Growing up at CSHL

[Alan Bernheimer Jr]

I more or less grew up at CSH, living there almost every summer from 1948 to 1967, the child of Alan W. Bernheimer, a summer investigator and microbiologist from the NYU School of Medicine who was also a member of the laboratory's board of directors (representing NYU) in the 60s. As a teenager I had a variety of summer jobs, including the Phage Course "kitchen" in Davenport Laboratory (washing glassware and preparing media), running the slide projectors at the annual Symposia, and checking people in for meals at Blackford. I was also the Symposium photographer for several years, when a trusting John Cairns simply handed me his valuable Nikon camera. New arrivals sometimes did double takes after the second or third place they saw me. Over the years, I lived in Hooper and Williams Houses, Cabin C, and the Page Motel, and camped out for two summers in Wawapex while it was condemned ! and was being used to store spare furniture and mattresses.

I have a lot of memories, from the MacDowell-called square dances on the lawn below what we then knew as Carnegie Dorm (now Davenport House) to the notorious Phage Course graduation parties My boyhood playmates included the sons of future Nobelists Luria and Delbruck. Our family sailboat was originally owned by Alfred Hershey. I was there (camera in hand) when the nearly naked lady came out of the cake at Francis Crick's 50th birthday party. I dug clams at the Sandspit for clambakes, picked wineberries, caught minnows and snappers with a bamboo fishing pole, chased fireflies, and drank ice-cold spring water whenever I was thirsty. I ran around barefoot so many summers that I could have told you blindfolded whether I was standing on the smooth cement sidewalk outside Blackford, the rough gravel walkway that descended in steps next to Hooper from Bungtown Rd. to Jones Lab, or the long fine grass that grew in front of Nichols.