Having resided in Levittown (1968-92) and Hicksville (1992-present), the bifurcated view of Billy Joel in your recent feature "Hicksville or Levittown" (Hicksville Illustrated News, Aug. 13, 1999) is one that interests me. Mr. Joel's description of Levittown and Hicksville's historical distinctions is well considered. But whereas Levittown still maintains its mid-Century suburban flavor, Hicksville, especially downtown, has a far more eclectic and polyglot feel blending older themes such as embodied in its architecture with a newer and more multicultural reality. Superficially, Levittown is more homogenized and Hicksville is more ethnic. And yet, it is the two of them, Hicksville and Levittown, that represent all of our ideals and realities.

Hicksville, especially downtown, has always reminded me of the kind of community that was typical of small town life America before World War II -- usually centered around a rail depot. If the appearance of an immigrant population (mostly Indians, Koreans, and Hispanics) seems a curious revision of that small town iconic lore, it pays to recall that between 1850 and 1900 the German-American cultural presence here was considerable owing to the arrival of immigrants from Germany.

Levittown also appears as a community at once evocative of a particular era. Both towns find common ground in people like Billy Joel and I think that it is little coincidence that so many of his pre-hob nob-with-the-jet-set works, when he was still an up-and-coming artist, suggest this.

Mr. Joel's songs, especially his earlier work, speak much about the suburban experience and the pursuit of the American Dream and all of the hope and disillusionment and angst and reproachment therein. His youth in the "Levittown section of Hicksville" makes for a wonderful credential to ponder the fate of the American Dream; Levittown and Joel's Hicksville are quintessential suburbia rather than mere generic rehash. Consequently, his songs mirror a personal reflection.

Scenes From An Italian Restaurant reminded us that by the 1970s, the 1950s heyday and suburban boom was over. After Vietnam, Watergate, OPEC, JFK and the rest of the Swiftian list in We Didn't Light The Fire, we truly "couldn't go back to the greasers." Allentown, which Joel once said was spawned out of a frustrated endeavor to compose a piece about Levittown, took the realization even further bringing into question the whole promise of America. When the hopeless and jobless youths in Allentown ponder "the Pennsylvania we never found," one may well consider the boomer or Generation Xer who can't afford -- and maybe never will -- the house his parents owned in Levittown.

In recent years, however, Mr. Joel has rediscovered his Long Island heritage and the plight of baymen and suburbanite alike. According to the Aug. 13 item, "The Joel family had moved from the Bronx into their small house on Meeting Lane, Hicksville in 1950. It was part of the Levittown housing development...."

Thomas Wolfe notwithstanding, occasionally you can go home and Billy Joel is always welcome in his hometown Hicksville and Levittown.

Paul Manton

Vice President

Levittown Historical Society