College point Queens New York where Hank and Jay grew up was an unusual, isolated town comprised of roughly 40,000 working class people, mostly German, Polish, Irish, and Italian. It was surrounded on three sides by the East River, with only four roads in and out of the town. 14th avenue, 20th avenue, 23rd avenue – or the airport road, and 122nd street known as the cause way. Between the avenues and streets there were junkyards, the College Point dump, empty lots of abandon vehicles, the local sanitation facility, a small privet airport, and even a large marshy swamp fed by a small creek.

It was early on a cold and cloudy day in February. The type of day when patches of ice and frost lye randomly on the ground like footprints made by the gods of wet winter weather. It was a Saturday when Hank and Jay began playing an outside imaginary game with some made up villain named, The Sleeper. At the time, Hank was 15 and Jay was 11. The game began in their abandon metal garage that was used as a playhouse fort. As the backyard became confining to Hank and Jay’s imagination, The Sleeper and the game moved out of the backyard and into the Streets of College Point.

Jumping on Jay’s blue stingray bicycle with banana seat and v-bars, they road up the block of College Place, passing the triangular Poppenhusan monument that split 122nd street and College Place. They biked down 122nd street, heading over to 14th avenue where Hank knew of houses in the process of being built would be unrestricted to 2-kids chasing The Sleeper.

Turning right off of 14th avenue and onto 132nd street, riding passed the entrance to the Grand Union super market and Coppola’s Pizza, Hank and Jay came to a set of uncompleted homes at the end of an unpaved road leading to nowhere. Climbing up to the second floor of a partially constructed, two-story cinder block foundation with red-brick walls, they entered the structure. Inside there were two-by-four vertical wooden studs that supported the ceiling and defined the rooms.

Looking out the front, Hank and Jay hid on either side of a framed opening that would someday be a large picture window facing the street, pretending to shoot down the on-coming imaginary soldiers directed by The Sleeper.

“The Sleeper has moved to a new location, and we are to follow him to his headquarters,” said Hank, looking off into the horizon where the skeleton of a high-rise building loomed. Hank and Jay got on the bike and proceeded to pedal over to 20th Avenue, where they could see The Sleeper headquarters’ rising in the distance.

The cold and gray winter day continued as Hank and Jay walked the bike over to Mill Creek at the    end of 20th avenue where the Cross Island Parkway divided College Point from the town of Whitestone. Mill Creek at this time was a partially frozen creek, fed by the East River bordering around College Point and emptied into Flushing Bay. As they walked next to, and then on the frozen ice surface of Mill Creek with weeds standing straight upright through the ice covered stream, they walked lightly so not to crack the ice.

“I think the ice is getting thin,” said Hank with concern. Just then, Hank’s foot broke through the ice, as the creek was noticeably getting wider and less solid to continue walking in the middle. Scrambling over to the muddy bank, traipsing through weeds and patches of old dirty snow, Hank and Jay found themselves on the runway of Speed’s Airport.

Speed’s Airport was a small privet airport with two runways that provided airplane tours of the area, and where locally owned prop planes and police helicopters could take off, land,  and have a place to park.  As they walked onto the airfield, here again were large frozen patches of ice that they slid and played upon. Finally, the airport police with lights flashing, drove up in a covered Jeep and quickly escorted them off the runway and out of the airport. Hank and Jay were now on 23rd avenue known as the airport road. they were getting closer to the headquarters of The Sleeper.

Back on the bike, Hank and Jay peddled the airport road up to the corner of 23rd avenue by Adventures In. Then, they turned right onto the service road, paralleling the Cross Island Parkway on the left with vacant lots and junkyards of old abandon cars on the right. This lead them up to where the headquarters for The Sleeper’s building stood.