We in Bensonhurst considered Riis Park as Rockaway: you got there by crossing the Flatbush Avenue Bridge. Flew there a few times in the later 50's. Flew more often in parking lots at Marine Park, Brooklyn, or some of the (paved) sports fields at local Junior High Schools, or parochial schools - Bible, Catechism, Yeshiva, wherever they didn't chase us off. When cars were available, we flew at the Farmers' Market and the 1939 World's Fair Grounds lots. Flew often at a wide Belt Parkway flood flat just next to Fort Hamilton Veterans' Hospital before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was even started. You think YOU were close to vets with what we now call PTSD... It crossed our minds, too. Did a lot of bus and subway travel to flying sites - like Red Hook Stadium in mid-winter. There was always a scrapped tire we could burn for heat... Choreographing the movement of modelers, models, fuel and field boxes on subways and buses became an insider's art.

If I get a few more interested in Mackey's book, I'll get back to each for snail addresses. Give it a week or so?

It's a different world now, no? People puffing on strange smelling smokes, with car radios blaring music full of brutal language, crime and violence, at the bleeding ear level, complain about OUR noise. And we've learned to take their 'complaints' seriously.

Been there (when it was good), done that, moved to Arizona...