The Changing South and Long Island

The Changing South and Long Island have commonalities. Just like the Changing South is not a culturally  uniform place, neither is Long Island despite it being a much smaller area than the vast region of the Changing South, spanning 12 states versus the roughly 120 mile long 20ish mile wide Long Island.

Religion is very different in the Changing South than it is on Long Island, it is mostly Baptist, while Long Island is predominantly Catholic. This is in part due to the fact that Long Island had a strong influx of immigration from the Irish and Italians who brought thier religion with them, and the fact that the South after 1800 did not have significant immigration.

The Changing South has distinct cultural identities that Long Island does not, such as the "Good-Old-Boys" best stereotyped by TV and movies with such classics as The Dukes of Hazzard, and Smokey and the Bandit, which happen to both feature fast cars and good driving, much like Stock Car racing which is huge in the Changing South. I wish we had this up on Long Island, alas how sad that we didn't. Now keep in mind that these media images help promote some negative stereotypes concerning the Changing South, but both of them deal with a very real issue, which is bootlegging, the transport of illegally made moonshine through dry counties, and areas.  Long Island does share that in common with the Changing South, especially during Prohibition however on Long Island much of the bootlegging was done by boat along the waterways around Long Island.

Dukes of Hazzard TV Show Intro



Smokey and The Bandit Trailer

It would be remiss of me to not talk about slavery and the Changing South. Long Island was never very big into the whole slavery scene as most farms were family run, and smaller in scope and did have such massive labor requirements as many places in the changing south. Now being raised on Long Island and a "Northerner/Yankee" I am hesitant to share this but what the heck it was a long time ago so here goes. On my mothers side of the family tree in doing a project years ago I came to find out that a man named Ninian Tannehill who bought a forge in Alabama and established a large plantation there. Later on during the Civil War, they produced ore for the Confederate Army to make munitions. Yeap it blew my mind that here I thought I was a good old northern boy, but turns out way back when I have some confederate roots. Well I feel that I have gotten sidetracked, now back to business!

http://www.tannehill.org/index.html

The South has changed significantly since the Civil War days, slavery is gone, Jim Crow Laws are gone, Black Codes are gone, seperate but equal is gone, and the Civil Rights Movement has happened. The New South is much like Long Island. Personally having family in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida and having visited all of them I can say the New South I know does not look too different from the Long Island I grew up in. With some distinct differences, at least in my opinion they, including my family have a much slower roll, so to speak than I did has a "Northerner" and I was always told I am moving to fast, to slow down and enjoy life and relax.

Appalachia, The Ozarks and Long Island? Through the Looking Glass.

Let me start off by saying that I have personally been to the Ozarks, and quite a bit of Appalachia and to try and compare them or draw a common thread with Long Island has me totally baffled.

I guess we can start out with the trailer for a movie from 1972, called Deliverance. I guess you could say that the men canoing down the river are like Long Island folks, golf playing normal type folks, in a land very different from what they know. I will say that this movie promotes sterotypes of the "hillbilly" image of Appalachia, but does show a sharp contrast from the suburban/urban Long Island to Appalachia.



In the book on page 152 it states, "Today, Appalachia's legendary isolation is gone. No longer realistic is the old image of mountain people living in mountain coves and far up steep valleys and having almost no contact with the outside world." Well I was in Appalachia, in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee in 2002 when I took another one of my grand road trips around the U.S. and let me tell you, it may not be as isolated but it is damn scary nonetheless.

The contrast between Long Island and the Appalachian and Ozark region can be easily seen in the poverty levels, much of the Appalachian region is poverty stricken while Long Island has some poverty, but is wealthy in comparison.

Another sharp contrast to these regions is that they have a low rate of urbanization, and as we have seen in previous blog entries that Long Island is highly urbanized. There are no mineral deposits on Long Island in direct contrast to the coal and ore found in Appalachia.

They do have some items in common, both Appalachia and Long Island have Highland soil. All three regions share Midlatitude deciduous forest, and are in the climate region of Humid Subtropical with the warmest month being over 71.6 degrees. Another thing they do have in common however is that both Long Island and the Appalachia/Ozark regions do participate in general farming to some extent. Long Island does depend somewhat on toursim/vacationers which is much like Branson, MO so the Ozarks and Long Island could be considered similiar in that aspect. Also similiar the 3 areas are all visibly beautiful in different ways. Long Island has its scenic waterfronts, Appalachia has gorgeous greenery and trees, and rollling mountains and views:



The Ozarks have similiar beauty like the Appalachians:



I guess overall there is not too much in common with Long Island, Appalachia, and The Ozarks but one thing. People, the people in all three places are overall friendly and hospitial in my experience and a good time can be had in any of these areas, each unique but worthy of going to see someday.

The Bypassed East and Long Island

Since Long Island is not in the bypassed east I am going to talk about something that is a common thread between the two regions. Fishing and seafood related industries. Today on TV you see lots of reality shows, depicting lobster and crab fishing in the Bypassed East. Many people might not realize it but Long Island was known for its clams and oysters and blue claw crab, other good catches for fishing are bluefish, flounder and fluke. Here is a phenominal video shot in 1972 depicting the life of a clammer in West Sayville, I grew up in Sayville, so this was a total blast for me to find and watch and brings back memories.

Much like in the Bypassed East the men go out on thier boats for long days, to catch in this case clams. As you can see in the video it was solo work, 1 man per boat, and dozens of boats in clam bed areas. 8-12 hour days most of which are spent on the boat, working the clam rake, which is exactly what is sounds like, a giant rake on a pole that you stick in the water and drag through the sand at the bottom on the Great South Bay, and hope you scrape up some clams. It is long hard grueling work, but boy let me tell you it is a great workout. In decades past large parts of local economies depended on fishing, clamming, crabbing for jobs and income. This is to a much lesser degree today. In the past the clams caught in NY provided 60% of the nations clams. As far back as the early 20th century things like oysters were exported as far away as Paris, France from the Long Island area.

As mentioned in an earlier blog about manufacturing, whaling was also a major component of Long Island life, and this was spread down from the Bypassed East in the 1600's. So it originated there and actually migrated to Long Island. I wonder if that makes some Long Islanders more like New Englanders?

Manufacturing and Long Island

Long Island is clearly part of the North American Manufacturing Core, although as the 20th Century drew to a close manufacturing became a lesser part of Long Islands economy. Refelcting the trend shown in Table 5.2. One of the main reasons for this is due to one of the largest manufacturing industries closing down, the aircraft industry. Grumman, and Fairchild no longer manufacture on Long Island as they did during the earlier part of the 20th Century.

You typically would not think of Long Island as a place for manufacturing as it has no minerals, steel mills, or other things associated with light and heavy manufacturing but Long Island did have its own industries that were helped by its proximity to water and ports. Whaling is one such industry. Whaling was popular on the east end of Long Island, Southhampton, and Easthampton as well as Sag Harbor were huge whaling centers. Schocking I am sure that the hamptons so posh and exclusive these days was once a bustling whaling community. The whales were harvested for blubber, to be used as oil for lamps and to make candles. If you think about the time period 1640-1870 electricty was not around the primary means of lighting was candles and oil lamps. This was a huge industry for Long Island. (http://www.kioli.org/longisland/random/long-islands-whaling-history/)

As the area moved into the 20th Century aircraft manufacturing was an integral part of life on Long Island. Charles Lindberg took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island in 1927 for his flight to Paris.

Companies such as Grumman Aircraft, which had a huge manufacturing facility 15 minutes from my hometown, and employed a large number of people in my neighborhood, as well as Republic, Fairchild, Sikosky, Sperry and Curtiss all had headquarters and plants on Long Island.

Republic, had a massive plant in Farmindale to assemble aircraft, right next to Fairchild Field, which is still one of the busiest airports in NY State. Below is a photo of one of thier assembly plants in Farmingdale, for FC-2 planes, as well as in later years the F-105 jet.

 

Here is a clip of the F-105 Thunderchief in action in Vietnam.

 

Here is a great Video of the A-10 Thunderbolt manufactured by Fairchild-Republic on Long Island.

Republic also made aircraft during wartime, and as a result the factory/assembly facilities had a very unique feature. Since Long Island is along the Atlantic Ocean and during WWII this put us closest to the war in Europe, the assembly plants all were connected by underground tunnels, massive in size so as to move aircraft and parts without exposing them to potential dangers above ground, as well as to keep movements secret. Sadly the Fairchild facilites were torn down and now a giant shopping complex sits on the land. When I was still in high school I had a chance to tour the empty facilites and tunnels, the massive scope and complexity of it was astounding.

Grumman Corporation was a huge part of Long Island industry. Grumman factories worked round the clock to produce planes for WWII, the F-4 Wildcat. They made 12,000 Hellcats during the war, more than any other single factory in the United States. Grumman went on to help design and build the Lunar Excursion Module, that brought Neil Armstrong to the moon, and perhaps one of its most remembered legacy's was the Navy's F-14 Tomcat 712 of which was produced on Long Island. Most of you probably would know the F-14 as the plane in Top Gun with Tom Cruise.

LEM Module on the Moon

Assembly Line Photos of the F-14 in 1973

Here is an awesome video of F-14's.

I must give credit for the pictures and information details to the following, if you have an interest please check out the links and read more.

http://www.grummanpark.org/Default.htm

http://www.fbhsli.org/Aircraft_Industry.htm

I am sure that you have figured out I love the aircraft industry on Long Island and its legacy. I grew up with it, and wanted to share it with you all. I hope you enjoyed.

Long Island part of BosWash Megalopolis

Long Island is an intergral part of the Megalopolis, located smack dab in the middle of it.

Long Island provided great enchancements to the developement of megalopolis in that it helped to provide a good sheltered harbor area around the mouth of the Hudson river, and greatly increased the coastline available for ports and sea access.  The land available on Long Island was also essential to the growth of the NYC region.

If you look at the urbanized area of Long Island spread through time the change is dramatic as shown below. The spread of population and outward growth from the core area of NYC and other cities in the BosWash after 1950 is astounding. For example in looking at Long Island alone, when my father grew up there in the 1950's was not very urbanized. The line on the map below where he, and I both grew up is the shift in color from 1970 to 1990 urbanization. So when he was growing up in the 50's it was very rural, still lots of farmland, as opposed to my childhood in the 70's and 80's the urbanization was spreading, and I got to grow up watching farms being sold off and housing put up instead. This goes along with the shift in the 1950's from the central city to suburbs.

The shift from rural use of the land to urban use, was in no small part a force of ecnomics, as areas urbanized the land value increased and farming became less profitable, as opposed to just selling the family farm for development.

This radical shift from city centers to suburbs was heavily impacted by one man, who if you grew up on Long Island you know because he made Long Island what is is today, and helped to spread megalopolis quickly throughout the Northeast. That man is Robert Moses, as far as the spread of population and creation of suburbs is concerned is probably the most important man in the 20th century.

Just who is Robert Moses and why do I consider him so important to the spread of megalopolis and Long Islands development? Robert Moses created 175 miles of parkways on Long Island according to the NY Times. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/nyregion/exhibition-traces-robert-moses-impact-on-long-island.html)  Not to mention a total of 627 miles of highways and parkways in the greater NY area (http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20070313/rethinking-robert-moses)Moses) 

 He also is the man responsible for the creation of the following structures that you may know:

The Triborough Bridge, The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Throgs Neck Bridge, Bronk-Whitestone Bridge, and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Moses played an integral role in developing many expressways around the NYC area:  Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Staten Island Expressway, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the Belt Parkway, the Laurelton Parkway, as well as helping to get Shea Stadium built, Lincoln Center, and having the United Nations headquarters built in NYC. Moses also helped to create parks and open areas for thousands of people, with his creation of Jones Beach, and hundreds of parks and playgrounds in the NYC metro area for people to use and enjoy.

Robert Moses also was responsible for large scale creation of public housing in NYC such as Stuyvesant Towns, Peter Cooper Village and Co-Op City.

His ultimate contribution was to the car culture, and suburban sprawl that is commonplace today in BosWash. Is it a coincidence that Robert Moses was influencial from the 1920's up until the 1970's in teh NYC/Long Island area and this is the same time frame as massive urban expansion in BosWash? There was a great book on Moses called The Power Broker, by Robert A. Caro that you can read if you are really interested in learning more about this great man. It won a Pulizter Prize, and I have read it.This half hour historical peice on Robert Moses only begins to scratch the surface but I found it interesting.

Overall the spread of Megalopolis over Long Island was sped up by Robert Moses, and this congestion and urban sprawl led to a great many problems on Long Island, as is common with other areas of BosWash. Pollution being one of the biggest, the waterways near Long Island became polluted with rain runoff contanimated with road pollutants such as rubber, oil and other car fluids, yard waste, feces. Much of Long Island did not have sewer systems rather they used cesspools, which leeched laundry detergents and other household items poured down the sink into local waterways.

Another problem associated with Megalopolis is government. You have many layers of governing bodies that often are in conflict with one another, all exerting levels of control over areas of Long Island. If you take my hometown of Sayville Long Island as an example, we have NY State, The Suffolk County Legislature, The Town of Islip, and then Sayville, if you add in the U.S. government that is at least 5 layers of governing bodies. Looking at the illustration below you can clearly see that in Suffolk county alone, there are 237 governing or jurisdictional units. Talk about a political nightmare and mess, it is truly a wonder anything ever gets done. You can note that Nassau County has 202, and Kings and Queens while technically located physically on Long Island are buroughs of NYC and are controlled by NYC.



Human Activity on Long Island

Long Island was settled by various Native American Indian tribes long before European settlers arrived. There were 13 tribes settled on Long Island the Matincock, Nesquake, Setalcott, Corchaug, Shinnecock, Manhasset, Montauks, Canarsee, Rockaway, Merrick, Marsapeague, Secatogue and the Unkechaug, these tribes also had many parts with thier own names. Many of the names of rivers and features bear indian names and so do some towns. (http://www.richmondhillhistory.org/indians.html#IndianTribes)

During the first phase of  European settlementLong Island was originally a Dutch colony, but eventually became an English Colony. Most of the immirgrants coming to Long Island were from northern and western Europe, followed by a shift to southern and eastern European imigration. For Long Island this was quite a few Italian and Slavic peoples, although there was a large Irish immirgration but the Irish were considered undesirable as much as the Italians and eastern Europeans. Long Island was largely settled by the time the United States came to being in 1776.

Today the population of Long Island is still largely white of European decent as shown by the slides from lecture, the Black, Asian, Latino and Native American populations of Long Island are incredibly low by percentage. Long Island is not a very ethnically diverse culture of people. Among many factors that inhibit tihs is the cost of living on Long Island, being high, is not conducive to many of the minority populations in the United States. The racial/cultural lack of diversity was evident when I was growing up, when I graduated high school out of my graduating class of 254, there were no black students, Indians and Asians make up the rest of the minorities there were less than 10 of them combined at that time. Many of the towns on Long Island repeat this pattern, some are more culturally diverse than others but it seems that the further east on Long Island that you get, the more homogenous the population, with proximity to New York City (NYC) bringing more ethnic and cultural diversity.

The lack of cultural differences is also shown in the predominate religions on Long Island. Overwhelming Catholic and Christian there are almost all other religions represented but in the vast minority. For example in the town I grew up in when I graduated high school 95% of my classmates where a denomination of Catholicism, my town of 16,000 people had 12 churches along the lines of Christianity, no mosques, 1 very tiny Synagogue, and there was only 1 Mormom temple in all of Suffolk County at the time I was growing up.

According to 2010 Census you can see a shift in racial/ethnicity as you move away from NYC towards Suffolk County (which is where I grew up). And according to the Association of Religion Data Archives for 2000 a  shift towards Catholic/Christian denominations.

 

Racial Groups, ethnicity, and religoius groups on Long Island Compated to State and Nation
County	Population 2010 Census	% white	% Black or African American	% Asian	% Other	% Mixed Race	% Hispanic/Latino of any race
Kings	2,504,700	42.8	34.3	10.5	9.3	3	17.6
Queens	2,230,720	39.7	19.1	22.9	13.7	4.5	57.5
Nassau	1,339,532	73	11.1	7.6	5.9	2.4	14.6
Suffolk	1,493,350	80.8	7.4	3.4	5.9	2.4	16.5
LI Total	7,568,304	54.7	20.4	12.3	9.3	3.2	20.5
NY State	19,378,102	65.7	15.9	7.3	8	3	17.6
USA	308,745,538	72.4	12.6	4.8	7.3	2.9	16.3
source is the 2010 US Census

County	Population 2010 Census	% Catholic	% Not Affilaited	% Jewish	% Protestant	Estimate of % not reporting
Kings	2,504,700	37	4	15	8	33
Queens	2,230,720	29	37	11	5	15
Nassau	1,339,532	52	9	16	7	15
Suffolk	1,493,350	52	21	7	8	11
LI Total	7,568,304	40	18	12	7	20
NY State	19,378,102	42	20	9	10	16
USA	308,745,538	22	37	2	23	12
source is the Association of Religion Data Archives for 2000

As you can clearly see, the population density decreases as  you move away from NYC with Nassau County being very urban and as you move into Suffolk county it gets less and less urbanized, until near the east end of Long Island you have farms and vinyards and open protected spaces.

To show an example of the different levels of urbanization of Long Island, here is a a video of the North Fork of Long Island, specifically over Cutchogue. Notice there is farmland, and lots of open space, not what most people assume are qualities of Long Island.

To contrast here is a cockpit view of a plane landing at LaGuardia airport, which is on the North shore of Long Island close to NYC. You can notice a vast difference in the developement along the ground as far as buildings, lack openess and space.



I hope this gives you a sense of the diversity of Long Island, and takes away some of the stereotype that Long Island is just an extension of NYC, because it is certainly not.

The Physical Environment of Long Island

We can start by talking about the formation of Long Island as a terminal moraine formed during the Wisconson stage of the Pleistocene epoch. a glacier which left a mass of small till and sediment along the southern edge of Long Island, and on the North shore, more boulders and larger material. One of the unusual features of Long Island is Lake Ronkonkoma, which is a Kettle Lake, formed by a large chunk of glacial ice that gouged a huge hole in the ground, and broke off when the glacier retreated and subsequently melted leaving a lake. Here are some arial pictures of the Lake, no river or underground water source feeds the lake, it is dependent on rainfall and snow melt to keep it filled. As a child I can remember during long hot summers the level of the lake dropping many feet, to a kid it seemed amazing that you could go back week after week and the waterline would get further and further away.



Techincally Long Island is part of the Piedmont that runs between the Appalachian Highlands, and the Gulf Atlantic Coastal Plain, and consists of what is classified as highland soils. The climate region is considered Humid Subtropical (Cfa) with the warmest months reaching over twenty two degrees celcius. The annual precipitation is between forty and eighty inches. Long Island is in the Midlatitude deciduous forest area. The information below is pulled from weather.com about Long Island City, Long Island which is representative of the region.

Monthly Averages for Long Island City, NY (11101)
Column1	Column2	Column4	Column5	Column6	Column7	Column8
Month	Avg.	Avg.	Mean	Avg.	Record	Record
	High	Low		Precip	High	Low
Jan	38°F	27°F	33°F	3.65 in.	72°F (2007)	-6°F (1882)
Feb	42°F	29°F	36°F	3.21 in.	75°F (1985)	-15°F (1934)
Mar	50°F	35°F	43°F	4.36 in.	86°F (1998)	3°F (1872)
Apr	61°F	45°F	53°F	4.50 in.	96°F (2002)	12°F (1923)
May	71°F	54°F	63°F	4.19 in.	99°F (1962)	28°F (1907)
Jun	79°F	64°F	72°F	4.41 in.	101°F (1966)	44°F (1945)
Jul	84°F	69°F	77°F	4.60 in.	106°F (1936)	52°F (1943)
Aug	83°F	68°F	76°F	4.44 in.	104°F (1918)	50°F (1986)
Sep	75°F	61°F	68°F	4.28 in.	102°F (1953)	39°F (1912)
Oct	64°F	50°F	57°F	4.40 in.	94°F (1941)	28°F (1936)
Nov	54°F	42°F	48°F	4.02 in.	84°F (1950)	7°F (1875)
Dec	43°F	32°F	38°F	4.00 in.	75°F (1998)	-13°F (1917)
Long Island City, NY (11101) Weather Facts
The average warmest month is July.
The lowest recorded temperature was -15°F in 1934.
The maximum average precipitation occurs in July.
The highest recorded temperature was 106°F in 1936.
The average coolest month is January.

Okay that seems like quite a bit of technical knowledge so I want to also use my personal experience to describe it. Basically Long Island has mostly moderate temperatures all year, for a place with four seasons. Summers are hot and humid, August being especially humid, so sticky outside minutes after you leave the house your shirt is sticking to you. Fall is beautiful, here is where the midlatitude deciduos forest comes into play, the leaves all change colors in the fall, reds, oranges, yellows, purples etc. and we have a ton of different types of trees:Oaks(white and black), Maples(norway, red, silver, sugar), Sycamore, Birch, Beech, Dogwood, Hickory, Black Cherry, we also have tons of different kinds of pine trees. Winter is normally not unusually snowy or cold but it has it moments, a hat, coat and gloves are recommended though! Spring and Summer have quite a bit of rain, summer having large thunderstorms and lightning with warm rain, summer showers they are called. It rains for half an hour or an hour or more then stops the sun comes out and all is right with the world again, it is something to be experienced.

Let's talk about one of the most unique physcial features of the Long Island area, specifically the Fire Island National Sea Shore.  Fire Island is a small barrier beach 2-4 miles south of Long Island protecting the southern coast from the direct waves of the Atlantic Ocean. There is an incredibly rare ecological community located there called Sunken Forest, bascially it is a whole ecosystem located between 2 sets of sand dunes with no vegetation growing higher than the dunes (the salty ocean air prevents growth above the dunes). There are rare plants, flowers and no roads here, even some American Holly trees estimated to be 300 years old. It is someplace to really go visit if you have a chance. Here is the link to Sunken Forest for those that want to check it out more:

http://www.nps.gov/fiis/planyourvisit/sunken-forest.htm

Here is a link to an informative video, the link would not let me embed the video.

http://www.fireislandlighthouse.com/video/fire_island_national_seashore_small.mov

One last thing I would like to point out is the water needs of Long Island and its sources. Unlike New York City which draws its water supply from reservoirs in the Catskill Mts of upstate NY, Long Island has a huge aquifer system that supplies its water. Naturally filtered through the soil, sand and clay that make up Long Island the water that comes out of the tap is fabulous, just like those bottled waters that come from aquifers, we just had it naturally.

To leave you all I found this great video of a sunrise in Cherry Grove Fire Island, a special place to me since my grandparents have had a beach cottage over there for 50+ years and I spent my summers there as a child. I hope you enjoy. I apologize for the link, but embedding the video was not on option.

http://youtu.be/cxgaKRuWphA