Mayor of Main Street makes rounds

Dominick Farriella hopped up the steps of Northport Hardware and went behind the counter on a recent foggy morning.

Farriella, 56, doesn't work there, but he started ringing up a customer anyway. After all, as the unofficial mayor of Main Street, the eclectic hardware store -- complete with old street signs, restaurant memorabilia and a panoply of taxidermied animals -- is part of Farriella's domain.

"I wanted to come down and say hello to the boys -- my brothers," Farriella said.

"When Dominick passes, we're going to have his head stuffed and put it on the wall," said Bill Reichert, who owns the Main Street mainstay along with his brother Jim.

Farriella became "mayor" after spending 20 years delivering packages to Northport Village's Main Street as a UPS driver.

He hung up the brown uniform in January after 25 years with the company.

Now Farriella, who grew up in Wantagh, lives next to Scudder Park in a village-owned house. In exchange, he works on the home and is the caretaker for the beach, mowing the lawns and cleaning the restrooms and gazebo. And several hours a day, he works for a former customer on Main Street, handling shipping and receiving.

"I walk to work and I have to leave early because everybody talks to me. And I like that. It's a great feeling," he said.

Another former customer even set him up with his girlfriend, Carol Leftwich, owner of Wolfie's Frozen Custard on Woodbine Avenue. (She, too, is a former customer of his.)

Leftwich, 55, said her insurance agent, who has an office on Main Street and an apparent matchmaking streak on the side, called to tell her she had a blind date lined up for her with her friend Dominick.

"Are you talking about Dominick the UPS guy?" Leftwich remembered asking incredulously.

The two packed apples and cheese and headed down to the village park for a Thursday night summer concert. Four years later, they're still together.

"Once you become accepted as somebody in the village, you become part of the village," said the actual mayor of Northport, George Doll, who called Farriella "an asset."

Later that morning, Farriella walked to Jones Drug Store, where he popped behind the pharmacy's counter next to pharmacist Vincent Terranova.

"Ah, the unofficial mayor of Northport," Terranova said. "They're going to put his statue in bronze."

That brought a protest from Farriella.

"Not brown!" he said. "Pick another color!"