I spent July 3rd at the beach at Tow Bay in Massapequa, Long Island, with Susan Woodbury, who was my best friend when we were 12, and her husband Vin, and their daughters and friends. We’ve done this most Thirds or Fourths for about 15 years. Susan works in the public school system and Vin is a manager at Verizon. Their now-grown daughters used to babysit for my now-grown son. Susan and Vin have a 40-year-old houseboat, about 30-feet long and 12-feet wide. It’s the kind of boat that used to bob in the background on “Surfside Six.” It doesn’t really move anymore but it still floats. It’s docked at the pier at Tow Bay and it’s full of beer and food and wet bathing suits. We meet at the boat in the morning and take big bursting coolers of beer and potato chips and hero sandwiches to the beach a hundred yards away. 

It’s a real Long Island beach, just down from Jones Beach, and the waves are big and heavy and crashing and I once got caught in a riptide-undertow there.  It was about ten years ago on a bright afternoon and the grownups were standing breast-high in the water and laughing.  Suddenly I got caught, swept and pushed by something, and suddenly I was moving. I was smiling — I think I was embarrassed — but I looked at Vin who was a few feet away, and he read what was happening and leaned, stretched out his arm, took my hand, jerked me off my feet and reeled me toward him. He was really strong. He didn’t say anything. Then he said something like, “That was interesting.” People barely noticed what had happened but I felt death had been at my feet and Vin got me from it. Well that’s more dramatic than I meant to be.

We sit at the beach all day. It was on this beach 15 years ago that I first noticed America was getting obese. It was sitting on the houseboat that I realized America was getting rich, that people who used to be called working class had speedboats and gold necklaces and big watches. At the end of the day, at dusk, we barbecued hamburgers, chicken and hot dogs. Vin stayed over on the boat and listened to a ballgame. The girls and I and Susan usually go back to the house, and the next morning we have chocolate Dunkin’ Donuts and coffee and read Newsday, and then I come home on the LIRR.

This year I went back into the city late on the night of the third. The next day, on the Fourth, I met my aunt for lunch and shopping and met up with the woman I describe in this column, which I wrote that night.