On the hunt for JFK's local digs.

I recently went out to the Bronx to find the former home of John F. Kennedy. It is hard to picture that a future president?never mind a rich Irish-American in WASP clothing?once called the Bronx home. You think "Kennedy," and images of tony Bronxville and Massachusetts come to mind. But, for two years, a young JFK lived there?and he admitted it, patronizingly, in a 1960 election stop at the Grand Concourse and Fordham Rd.

As I drove up to the Bronx, I pulled off the Deegan and passed through the ghetto where Lee Harvey Oswald once lived. Oswald?like Kennedy?lived in the Bronx for two years. They both had a hard time in the borough. According to Bronx court records, Oswald was a truant who passed many a day in the Bronx Zoo instead of in school. Kennedy lived in a better neighborhood but spent most of his Bronx years in a sickbed.

Back on the crammed highway, I drove toward Riverdale, the Bronx's wealthiest district. On Broadway, the seedy bustle underneath the el train disappears as you turn left and go west on the tree-lined streets of Manhattan College. Passing through the bucolic grounds, I imagine it was here that Giuliani first had his vision of how New York City should be.

I pulled over, stepped out of the car and moved under the shade of an oak tree. I asked two young men coming out of the college if they knew where Kennedy's house was.

"You mean Kennedy? Like John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the president that got shot?"

"I do."

" He lived here?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Joseph Kennedy brought his family to the Bronx in September of 1927. The future president was ten years old; his father was busy raping Wall Street. Joe Kennedy rented a mansion on Independence Ave. in Riverdale; the family stayed there for two years before moving to Bronxville?a suburb just north of Yonkers.

I didn't have an address or a cross street on Independence Ave., and my Bronx instincts fail me in Riverdale. This is how the neighborhood is designed?if you don't live there, you don't belong there. And good luck getting through the maze of streets. My Hagstrom map failed me, and I wound up on Independence Ave. at 246th St. with nowhere to turn. The area is full of cul-de-sacs. One of them, Ploughmans Bush, has a stone post with a sign warning against trespassers on this private property.

I parked the car and approached a man raking his lawn.

"Please go away."

"I will if you tell me where the house is."

He retreated into his garage and closed the electric door after him. Suspecting that this was the house, I took a closer look. It's a nice enough ranch, but far from the mansion a Kennedy would be expected to rent. Then again, Joe Kennedy was known to be a cheap son of a gun.

On third look, I realized the house was too new.

I drove up the narrow streets and couldn't get through on Independence Ave., so I drove east and passed the Riverdale Country School, which JFK attended. I pulled into the driveway and looked around the grounds. I asked a maintenance man about the Kennedy home.

"I have no idea, but you can't be here. This is private property. No one is allowed on the grounds on the weekend."

On 252nd St., I found the extension of Independence Ave. This part of town was more like it: The homes are brick and stone colonials, some of them mansions. There's no one on the street, no one hanging out to ask about the mysterious Kennedy home, just squirrels on the front lawns and in the backyards. There are no delis, no bodegas, no coffee shops where I might ask questions.

At the corner, I came across the rolling, 28-acre public garden of Wave Hill. After paying the $4 entrance fee, I strolled the grounds, where I passed a gazebo in front of a thatch of Scotch thistle and foxglove. In the northern reaches of the garden, I saw the Wave Hill House: a Greek Revival mansion that was once home to Mark Twain, as well as future president Teddy Roosevelt.

In the cool confines of the house, I found an exhibition of paintings by Deanna Lee. In a logbook, previous visitors offered their opinion of the works:

"Beautiful" (Jayne Libe of the Bronx).

Answered with: "This sucks" (Bill Shepherd).

At the reception desk, a middle-aged woman was manning the phones. I asked if she knew anything about the erstwhile Kennedy compound.

"Oh, yes, I do know the house. It's right across the way on the corner of 252nd St. and Independence Ave. It's a shame, because it looks abandoned, but someone recently bought it. I hear that they're putting a lot of money into it. They're building underground parking. I see that the work is going on, so I guess we will know who owns it soon enough."

I thanked her and left the grounds. Finally, some concrete direction.

And there it was. Just beyond the walls of Wave Hill, a dead tree sat in front of the house, some of the windows covered by plywood. I walked up a pathway and stood on a stone veranda. Through a huge window, I could peer into the living room. The house was empty.

As I walked away, a group of Orthodox Jewish men passed me on the way to a nearby temple. I laughed to myself, imagining Joe Kennedy?a notorious anti-Semite?turning in his grave and thinking, "There goes the neighborhood."