January 18, 2001 - The 'old days' on Depot Lane6A • The Suffolk Times • January 18, 2001
Suffolk Times photos by Paul Stoutenburgh
Above: The familiar Fleet barn, east of Cutchogue village. At
left: Paul's sister, Margaret, skating on the bay in the '30s.
Below: An old postcard showing a schoolhouse next to
Cutchogue Presbyterian Church, courtesy of June Glover.
The `old days' on Depot Lane
DIAGONALLY ACROSS THE STREET
from the former Barteau gas station
on the corner of Pequash Avenue and
the Main Road-sits a brick home
owned by Jim and Carol House. It
was built by Dr. Howard, with an
office in the front, when he
was a dentist in town. We
also had another dentist in
town, Dr. Duchow, in the
little brick building that the
telephone company built
and is now used as a flower
shop.
But back now to the
south side of the road,
past the Barteau garage we come to
where the Fleet estate used to be,
with horses that used the fenced pas-
ture and were kept in the big barns.
Then between the barns and the
smaller white house next to the
hardware store, there was the big,
beautiful homestead of the Fleet
family.
What a place that big family
home, with its large wraparound
porch, would have made as an
adult home or a bed and break-
fast today right near the village.
Many of us can remember the
wooden wagon or cart that Bernie
Shalvey tells us the hired hand
"little Joe" Miller put out just to
the right of the driveway in the
fall, full of gladioli for sale.
Across the street and down
Depot Lane is the two -story brick
school building where my sister,
Margaret, and I went to school.
This is the first year it doesn't have
children running up and down its
halls. When we went there it was a
much newer school than the East
Cutchogue School, having been built
in the '20s. Jean Morell Baker tells in
her "Cutchogue School Memories"
about going to the old Cutchogue
Grammar School on the north side of
the Main Road just west of the vil-
lage. She says, "Our school
was closed forever at the
time I entered sixth grade
and we moved to the new,
two -story, brick building on
Depot Lane. My fondest
memories are of the wood-
en "school on the hill."
When I went to the
Depot Lane school I
remember Miss Hand, whq kept us
boys well under control by wielding a
leather strap. When it was my turn
she took me in this long closet on the
top floor and thrashed my legs with
the strap but, of course, we boys
wore long pants and some of us even
had high boots on so it wasn't too
Focus
ON THE
PAST
by Paul
and Barbara
Stoutenburgh
damaging, but it did teach us a les-
son.
In those early days there was no
bus except for the high school and
then you had to catch it at the Main
Road. My sister and I had to walk a
mile- and -a- quarter each morning and
night to get to grade school and often
we'd get into our lunch bags and find
the goodies Mom had put there as
we cut "cross lots" to school.
On weekends in the winter we'd
often skate on the bay when it got
cold enough to freeze and there was
a time when Herman Moeller and I
built an ice boat that we took out on
the bay and rumbled along on the
rough salt ice. We've heard tell that it
once froze hard enough to drive a car
across. Our mothers would drive us
up to the country club, go across the
grass and park so the car lights would
shine on the pond where we'd skate.
I can remember being there once
when my sister fell and got up with a
bloody face.
In the 1930s when we lived on
Fleet's Neck our uncle, Henry
Barning, came out summers and ran
Baming's General Store on West
Avenue, on the left just before what
was Boatman's Harbor Marina then.
He used to make a great chum pot
he sold in his "store and I still have
one.
I mention this because there are
many folks who are not "natives" to
this area but are what you might call
"summer natives" who have come to
our area and had cottages here for as
long as many of the rest of us can
remember, and it is some of those
"summer natives" who well remem-
ber what it was like out here many
years ago. We thank them for their
memories. Barbara tells of some of
the summer natives she's known
since they were 3 and 4 years old,
Martha Jane Paul and Howard
Meinke among them.
Meantime back to the Depot
Lane school area. Alex Danowski
built the Depot Lane Garage and
today there is still a gas station
and garage on that corner. Across
the street from there was a one-
story white stucco house where J.
Henry Wolf the bus driver lived.
Bob at Cutchogue Hardware tells
us, "I offered the old Wolf house
to anyone who would move it off
the property before I built my
hardware store. It was moved
across the Main Road, down
Depot Lane, across Schoolhouse
Lane and then through the fields
in the wintertime and can still be
seen today on Alvah's Lane."
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