Diamonds, Memories & History Lessons

One great aspect of Babylon Village, in my humble opinion, is that when you walk into Glen's Dinette, or sit at the bar at the Post Office Café or grab coffee at the , you hear voices.

I know, that's a strange statement, but it's true. All over the village people are talking, conversing, interacting, laughing, debating, and yes, sometimes even grumbling about something.

What you don't hear is silence amidst the tapping of fingers on tiny Qwerty keyboards on the wonderful mobile data devices we call used to call cell phones.

Yet the village and its residents are clearly Internet savvy. The proof is right out there on the big old World Wide Web (as some of us remember called it way back when).

How do I know this? Well all I had to do was spend about 15 minutes 'googling' and searching popular sites, such as YouTube.com and Craigslist.com. The short exercise rewarded me with a gift idea for a nice guy in my life, a couple of history lessons and a reminder that I need to home my video skills.

So in the spirit of the season, I wanted to share what I found.

Over at Craigslist, a search on 'Babylon Village' on the various categories revealed two NY Islander tickets for sale, going for about $60, for a hockey game against Tampa Bay Lightning on December 22.

Another resident is selling a David Yurman Ladies Diamond Watch for just under $2000, valued at about $6,000 when it was bought a year ago. While the tag is removed, it even has its original box and papers. The need for holiday cash is prompting the sale. While it's priced a  little out of my ballpark it sounds like a great deal for someone with a size 7 wrist.

The other item that caught my attention was a window tinting service that does house calls. It makes for a great surprise gift idea and something I know will make a friend of mine very happy this holiday season.

Also on the sales block is a neat, and very affordable, white microwave kitchen cart already put together, which is a huge plus if DYI isn't part of your genetic makeup.

After a little shopping, I jumped over to YouTube on a whim, just to see what a search on 'Babylon Village' would produce.

One YouTube member, Buzzz777, was kind enough to load up nice videos of the recent Veteran's Day parade and even the press conference announcing the new WiFi service now available in the village. I tried to track down Buzzz777 but had little luck. I'd love to enlist his video skills on Patch.

The Town of Babylon history museum was kind enough to share some interesting short videos with local residents about village life decades ago.

One features resident Jeannette Smith talking about  the hurricane of 1938. She recalls arriving home by the train to the village and was amazed at all the trees down. Her family had no electricity for 10 days. Since there wasn't a candle to be bought in the village, she would bring candles home from work during that time.

Village resident Thomas Morris talks about the days he spent clamming on the Great South Bay, and once he had about 200 in his basket, he would go door to door selling them to neighbors.

I hope the history museum does more of those oral history vignettes as they're just fascinating.

In fact, I think it's now on the to-do list for Patch. So if you know someone who has some historical tales to tell about living in the village, and life in the village way back when, email me:  judy.mottl@patch.com.