My first summer job in the Bronx was at Orchard Beach, which I remember more as the seventh level of Hell. There were always too many boys for the available jobs and you waited until the boss man came out across the river Styx. "You, you, you, and you. You, also you, you, no, not you, yes, you," he commanded until he had selected his army. Everyone else went home. Thirty cents to get there and thirty cents to get home and with nothing to show for it (thirty cents meant a whole lot more then than today). There may be several days before you got your chance to cross over with the ferryman.

I got called on the second day and was assigned as an ice cream vendor who roamed the beach wearing a pith helmet and white clothes with a heavy box of ice cream pops and dry ice on a strap over your shoulder. I don't think there's anything worse than walking on sand that moves and shifts under your burning feet.

So back and forth along the beach I walked calling, "Ice cream, ice cream," and as the day progressed the more I approached exhaustion and looked more and more like old lady Finklestein who had osteoporosis so bad she couldn't look at anything but her feet. At one point in the late afternoon I heard a woman's voice say, "Look at that poor kid."

My shift ended and I checked out. All that was left was a package of pops that had been packed incorrectly by someone else earlier that morning and were broken and unsellable.

The next morning, which was a Saturday, I decided to quit--I could quit or die, my choice--so my father drove me out to the beach to collect the money due me. The Orchard Beach concession people had an interesting way of determining your wages. For each ice cream pop you sold you earned a nickel but for each one you didn't sell they subtracted the sale price and since there was a carton of unsellable pops left in my box the full retail price was deducted and I came away with less than $2.00 in cash for the whole day.

It took several days before I could stand straight again.

A most interesting story.

I remember those guys walking Orchard Beach.

Back in the day, we used to call Orchard Beach

Horse....Beach.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by DeWittC64:
My first summer job in the Bronx was at Orchard Beach, I remember this well also they used to sell soda too, try and get one of the kids today to do this lol

I remember those poor kids walking in that hot sun.Now they sell loose joints. or Spanish food on the beach. Remem you would get a $5.00 fine if you sat on the wall. No walking on the grass, now it is a vacation resort with hammocks tents cooking drinking etc. Police don't do anything because they don't want any riots.
The did call it Horse s_ _t Beach.