Stone Harbor, 1950's, summertime. No shoes, no sunscreen, total freedom.

My sister's and I spent our summers with our grandmother in a small beach cottage on 117th St. built by my grandfather and uncles in 1949. Our street was the last one in Stone Harbor, one block long and as only 3rd Ave. connected us to the rest of the town, quite isolated.

During the 1950's there were 12 children ranging from 6 to 12 years old regularly spending their summers on 117th St with mothers or grandmothers. We thought of ourselves as a single entity, the 117th St. kids, for most of our adventures but with a strict hierarchy based on a combination of age and number of summers on 117th St.

Consequently, you might be one of the older kids but if it was only your second summer you would be pushed down the totem pole when it came time to plan our daily adventures, our big end of summer extravaganza's (truly awful home grown plays and music) or lead our inevitable wars between the girls and the boys.

By the mid-50's we had honed out organizational skills and developed secret calls for each kid that identified you as part of the 117th St. gang. These calls mimicked the sound of the gulls, at least as we heard them, egi-gawk, with the number of gawks on the end of the call identifying your rank. My call was "egi gawk gawk" and written in our coded messages "egi-gawk2".

A few years ago, more than 40 years after the end of our summers on 117th St, one of the 117th St. kids drove by our house on 106th St., saw my call sign over the door and knowing immediately who lived there, stopped to say hello and share some sweet summer memories.