... I can tell you I missed Dave the cabana boy more than my own parents.

Anyway, for two summers at Capri we shared that cabana with the Lowensteins and the Garfunkels. At that time, I was addicted to American Bandstand, so when my Dick Clark Yearbook arrived, I would lay on one of the chaise lounges and read it over and over and over, avidly consuming everything I could about Justine and Bob or Arlene and Kenny. 

I paid no attention to the teenager on the other chaise lounge right next to me. He was aways falling asleep on it and he was not very talkative and seemed to prefer the sound of silence. What a bore that Arthur Garfunkel was. 

Those summers of so long ago have fallen away and so much is gone. I sometimes think of this beautiful young dark haired girl, who was mischievous back in those days, and she told a group of us to follow her to the back part of the cabanas. She had a black marker in her hand and she scrawled in script on a plain and empty wall: "Mary Bard was here." And she was. So were we all.