A Staten Island sunflower stands 14 feet tall in the July sun. (Staten Island Advance/Pamela Silvestri)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — In this sultry weather with sunflowers looking down from cloudless blue skies, I am reminded of beautiful summertimes growing up in Dongan Hills. And this week, while driving my boys to camp back and forth along Richmond Road, we passed by a little oasis I knew as a kid, the “The Reliable” deli.

Dongan Hills (Staten Island Advance/Pamela Silvestri)

Now at 1244 Richmond Road, one can find a classic deli inventory and sundries of a Big Apple, 24-hour bagel operation. Back in the ‘70s, an older couple ran this store, which had a respectable meat counter. Dongan Hills resident Charlie Greinsky tells me that the family owners then were the Piazzas. A butcher in the family made the store’s rather good sausage and carried chopped meat in a display case that ran along the back of the shop.

The only other place to buy meat, candy or something cool within walking distance, by the way, was Camelot Deli, now a convenience store by a relatively new Pastosa in Concord. Friends who grew up in the neighborhood recall Finast supermarket at the corner of Old Town Road and Hylan Boulevard, a location forever known to me as Save-On and home now to a rocking CVS.

But Reliable was just that on a hot summer’s day, a reliable stop for a preteen looking for something to eat and drink. That involved walking down Dutchess Avenue or Holly Street to Vista Avenue with my friend Carolanne to buy a Manhattan Special, purple Nehi or a frozen Snickers bar.

Whatever time of the year, visits to Reliable, in retrospect, helped shape our palates. It was convenience, by our standards without a car, to chug along to immediate sustenance. Always an excellent baker, Carolanne could buy ingredients for stuff she wanted to whip up on a whim. It was here where we were introduced to Funyuns, a gateway food drug to more sinful packaged things like fried pork rinds and Slim Jims.

On a more serious note, Greinsky reminds of a little history in the environs just past the old Reliable’s facade: it was the scene of a heart-wrenching tragedy. In the late ‘60s, New Dorp star football player Jimmy Gitto was killed in a car accident just outside the store shortly after graduation.

With that in mind, the heat indeed makes solid memories. I do believe time moves more slowly when you’re uncomfortable and those are moments that mold us. That said, the walk home from Reliable was uphill every step of the way, the sound of sycamore bark crunching underfoot and cicadas bleating in the trees. It’s a reliable memory that always serves me well.

Pamela Silvestri is Advance Food Editor. She can be reached at silvestri@siadvance.com.

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