1: Paradise Found
Sandy Pond sits atop my list of favorite vacation places – a fact that inconvenienced two wives and puzzled friends and co-workers, particularly during the many years I lived in Rhode Island, the Ocean State.
Swell, you say, but what and where is this . . . Sandy Pond?
To locate it, you need a map of New York. Okay, now run a finger along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. About 40 miles south of the St. Lawrence River you’ll come to a teeny-tiny version of NorthCarolina’s Outer Banks – a skinny peninsula that separates the Great Lake from a pale blue blot to the east. Welcome to Sandy Pond.
If your map is painstakingly accurate, it will show two blots – North Pond (or Big Sandy) and the much smaller South Pond – connected by an umbilical-shaped stream. Combined, they are known as Sandy Pond, more than four miles long and two miles wide. A channel splits the peninsula and connects North Pond with Lake Ontario. I'm fuzzy  on the history of the channel. Perhaps the first one was man-made, but over the past 60 years the lake has created channels of its own, thanks to various forces of nature, including the violent storms that are common to the area and will be mentioned later in this piece.
Until recently, boats on Sandy Pond were relatively small, but a few of today's cottage owners could – theoretically – cast off from their docks and sail around the world. More likely they visit the Thousand Islands to the north or fish the mouth of the Oswego River to the south. We rented a cottage from a man who said there was excellent fishing in the lake, just north of the Pond and about a half-mile from shore. That was about as far as he ever went in his boat.
Both North and South Ponds are rimmed by vacation cottages, trailers and a few year-round homes. There are a couple of small marinas and, I think, only one restaurant located along the shore of North Pond. There's still nothing fancy here. What you pay for a month’s vacation might get you a week in, say, Hilton Head. Sandy Pond is decidedly blue collar. It's also well-loved.
What’s to love?
Sandy Pond’s past. And, one hopes, its future.
My family’s love affair with Sandy Pond began in the 1920s with a swimming date. The couple who would become my parents, Buster Major and Helen Smolinski, lived in Solvay, a Syracuse suburb about an hour’s drive from several fine Lake Ontario beaches, including Fair Haven and Selkirk Shores, two popular state parks. However, my father had heard about a gorgeous spot near the village of Pulaski. (And in New York, unlike other states that honor Polish patriot Casimir Pulaski, the last syllable is pronounced sky, not skee.)
Along with a few friends, my parents-to-be visited Sandy Pond and were not disappointed. I suspect they felt like 15th century explorers discovering a new land. Sandy Pond gave you that feeling. It would for many years.
Time out! I sense your confusion. Am I talking about the pond or the lake? Why say Sandy Pond if I mean Lake Ontario? Habit, I’m afraid. Old-time Pond people tend to refer to the whole area as Sandy Pond.
I hope this clears things up:
You do not swim in the pond. Oh, I’ve seen people try, but they’re probably still pulling seaweed off their legs.
I suspect the ponds were named not for a sandy bottom, which extends only so far, but because of the long, narrow and steep hill of soft sand that separates the ponds from Lake Ontario.
There are spots near the channel where a pond swim isn’t a bad idea, but as of my last visit – granted, that was 20 years ago – the pond was polluted and thick with weeds, the sand bottom buried beneath layers of muck. Back then it was necessary to bring in a huge, riverboat-like thrasher every summer to run a Zamboni-like pattern through the pond, temporarily clearing paths for the assortment of motorized watercraft turned loose each summer. In those days cottages disposed waste into the pond. That is no longer the case. The resulting change in the water chemistry apparently has the weeds under control, so the thrasher is no longer needed.
(Note: The pond also is popular during the long, cold Northern New York winters when the water freezes to a thickness that allows ice fishermen to drive to their favorite spots.)
When I mention the beach at Sandy Pond I'm referring to the three-mile strip of sand south of the channel on the Lake Ontario side. In any mention of Sandy Pond there are certain words that make it easy to differentiate between lake and pond. “Beach” and “swimming” are two such words, obviously. So are “great waves,” “undertow,” “body surfing,” “sand castles” and “I could stay here forever.”
Other words just as obviously refer strictly to the pond, words such as “seaweed,” “cattails” and “that’s the smallest fish I’ve ever seen!”
So where were we? Ah, yes, 15th century explorers. New lands. The thrill of discovery . . .
Sandy Pond’s beach wasn’t easily accessible. That’s what made it so appealing to my family and their friends. The inaccessibility insured a sense of privacy.
Until the 1950s, the strip of sand between Sandy Pond and Lake Ontario could have been a site for Survivor. First off, the road to the beach – Oswego County Route 15 – didn’t actually go to the beach. From where the road ended, there was no beach in sight, only the sand dunes on the far side of a small, rickety bridge that spanned the channel that connected North and South Ponds. When the lake was rough you might hear surf, but you didn’t know exactly where it was.
There was no parking lot; cars were left on the skinny road’s uncertain shoulders. The walk – half a mile or much longer, depending on where you parked – was unpleasant exercise on hot, superfine sand that collapsed under foot and filled your shoes.
(Yes, you've been to a beach, so you know the feeling, but Sandy Pond was a special test of patience and leg muscles. The difference between its sand and, say, what I encountered along the ocean in Rhode Island, was like the difference between Splenda and regular, granulated sugar.)
Meanwhile, no concession stand awaited Sandy Pond visitors, no toilet facilities, no trash barrels. What was needed for a day at the beach had to be carried in – and out. People were responsible for their garbage. Maybe that's why people stayed away.
In the meantime there was an endless, nearly deserted stretch of white sand and driftwood between white-capped blue-green water and tree-shaded dunes and 100-foot high sandhills that promised a thousand hiding places.
In short, Sandy Pond was paradise.
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