All past, as the aphorism goes, can be prologue when the physiognomy of the present superimposes itself in an obtrusive manner. "Some places are so tightly associated with, or even defined by, particular events or times that it is difficult to imagine how they were before," wrote Margaret Lundrigan Ferrer and Tova Navarra in Levittown, The First Fifty Years, "like Salem before the trials, Waterford before crystal, or Oxford before the university." Indeed, picture Levittown before Levitt.

Is the history of Levittown before 1947 really that important? I mean, the transformation from open fields to winding lanes and thousands of homes was so rapid that there seems to be little continuity. An Island Trees man leaving town in 1945 would be utterly disoriented were he to return in 1950. Well, I believe that the before/after is important for two reasons:

Firstly, the building boom and demographic tidal wave pioneered by the Levitt development represents an exploding bomb with a long and smoldering fuse. That fuse and bomb was the transformation of America from a rural culture to a (sub)urban one.

Secondly, future students of Levittown history will probably have a broader, more inclusive view than today's historians. Many of the Levittown Historical Society's older members can remember the post-war building boom if not the war itself and the depression before that. The focus of their attention is, not surprisingly, centered upon the founding of Levittown. But younger people who know only houses and roads and harbor no recollections of farms, pastures, airfields, and country lanes, might just as easily overcome a sense of the ahistorical by not allowing the past to be defined "by particular events or times."

Consider my own experience. Being born in 1961, I don't recall the post-war world or anything before that. Moreover, my family didn't arrive in Levittown until 1968. The past, I was assured, was nondiscript potato fields and that was that. But being a curious youth, I explored the sumps and vacant lots of Levittown, butterfly net and collecting jar in hand, and picked up tidbits here and there. Why was the vacant lot off Skimmer and Orchid called the Old Motor? Why did the map of Levittown have a Long Island Rail Road right-of-way running through it? Why were there so many roads in the general area with the name "Jerusalem"? Why did the Dalton Funeral Home on Hempstead Turnpike resemble a large house rather than a boxy commercial building?

It was those things suggestive of something atypical in my suburban environs that stirred my interest in local history. I was especially fascinated by the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway where I collected insects in the late '60s and early '70s. In 1995, I read an article in the Long Island Forum (where I am now a contributing editor) by Lynne Matarrese about Levittown's Historic Raceway Site. I had mentioned my entomological explorations in the Old Motor in a Forum piece a few months later. As luck would have it, in April of 1996, Lynne and I met at a writer's dinner. We recognized each other's names, and along with Steve Buczak and my wife, Cathy, had a conversation into the night that introduced me to the Levittown Historical Society. Lynne by the way, was president of the society at the time.

My involvement with the society on the eve of Levittown's 50th Anniversary made me ponder the extraordinary legacy of William Levitt which I had hitherto possessed only fragmentary knowledge.

The point is, my perspective of Levittown history necessarily gives the same weight to events before and after 1947. As the torch is passed to a new generation in a decade or so-a generation not shaped by a particular pivotal event-this broader historical perspective might help young people to comprehend the changes they will experience in their midsts as they grow old. For example, last year Newsday published excerpts from my short story "Home and Garden Types," set in Levittown in 2053. In this tale of tomorrow, society became divided between "Indoorsmen" who retreated into cyberspace cooped up in hi-tech residential complexes, and "Sunburns" who worked the land that had reverted back to agriculture. (The explosive growth of property tax, the only real entity left to tax in a virtual reality world, brought suburbia to an end). Food had become a controlled substance in this future, so the plot concerned the underworld of illicit gardeners and underground restaurants called "eateasies." Far fetched? Yes, of course. That's political satire and the SiFi genre.

Let us not forget that Levittown in 1953 would have been unimaginable to anyone living in 1899. We must constantly remind ourselves that whatever year it happens to currently be, we are living in the future. My broad historical perspective allows me to see that Levittown is a place where fantastic and unpredictable things have happened in the past and will happen again in the future.