An Archive of the Eclectic Interests of an Autodidact
I spend most of my Saturday going in to town in Far Rockaway, These were very special days for me. I would bring my favorite foods, or other times I would eat at the counter at Woolworths . I would always see a new movie at the Strand. And then to the books at Woolworths . Many of the books from the 1960 are from there. They were in the back on the left.
Click here to see Movie Tie-in Books photo gallery for books A-K
Click here to see Movie Tie-in Books photo gallery for books L-Z
I found these amazing photographs on google images and it led me to this blog.
Footnote Maven: This photo is the reason I believe my family motored out to Edgemere. My Grandfather loved to drive and was fond of what he called hot cars. Once on a visit to New York he took my sister and me for a ride in his Karman Gia which he called the “Hottest Car On Long Island.”
Bushes in front of our house near the corner of Sprayview Avenue, Straight ahead are the original bungalows toward the elevated subway and Edgemere Ave
This is our house on Beach 38th street right off the boardwalk , Its the big brown one, I can still hear my family and all the people that would come and spend their whole summer or just a week.
I started looking on Skips’ And Carols’ wonderful FarRockaway.com site when it first began. Like many of us is this is where I got the bug. I couldn’t get enough. This led me on a journey to rediscover the three beach houses on my grandparents owned in Edgemere.
This has led me in my own way to bring Edgemere back to life. There are two ways to see many of my photos. One is thru my families photos and the other is through the streets, buildings and stores. Through all of these years, no one has ever put up anything on Beach 38th street and Sprayview Avenue. I searched and kept waiting for a picture to show up. Years went by without a photo of this street. For anyone who loves all these sites, it is all of us that are keeping it alive.
It’s now my time to relinquish my treasures of my families history in Edgemere. I hope you enjoy them.
When I was around 10, I spent the summer at the beach 38th street house.
My grandfather often talked about his movie years being a motion picture operator in the early days of film. As new movie projector models replaced the old ones, he saved them in the basement. He would often take us down there and weave his stories and show us all the wonderful things he collected. Collecting I learned was a part of his personality. He told me that collecting is about passion.
It was one of the greatest summers of my life. In the early evening, that twilight time between day and night, in the part of the house that was my grandparents’ quarters off the right side of the main porch, my grandfather would often show me some of the things he saved. My love for books comes from this moment. He showed me these wonderful old books that were Movie Tie-in Books. It set me on a course of collecting that has not stopped to this day.
While I was going to junior high school at PS 198 my father worked in the city. He was a book binder. He would bring me home all the books he thought we would like. I would save my money and go into the city as often as I could and searched the bookstores all over Manhattan and buy myself paperback books. I would come home with shopping bags of them and I could see the look on my parents face. They were very concerned. But I was in my glory. I would fall in love hundreds of times with the graphics on the covers. I learned that they began making movie tie-in books as early as they have been making films.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I still do.