From Finding Peace To Getting The Creeps

A smart man, or at least one who relishes life with minimal ruckus, knows enough to agree with his wife --- particularly when it comes to the ideal route to get from here to there.

Of course, then there are the rest of us, who learn these things the hard way. In the best example of navigating my way in New York that comes to mind, the “there” involves the Suffolk County hospital where my mother has been a patient at various times in recent years.

For too long, I had relied on the roadway that serves as my personal motoring landmark when figuring the way to a destination in Long Island’s Nassau or Suffolk counties. As usual, I had one question, albeit of two parts: how far do I go on Sunrise Highway and where do I go from there?

While I understand the joy and possible benefits to getting some place sooner, there’s also some comfort in taking a major route so lined with businesses, dotted with traffic signals and broken by intersections that it can be seen as risk-proof by first-timers who fear getting lost.

This would prove especially true along the Nassau County stretch that runs parallel to the Long Island Rail Road. Station by station, the passing motorist can mark the drive one village at a time.

My way was simple enough: turn onto Sunrise Highway and head east, beyond the intersections that give way to exits, until I could take the ramp leading to Route 231 and continue south to Montauk Highway. From there, the hospital was almost within walking distance.

Once my wife -- My Wonderful Wife Peg -- learned of this, she wanted to know why I wasn’t taking the Meadowbrook Parkway to Ocean Parkway instead. As it was, I didn’t have any good reason for my way other than it being my way, so I clung to it for as long as I could and whenever I could --- i.e., as long as I sat behind the steering wheel on those occasions when I would visit the hospital alone.

Meanwhile, Peg had the reasons that made perfect sense for taking her way: fewer vehicles and nicer scenery. A much more peaceful ride, she maintained, and as so often happens, she was right.

Taking the Meadowbrook Parkway towards Jones Beach during the fall and winter months put me on a road unlike anything I knew. I am a relative latecomer to Long Island, having grown up and spent most of my life in New York City’s Queens County. Peace and quiet did not come naturally to me.

But in my first try on the route recommended by my wife, I felt a calmness come over me. By the time that the Meadowbrook ended -- after passing through empty toll booths (for parking fees during beach season) -- onto Ocean Parkway with beach land on either side, the transformation was complete: as close to serenity as I am capable of reaching while operating a motor vehicle.

Ocean Parkway runs a bit more than 15 miles between two state parks -- Jones Beach and Captree, with beaches in between. It starts in one county (Nassau) and ends in another (Suffolk), before feeding into the Robert Moses Causeway, named for the all-powerful parks commissioner who had envisioned Jones Beach State Park and the roadways to it.

But in traveling from home, once I got past Moses’ own promised playland for summer fun, I no longer knew where I was exactly, except for an occasional sign about a particular beach or town. I had passed the one real landmark I could rely on --- the old water tower that stands as a monument at the center of circling roadways. After that, I was on my own, with no busy intersections, traffic lights or railroad stations to serve as clear and frequent reference points.

In either direction, Ocean Parkway is a long stretch of two lanes cutting through the tall weeds, wooded brush and sand. With fewer signs and structures, except for occasional clusters of houses, the landscape was wrapped in more sky than what I typically failed to notice. Wherever else I was, I knew I was at peace --- so comfortable in the feeling of solitude that I was free to get lost in my thoughts.

With neither congestion outside the car nor conversation inside it, there was nothing to steer my mind in a certain direction. I let myself drift, from wondering about the present -- and whether my mother would rebound from this latest episode of physical betrayal -- to sifting through memories that now seemed like scenes from old movies.

I could choose my soundtrack, as I drove to and from the hospital. Instead of listening to the news or sports talk on the radio, as I often do while driving, I found myself bringing CDs along for the ride. Shawn Colvin and Aimee Mann emerged as Ocean Parkway favorites.

But then it all began to change last December, after human remains turned up along Ocean Parkway. Within a three-day period, four decomposed victims -- subsequently identified as females in their 20s who were regarded as suspected prostitutes -- were found in the vicinity of Gilgo Beach.

The crime scenes and evidence searches that ensued led to the kind of traffic closures usually reserved for road work projects and marathon races while news accounts pieced together the shadowy picture of a serial killer.

At least, it appeared to be a matter of a singular slayer until earlier this month. Police boosted the numbers of both victims and killers, due to the cases of three other people --- two of them, dismembered women partially found years ago in Manorville -- whose body parts had been dumped near Ocean Parkway between Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach.

Along with the suspected victims of foul play, the blanketed corpse of a female toddler presented an eighth case for investigation.

“It is clear that the area in and around Gilgo Beach has been used to discard human remains for some period of time,” Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said, during a May 9 conference with the news media.

By then, my mother had left the hospital to return to the nursing home. But while I did not need to drive on Ocean Parkway, I felt wounded by loss just the same. I knew how I had felt soon after the grisly finds were made last December. More than ever, I missed what it had meant before fog or darkness became worrisome things, sometime before I gave serious thought to how I could describe my location in the event of an emergency cell phone call --- before the sign for “Gilgo Beach” gave me the creeps.

Even the sound of Shawn Colvin quietly singing “Shotgun Down the Avalanche” in my car seemed haunting now in a way she hardly would have liked.

As somebody whose newspaper experiences included years of covering murders and going to crime scenes, I could understand what would make Ocean Parkway appealing to a killer looking to dispose of a body. But knowing a monster’s idea of heaven had poisoned the peace in my own way through it.