Brooklyn Life from Brooklyn, New York • Page 22

BROOKLYN LIFE. Motoring. fx I IT is astonishing what people will put up with in the way of poor roads and have put up with for year after year. To read descriptions of the good roads of Long Island, for example, one would be led to believe that there were no others. There are plenty of them and outside of Nassau County they abound.

Probably the most popular route for automobilists is along the North Shcre through Queens and Nassau, where the roads are upon the whole fair to middling. Almost the moment, however, the county line dividing Nassau from Suffolk is crossed, the difference may be seen. Once the road from Woodbury to Cold Spring, and on into Huntington, was good, 'but it has not been kept in repair and is now full of those rutty holes which make progress a series of annoying bumps. So with the road over Cold Spring Hill into Huntington and, as for New York Avenue, the thronged automobile thoroughfare to the Harbor and Sound its condition is disgraceful. There is some excuse for this, however, for New York Avenue forms the northerly end of the great state road across the Island and, as it will have to be entirely rebuilt a little later, it seems hardly worth while to do anything to it just now.

SPEAKING of this new state road, it has been proposed that it should have a top binding layer of asphaltum, eighty per cent strong, the state to pay for the greatest portion of the additional expense, the county the next greatest and the town of Huntington its fair proportion. This proposition was voted upon by the Suffolk supervisors last week and the result was a tie. Huntington was ready and so was the state, but there seems to be a disposition upon the part of Suffolk's supervisors to block anything that would help the former. It is too bad if the matter is thus dropped, for the addition of this heavy binding coat of asphalt would make this new state road the finest on the Island. The effect of even a thin coat of this material, mixed as it is with a top layer of gravel, may be seen on the road from Hicksville to Woodbury.

There is no better surfaced road anywhere arid it is kept in this condition by little work, apparently. BUT to get back to a bad road! If any nearby can be worse than that leading through the center of the Island, it is not in evidence. Why there is not a daily accident upon this two-rut (six inches deep), sandy, narrow pass, is one of the miracles that seem to be so often performed nowadays in behalf of the automobilist. The strange part of it is that while this road is in constant use, as it leads to Riverhead and from it one turns off to reach Port Jefferson, everybody seems to take its abominations as a matter of course. But it won't be long before a new road of macadam will take the place of this narrow, tortuous sandy path through the woods; for over much of it will stretch the smooth ribbon of another new state road, which, beginning at Woodbury, will reach to Riverhead.

A new order of road building will also begin this next November, when the state assumes full control. Then it is promised the old botch-work mending of country roads MRS. JOAN NEWTON CUNEO. Driving the Knox Giant that made the woman's world record for fifty miles in fifty-two minutes and forty seconds at the New Orleans Mardi Gras festival. will become a thing of the past and the Long Island bumps and humps, mud and sand, will pass with it.

It is time they did. XXXcXXm NEW YORK'S Fifth Annual Automobile Day for the Orphans' Outing comes next Wednesday. So far the committee has about $500 in hand. More money is urgently needed to be especially devoted toward the hiring of large cars which car) carry a great number of children, and it is to be hoped that those who cannot spare their; own cars will aid the movement this way. About seventy-five cars have now been promised and Secretary Elliott of the A.

A. A. has also reported a number of contributions of cars and cash from the members of the American Automobile Association. Members of the Automobile Club of America are largely interested in the outing, as they always have been, and a number of members will not only contribute cars and cash, but others will hire sight-seeing cars to carry the little ones to Continued on page 24.) iP. I 1 THE GREAT FOYER OF THE BELLE "TERRE CLUB-HOUSE, AT PORT JEFFERSON, LI.

Which was opened for the season Decoration Day arid until late in the autumn will be a rendezvous of motorists, the run from town being an easy one of less than sixty miles..