The Old Esso Gas Station & Pine Lake Garage

Saltwaters Tackle Inc., which is located at 939 Montauk Highway, was originally home to the Esso Gas Station and the Pine Lake Garage, which was opened and operated in the early 1940s by Daniel McKeen.

McKeen was born in County Clare, Ireland in 1900.  One of the few things known about his early life is that he avoided tragedy in 1912 when he was taken off the passenger list for the Titanic because of an eye infection.  He eventually made it to America and settled in Winfield, Queens, which is know known as eastern Woodside.

In 1926, he bought a home on Myrtle Avenue in West Islip, near First Street and Pine Lake. A year later, he married Anne Burke, another Irish immigrant. They spent their summers in the West Islip home which was affectionately referred to as "the country house." By 1942, the McKeens moved to West Islip permanently to raise their six children:  Jimmy, Daniel Jr. (nicknamed "Buddy"), Anne, Marie, Rosemarie and Alice.

McKeen was a mechanic by trade and owned his own garage when he lived in Queens.  When he relocated to West Islip, he was working at Grumman's but decided to open another garage.  His son, Buddy, ran that shop and McKeen's other son, Jimmy, ran Pine Lake Auto Body behind his father's garage.   But the boys were not the only ones who worked at the family business.

"My mother worked there for a while and so did I," said McKeen's daughter, Rose Ramaikas.  "She even had a flower garden near the shop.  People would stop to look at it.

"She grew Sweet Williams and Bachelor Buttons (Cornflowers).  I was the bookkeeper and I pumped gas when it was busy.  One time I put gas in (Robert) David Lion Gardiner's car (the owner of Sagtikos Manor).  Another time I gave actor Eddie Fisher change when he stopped here on his way to the Hamptons."

In 1949, McKeen lost his daughter, Alice, and his wife, leaving him the sole parent of his five children. When his sons married and moved to the city, McKeen ran the business until he retired in 1956. He rented the business to American Motors, who eventually bought it from the family after Mckeen's death in 1972.

Ramaikas said the building that conatined the Esso station hasn't changed much since her father owned it.   "The sides and the back of the place are still exactly the same," she said.  "Only the front has been changed in all these years. My father bought the property for his business from Mr. Moran, who owned the Oak Neck Inn, which was where the new restaurant is now." (999 Montauk Highway is where Nonnina's Italian Bistro is today.)

Ramaikas still lives on Myrtle Avenue, right next door to the house she grew up in. But parts of that home are still with her--literally. "The original back door to my house next door is now the door from my living room to my kitchen in this house," she said.  "And outside I have a hydrangea bush that came from a cutting off one of my mother's hydrangea bushes next door. I also have a Phlox plant which started from a cutting I took from a Phlox plant near my father's garage."

The West Islip Ramaikas fondly remembers was "so different and so nice years ago," not to say that she still doesn't enjoy the area where her father settled back in the 1940s.

"It wasn't so overcrowded," she recalls." There were such nice areas with plenty of trees and you could count the houses.

"The street behind the bait & tackle shop today-Madeline Place-was not there. It was all woods back then. And Pine Lake-it was full of lily pads. If you go by the lake today, you might still be able to see the concrete pilings.  And we used to play at the farm next to Sagtikos Manor. We rode horses there. One day when we were there, they were pasteurizing the milk and they gave us some to drink. Another time the cows got out from the farm and the next morning we woke up to find 35 cows in the front yard! There was a chicken farm next door to us so we got to play with the little baby chicks. We had good clean fun."

This week's trivia question:  The concrete pilings visible in Pine Lake today were from a restaurant which was located in front of the lake on Montauk Highway during the same era as when the Esso station was open. What was the name of that restaurant?    (Hint: the family that owned it owns five restaurants on Long Island today.) The answer in next week's column.

The answer to last week's trivia question is: The West Islip Library was originally located on Hawley Avenue.