When at last the head of Little Neck Bay is reached, here is another variety of primitive country scene. The upland road skirting the hill, beyond which the rifles of Creedmoor are crashing, takes a sudden turn down a steep grade, a guileless-looking grade, but very dangerous for bicyclists, especially in the fall when the ruts and rocks are covered thick with leaves for days at a time. Then, after passing a nearer view (through a vista of big trees) of the blue Sound, with the darker blue of the hills beyond, the road drops down into a peaceful old valley, tucked away as serene and unmolested as it was early in the nineteenth century, when the country cross-roads store down there was first built, along-side of the water-power mill, which is somewhat older. In front is an old dam and mill-pond, called "The Alley," recently improved, but still containing black bass; in the rear Little Neck Bay opens out to the Sound beyond, one of the sniping and ducking places of Greater New York. The old store, presumably the polling-place of that election district of the city, is where prominent personages of the neighborhood congregate and tell fishing and shooting stories, and gossip, and talk politics, seated on boxes and barrels around the white-bodied stove, for the sake of which they chew tobacco.
It is one of those stores that contain everything—from anchor-chains to chewing-gum. There are bicycle sundries in the show-case and boneless bacon suspended from the old rafters, but the best thing in the place is a stream of running water. This is led down by a pipe from the side of the hill, acts as a refrigerator for a sort of bar in one corner of the store—for this establishment sells a greater variety of commodities than most department stores—and passes out into Long Island Sound in the rear.
The fact that they are in Greater New York does not seem to bother them much down in this happy valley, at least it hasn't changed their mode of life apparently. The last time we were there a well-tanned Long Islander was buying some duck loads; he said he was merely going out after a few snipe, but he ordered No. 5's.
New York City Up in the Beginnings of the Bronx Regions—Skating at Bronxdale.
"Have you a policeman out here?" we asked him.
"Oh, yes, but he doesn't come around very often."
"How often?"
"Oh, I generally catch a glimpse of him once a month or so," said the gunner. "But then, you see, these here city policemen have to be pretty careful, they're likely to get lost."
"Down near Bay Ridge," a man on the cracker-barrel put in as he stroked the store-cat, "one night a policeman got off his beat and floundered into the swamp, and if it hadn't been that some folks of the neighborhood rescued him, he'd have perished—of mosquitoes."