A VISIT TO FISHER'S ISLAND, PART 1 - APRIL 9, 1983

On Saturday, April 9, 1983, I took a unique trip to a place called Fisher's Island. I was accompanied by WUSB chief engineer Frank Burgert along with friends of WUSB David Ruderman and Alan Belitsky. Fisher's Island is a very strange part of Long Island in that you can only get there by going to Connecticut first. While it was in Long Island's 516 area code, it had a Connecticut zip code and was actually much closer to that state. I had discovered it by accident once while exploring phone exchanges and finding one that sounded really far away even though it was in the same area code. We documented the entire trip, starting with our missing the Orient Point ferry that would have gotten us to the Fisher's Island ferry in time. Overcoming such hurdles made the trip more interesting. We eventually made it and began exploring this tiny, isolated island. We had seen newspaper articles about a new bowling alley that had just opened up, so that was our first destination upon arrival. We were fascinated by the fact that someone on the island was named William Faulkner and wondered if he could be the person right in front of us at the bowling alley. We later found out that it indeed was. (Much of this material aired on the last recorded regular episode of "The Voice of Long Island," available in our archives.)