HIS PARENTS bought a summer place in the spring of 1929 for $1,700. He was five that summer and cut his foot badly on broken glass. Three years later his parents could have bought or might have sold the place for $250. Because of the depression half of the thirty-two bungalows on the block remained empty through the thirties. He and his friends had access, with skeleton keys or through broken windows, to the unoccupied bungalows, most of which had a special character. Number seven, for instance, was sexy because one of the girls on the block was said to have undressed there for a boy from another block. Number one was haunted because its trim was black; it was visited only in daylight. Thirteen was fit for abuse because a once-flung apple adhered, dried and discolored, summer after summer, to one of its plasterboard walls; when he and his friends wanted to break something man-made they went to thirteen. As war approached and the depression eased, all the bungalows were finally sold. Thirteen was last, and it went to a childless undertaker and his wife. Jews and cars were not allowed in the community. Cars from the city were parked in lots outside, and Jews inquiring about bungalows were told they wouldn’t be happy there. A majority of the inhabitants were Catholic, the rest Protestant, except for a small percentage said to be crypto-Jews. He tried to determine who these might be but could not decide on anyone for sure. The father of a girl he went with one summer was said to be a Jew, but converted; and the father did in fact seem to resemble his father’s colleagues, most of whom were Jews. The swimming was excellent, particularly in his early years, when pools and sand bars formed at low tide. One boy broke his neck diving into a deep-looking pool. Sometimes he scraped his nose diving off a sand bar. Once, before he could swim, he floated on a tube out beyond his depth, and the tube lost air. It was early in the morning, before the mothers had come to the beach. The only person there was an older girl from the block; she swam out to save him. In his panic he pushed his palms against her breasts and understood for the first time that breasts did not have bones. (Years later he heard that she had developed breast cancer and wondered if there was a connection.) His day started with orange juice brought to him in bed by his mother. Afterward he rose, washed, dressed, had breakfast of a boiled egg and bacon strip, and went to the general store to shop for his mother. Then he was free for the rest of the day. He would join one or more of his friends; they would swim, play games, or undertake adventures. They would walk, say, the two miles to the end of the community called the Point, where they would find such ocean refuse as shark carcasses; tangles of fishhooks, sinkers, seaweed, and line; blood-streaked jellyfish; exotic shells. Sometimes they would walk to the other end, which abutted a coast artillery camp, sneak inside, and examine the sixteen-inch guns, which had been there facing the sea since the World War. When he and his friends were hot from the sun and had had enough of the water they would sit in the shade of a bungalow and play word games. After lunch they would wait the hour prescribed by their mothers, swim, and begin again. Once a year they would go to a nearby amusement park and add the next more daring ride to their repertoires. One new girl in the community went on all the rides on her first trip and earned a reputation for bravery; during the war she served as a woman Marine. When he went away to the service his parents sold the bungalow. He goes back there now and then for old times’ sake. (He once took his children along so they could see a favorite place of his childhood. They didn’t like it.) A great stone jetty has been built at the Point to protect the waterfront bungalows from erosion. The beach has deepened; the quick fall of the shore is gone; the receding ocean, instead of cleaning the beach each winter, leaves summer debris. People drive cars directly to their bungalows, although there are still no Jews. The faces look suspicious now. He recognizes no one and feels as he walks down his own block that the inhabitants think he is a Jew. There will be apartment houses soon, built on great concrete pilings driven into the sand, and eventually the nearby city will condemn the land for a public beach.