Joe Wing (a 41-year resident of the MBEA), wrote the following article not long before his death in 1982.
The Manhasset Bay Estates beach, as well the development's residential area, have changed a lot since we moved here forty-one years ago on Halloween Day.
In those years, it was not hedged in by houses and it was in a more natural state than now. Over a period of time old-timers managed to stave off the efforts of various Robert Moses-minded newcomers to "improve" it radically before they moved on to fresher fields, but inevitably there have been changes.
The dock then was a small, temporary affair taken down each fall and put up again each spring. This was hard work but there always seemed to be plenty of volunteers to do it. The pond was larger and cleaner then than now and was connected to the Bay with a little tidal stream that flowed south and west towards salt water near the edge of the Estates property. It was spanned by a footbridge from which youngsters could observe tiny fish skittering to or from the pond and could cheer on the makeshift boats they launched in it.
To the north between the pond and the Bay were a couple of beach houses maintained without challenge by two of the property owners in the Estates. One house fell victim to a hurricane, I seem to recall, and the other to fire.
Old-timers still remember those hurricanes. They propelled water across the parking lot and up the drive beyond the gate. Also, they strewed the beach with yachts that had dragged their moorings.
The shoreline was further out than now; erosion ate into it after some eager-beavers pulled up much of the water grass that had helped fend off waves, and after one of our floats grounded on it and stayed all winter. With plume grass standing tall around the parking lot and noone considering it ugly or menacing, the beach was a heaven on long summer days for solitary dreamers and for bird watchers.
At high tide time, however, the place usually was well-populated, especially considering that the Estates must have had no more than half the residents that it does now. No lifeguard was hired for the droves of children and adults who splashed and swam. During one of two seasons a big, abandoned, vicous-looking mushroom anchor loomed high at low tide just north of the dock; youngsters dived nonchalantly nearby without cracking a single skull.
All this waterborne activity was the more remarkable because the Bay was not as clean then as it is now. Every once in a while raw sewage floated in from New York City or from the far shore of the Sound. Swimmers might not go near the water at such times, but on better days they did not worry unduly about contamination. None of them ever fell sick, insofar as I know, and none ever drowned.
The annual beach party, held on Labor Day weekend, was more of a sporting event and less of a beer and hotdog fest than it is now. Parents turned out en masse to watch their children and neighbors' children compete in swimming and other events, and to have fun themselves with games and races. A full-page picture story showing some of this activity in a number of papers around the country.
The privilege of mooring boats off our beach was valued more highly then than now, which seems strange, the way yacht club and marina fees have skyrocketed. As a result, a respectable little fleet of boats bobbed at moorings a ways out.
To get to them, owners had to carry or drag dinghies down to the water at low tide, but they were tough enough to cope with the shore. Some even liked it. I know one resident who belonged to a yacht club yet who preferred to row out rather than use the club launch service for which he had paid. That was at a time too when dinghy racks did not exist for our members. Dinghies were simply turned upside-down above the high water line and chained to cinder blocks buried in the sand.
In those days, too, the area was dark at night. There were fewer lights across the Bay and at nearby homes and docks, and floodlights of our own had not been installed. Yachtsmen ghosting in after sunset could still see their mooring buoys in the dim light that illuminates the water at night, and could sit undisturbed and muse a while in their cockpits or later on the dock, before driving back reluctantly to their workaday worlds.