College point Queens New York where I 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 to the town’s people 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 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 and my older brother and I, began playing an outside imaginary game with some made up villain named The Sleeper. At the time, I was 11 and my brother was 15. The game began in our abandon metal garage that we used as a playhouse fort. As our backyard became confining to our imagination, The Sleeper and the game moved out of the backyard and into the Streets of College Point.

 

Jumping on my blue stingray bicycle with banana seat and v-bars, we road up the block of College Place, passing the Poppenhusan monument. The two of us biked down 122nd St. heading over to 14th avenue where we knew 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 St, riding passed the entrance to the Grand Union super market and Coppola’s Pizza, we 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 and brick wall home with 2x4 vertical wooden studs that supported the ceiling and defined the rooms. Looking out the front, we hid behind 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. At this point, my brother said, The Sleeper has moved to a new location, and we were to follow him to his headquarters. We got on the bike and proceeded to pedal over to 20th Avenue, where we could see his headquarters rising high in the far distance.

 

The cold and gray winter day continued as we 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, bordered around College Point and emptied into Flushing Bay. As we walked next to, and then on the frozen ice surface of Mill Creek with weeds standing straight upright through the ice covered stream, we walked lightly so not to crack the ice. My brother then said, “I think the ice is getting thin.” His foot suddenly broke through the ice, and we noticed the creek was widening, becoming less solid to continue walking in the middle of the creek. Scrambling over to the muddy bank, traipsing through weeds and patches of old dirty snow, we found ourselves 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 land and find a place to park.  As we walked onto the airfield, here again were large frozen patches of ice that we slid upon until the airport police with lights flashing, drove up in a covered Jeep to quickly escort us off the runway and out of the airport. We were now on 23rd avenue known as the airport road. We were getting closer to the headquarters of The Sleeper. Back on the bike, we peddled the airport road up to the corner of 23rd avenue by Adventures In, then turned right onto the service road, paralleling the Cross Island Parkway on our left with vacant lots and junkyards of old abandon cars on our right, leading us up to where the building of The Sleeper’s headquarters stood.

 

Turning right into a driveway, we entered a sand and gravel road entrance leading up to the foundation of an abandon, partially built, steel-frame multi-story high-rise building. Climbing up the cement foundation wall, we then could easily walk into what would be the first floor or the lobby. It was just a slab of cement with two rectangular holes for elevator shafts cut into the slab along the back wall. The walls and ceiling were complete and there was a stairwell on the right side leading up to the second floor. We climbed the stairs. The second floor was completed but less finished than the floor below. Again, the stairwell to the right lead up to the third floor, but the safety hand railings were no longer installed. Now on the third floor, the floor surface was completed but the walls were open to the world. The steel columns were visible and arranged, roughly every 15 feet along the outer edge of the building. The stairs continued up to the fourth floor however, the stairs were just metal poles across the well, supported by steel meshing, like a giant orange fishnet with small crisscrossing triangular holes.

 

The stairs continued upwards to the next floor, but now only the steel meshing, as there was no definable stairwell, could be used for climbing. Crawling onto the steel meshing, working our way up to the fifth floor we found no floor. We saw only the steel beams and columns above us with steel floor meshing all across the entire length and breadth of the building. At this point, we were up about 50ft in the air looking down at all the building floors and streets below. There were still steel framed floors above, but no stairs or stairwells to climb. In our excitement to clime the building, The Sleeper, placed us in tremendous physical danger. The game quickly ended after we realized just how high up on the building we were standing. We were miles away from any emergency assistance, and the trip down the building would still be perilous. We very carefully climbed down the partially assembled stairway until we were back on the first floor. Leaving on the bike the same way we came in, we continued to petal parallel to the rising Cross Island Parkway on the left and the sanitation department building on the right, until we turned onto 122nd St, known now as College Point Boulevard. 122nd St. would take us all the way home without needing to make any turns whatsoever. When we got home, we were cold, wet, hungry and tired from our extensive all-day journey. Of course, we told no one where we were, or what we did.

 

Looking back at this unforgettable adventure covering more than 10-square miles of College Point, I can’t help but wonder how we got away with so many questionable entrances. Without permission, we entered partially built houses, frozen creeks, a privet airport, vacant lots, and abandon buildings with no restrictions or regrettable outcomes. Just like walking the Whitestone Bridge, we naïvely took great risks, all for the sake of exploration and fun.

 

Epilogue - In today’s technological world of hidden camera surveillance, and cell phone location identification, this kind of imaginary yet totally realistic game experience, would not and cannot occur. Instead the exploration for kids today now takes place in a virtual space where the gamer cannot be physically harmed and needs to pay to play. In our game of battling The Sleeper, not one penny was spent on anything for an entire day of incredible fun and creative imagination. This type of kids’ game, good or bad, safe or risky, is now unheard of in today’s technological world.