Hot June Friday afternoons always bring memories of happy family picnics at Baily Beach. Mom would get home from teaching around 3:30, have a short gin and tonic with a twist or mabe a sprig of mint from the garden, then, if the tide was going to be high that evening, drag out the scotch kooler and shove it full of those blue plastic ice things that sat in the freezer year round and stunk to high heaven. She'd pack all the fixin's for martinis...shaker, gin and vermouth....dixie cups, and... oh yes, some meat and salad and french bread. When Dad rolled in at 5:30, he'd change to shorts and get the charcoal and newspaper and lighter fluid and away we'd go. There were always 3 or 4 other gin-drinking families doing the same thing at the Bailey Beach picnic area (NO Food or Drink on Beach under penalty of death) and pretty soon the party was going full blast. Booze, food, dimes for the kiddies to go to the concession and buy popsicles. The fire had to be started and then there were false starts and smoldering newspaper and black smoke. When it did start, at least one hour had to pass for it to become a white hot pile of coals, so that dad could burn the hell out of whatever protein he was cooking. It was usually steak...marinated flank steak as tough as an old leather belt and dripping with red wine marinade. Never a hot dog or even a less proletarian hamburger. Never a bottle of ketchup or A-1. Nothing. We didn't know what was good, and we were reminded of that on a daily basis. I'd beg to go home, beg for dimes and nickles, beg to be allowed to start a little campfire on the ground. Sometimes if the sun was far enough over the yardarm, I was allowed, and once in a blue moon there was a bag of hard, deformed marshmallows that I could impale and incinerate, and finally scrape out of my hair the next day. Each summer, nothing changed. The alcohol, the scotch koolers, the crusty old lifeguard Art Ladrigan, the high tide picnics. Until 1960. With 24 hours notice, all plans were changed, and I was put in the back of the barely-running 1950 Ford convertible with my dog and rabbits, and driven to New Hampshire where Mom and I hid out and snarled at each other for 2 and a half months. What was that about? To this day, no one's mentioned it. The month we returned, the "family" what was lefty of it..moved to West Norwalk.