I drove out to Long Island on Thursday to meet my brother. I headed east on Eastern Parkway towards the Interborough Parkway. Actually, it's now called the Jackie Robinson Parkway, but I can never remember to call it that. It's not that I don't like the new name. I have always been enamored with Jackie Robinson. It's just that we drove the Interborough to go visit my Uncle's family in Queens, and for a while I lived with them, so I spend a fair amount of time traveling back and forth on the Interborough.

As kids, whenever we drove on the parkway, one of us would mention how it was the most dangerous stretch of road in New York. It was a small curvy thoroughfare. It was very narrow with a small concrete nub reaching no more than a foot in height dividing the oncoming traffic from you and imminent death. It appeared to be more of a misplaced curb than a highway safety barrier. It was a winding stretch of road, and I could feel the tension emanating from the drivers seat as we approached the parkway. I have memories of Christmas Eve drives to Queens in the rain, the unspoken threat of large Buicks with drunken operators hurtling eastward towards us, our only protection a mere twelve inches of concrete seemingly enticing the massive cars to hop the pathetic divider and crush us in our meager green duster. All this being read from the strain in the back of my Mother's neck as we drove down the Interborough.

As we approached the parkway, my Mother would comment how she learned how to drive on the Interborough. This was always a strange statement. Who, in their right mind, would give the wheel to a new driver, my mother as a new driver for that matter, and then point them towards the Interborough. This, of course, would have been our father. I assume he was either insane or a sadist, and years of stories about him seem to lend credence to both. My mother could hardly bare the strain of the parkway after thirty years of driving experience, it was implausible that she could survive her first day out on this stretch of asphalt. After a few years I realized that she was just talking nervously while trying to ease her and, by proxy, our stress of the impending death ride into hell. She was trying to calm us by implying that she had survived her first drive on this road, so this current drive would be a cake walk. But her white knuckled death grip on the steering wheel gave her away easily. Somehow we survived. Maybe to tell the tale to others, so they could hear of the great evil that lurks just west of the Van Wyck Expressway.

For awhile, Tamara was working with my brother out in Sayville, and she took the Jackie Robinson Parkway out to Long Island. I still called it the Interborough, and she would correct me. Eventually my brother and I started calling it the Inter-Jackie Robin-bourogh-son Parkway. The divider is no longer a nub but a tall concrete barrier protecting you from the huge SUVs barreling down the road towards you. Most of the parkway is wider, and it is nicely paved and is actually a very scenic ride through Highland Park, Cypress Hill, Glendale, and Ridgewood. As I drove down the parkway on Thursday, just for a second, my knuckles turned white, and my neck got tight, and I thought, "My Mother learned how to drive on this god forsaken road."

Interborough (Interboro) Parkway, Queens and Brooklyn boroughs of N.Y. city, SE N.Y., at extreme W end of Long Isl. Short parkway (4.7 mi/7.6 km long) snakes its way from the East N.Y.-Highland Park area of Brooklyn E to the Grand Central Parkway in Kew Gardens, Queens. Completed Aug. 1935, its lack of breakdown lanes, narrow, winding character, difficult lane changes, and low median barrier made it one of the most hazardous thoroughfares in the metropolitan area...

Interborough (Interboro) Parkway

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A Picture of History - Kew Gardens. Old and new photos of the Jackie Robinson Parkway.