Lake Ronkonkoma. How’s that for aNativeAmerican name?
Sort of rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it? To get my mother, my big brother and me out of Manhattan and into the country for a while, my father would drive the 60 or so miles from Manhattan to Lake Ronkonkoma, which used to be quite lovely. Private beaches ringed the lake, many with pavilions that stretched out over the water on pilings. Tall slides that had hand pumps at their tops to take the blaze off the summer steel stretched out into the deeper water. We’d climb, pump, slide and shriek into the warm lake. We’d be out there on our own while our parents drank beer and watched us from a wooden picnic table up on the pavilion.