“Hello, Robert Boy!” When I heard that greeting after answering the phone, I knew immediately who it was and that eventually I’d have a sore back, blisters or both.

The voice on the other end of the line was Roger Quesnel, the director of the Mystic Community Center, and he needed help. That’s one way the center kept its expenses down – volunteer labor.

I suspect that the majority of people using the beautiful Naik Family Branch of the YMCA don’t remember Quesnel, but without his energy and leadership, the building on Harry Austin Drive might never have been built. (I’m almost sure that nobody there remembers Harry Austin, the longtime security guard at Williams Beach.)

When Quesnel took on the directorship of the community center in 1960, the organization was housed in a former garage on Pearl Street, which has since been demolished and is now the site of a couple of modern homes.

The Pearl Street site offered a large variety of activities, primarily aimed at youth. The youngest children were offered a nursery school.

I remember many evenings working with a few other folks handing tricycles down from the overhead storage so that they would be available for the kids in the morning. These toys were well built and heavy. They got a lot of use. Of course, when the school ended each day, they had to go back up the stairs!

Another popular activity was basketball. One of the challenges to playing that sport at the center was the overhead steel girders that could get in the way of a long-range shot.

Gymnastics attracted a lot of kids, including my daughters, one of whom came close to being born there when my wife suspected she might be going into labor.

Putting the mats away was easy, as they hung on the walls. Thankfully we didn’t have to move the vaulting horse up the stairs!

The mats came down for judo, but had to be hung up again for teen dances on Saturday nights. These always attracted a fair crowd and were a good way for kids from both sides of the river to meet each other. In the summer, block dances were held in the A&P parking lot and sometimes in the Seaport parking lot.

These dances included a stage for the band or DJ. Phil Danforth built the stages, which were very solid. They could have held a tank and weighed about the same as one!

It took several of us to lift them on and off Fred and Frank Crandall’s pickup truck for transport to and from Pearl Street.

One night, after the stages were on the truck, I headed back to the center and was met in the parking lot by a couple of neighborhood kids shouting, “Bob, there’s somebody in the center!” There shouldn’t have been, since I was the first one back.

I went back up Pearl Street to tell the cop on the corner in front of Oliver’s Record Store, who told me to turn around in front of the bank while he called it in on the corner call box. When I had made the turn around the traffic signs, the officer, who as I recall was Ron Powich, hopped into my front seat and we went down to the center.

A cruiser soon arrived as did a keyholder. The police checked and there was nobody inside. I took a lot of good-natured ribbing over that one!

A wintertime outdoor activity at the center was ice-skating on the asphalt basketball court adjacent to the building. The court had a rim around it and we’d simply fill the area with water when the temperature dropped below freezing. The rink wasn’t big enough for fancy figures or races, but it was a good spot for little folks to learn to skate.

When the weather warmed up a lot of activities moved to Williams Beach. This location had softball and baseball fields, as well as swings and tennis courts. All of us were reminded to drop the nets at the end of the day.

A deep area was dredged in the river periodically to provide enough depth for diving off the raft. Swimming lessons were taught using the Red Cross guidelines.

I remember teaching the beginner’s class and thinking that the water was a lot warmer than when I was a kid being taught by Steve Ziberski at Eastern Point. Later my daughters enjoyed the beach, playing in the sand and taking swimming lessons.

Seaweed nets strung on posts set in tubs of concrete kept the swimming area relatively clean. When the season ended, Roger Quesnel would call and seek help bringing in the nets. With luck, the water would still be warm, as it was no fun to be rolling the drums of concrete along the edge of the dredged area and stepping off into water 10 feet deep!

One summer day we held a carnival at the beach. I operated a game of skill (not chance!) in which I challenged patrons to toss “one thin dime, only the tenth part of a dollar” onto a piece of “fine Oriental glassware” without it bouncing off. Many people spent far more than the glass was worth trying to win it for a dime!

A central gathering spot at the beach was the concession stand, which for a few years was presided over by the late Darryl Williams, famous for his greasy cheeseburgers. Darryl, who married Sue Martel, one of our lifeguards, later went to nursing school and became a lieutenant commander in the Navy Nurse Corps.

While the community center on Pearl Street pales in comparison to the current YMCA, and Williams Beach can’t begin to compete with Misquamicut or Ocean Beach, they were great places for kids and families growing up in mid-century Mystic.

Robert Welt of Mystic was a longtime teacher in Groton Public Schools.