By Jim Marquardt

Fifty or sixty years ago, we eagerly looked forward to summer just as you do now, but our memories of those carefree days is tempered somewhat by recollections of the miseries we suffered, believe it or not, from our bathing suits. In those primitive times bathing attire invariably was made out of thick, heavy wool, always black. Romping on the beach was not an unalloyed pleasure because when wet, woolen suits lost all elasticity and hung loosely from our bodies like a layer of sagging flab. And when we sat on the hot beach to warm up after a swim, the bathing suit became coated with sand, creating woolen sandpaper that chafed our thighs raw. You could always tell chafe victims even at a distance because of their awkward, straddle-legged walk.

Historians say that in ancient times, citizens wore toga-like outfits into the baths (except for those saucy Greek discus throwers) which were made of wool and probably doubled the weight of the bather. They could only have rolled in the water like hippos because it would be impossible to swim towing such a sea anchor.  Bathing was frowned on in the Middle Ages when frowning was a common pastime, but made a come-back in Europe in the 18^th century. It became popular in the United States in the nineteen-hundreds but our puritan hangover forced women into full-body woolen suits that, hard as you tried, you couldn’t see through even when wet.

The aquatic costumes of that day for women consisted of knee-length, puffed sleeve woolen dresses, sometimes with a sailor collar, worn over bloomers trimmed with ribbons and bows. Accessories included long black stockings, lace-up bathing slippers and caps. Somewhere in the attic I have black-and-white snapshots of my female ancestors wearing these somber outfits. That they all look unhappy is certainly understandable. Obviously women couldn’t swim when so weighed down but jumped through the waves while holding onto a rope attached to an offshore buoy. Suits became a little more abbreviated over the years but wool remained the fabric of choice until after WWII.

One summer, in the age of the woolen suit, I worked in a bath house on Long Island where people who came out on the train from the city could rent a locker to change their clothes for a swim. Many of them brought their own bathing suits and when they returned from the beach, I’d offer to rinse out the sand and salt and wrap the sodden mass for the trip home on the train. Usually they agreed, and I’d dash off, wash the suit under a tap and crank it through a big mangle to squeeze out the water. It would come out of the mangle squished into the size of a manhole cover. I’d fold it over a couple of times and extrude it into a long plank that I rolled tightly into a sausage shape. Wrapped in waxed paper and tied with a string, it made a neat billet that earned me at least a quarter. Many times my excellence in packaging was wasted because between the bathhouse and the train station were several bars where the men would stop for a beer and invariably forget their woolen sausages. Perhaps they were happy to be rid of them. The old reprobates who cleaned out the bars on Sunday mornings must have puzzled over these artifacts before chucking them into the garbage.

Other down-for-the-day bathers who didn’t bring a suit could rent one at the bathhouse, a dollar for the black woolen brief, a towel and a brass tag inscribed with the number of an assigned locker. The bathhouse stocked rental suits for men up to 72 inches in the waist, a marvel I never got to see. 

But I witnessed a watershed event in the history of bathing suits — the shift from wool to cotton, or more accurately, stiff canvass. After so many years of discomfort and chafe, the men of that time welcomed the arrival of boxer shorts, though one fellow apparently found the mechanics somewhat puzzling. Inside the new trunks was a built-in athletic supporter, referred to by the guys on the corner as jock straps. It was a rudimentary creation, just two elastic strips from the rear of the waistband leading down between the wearer’s legs to one end of a rectangular patch of cloth, the other end of which was sewn to the front of the suit.

Soon after introduction of this sartorial breakthrough, an old fellow coming out of the changing area seemed to be walking in a crouch. He had mistaken the innovative athletic supporter for suspenders and had stretched the elastic strips over his shoulders, while the rectangular piece of cloth was pulled up on his chest like an abbreviated butcher’s apron. With delicate gestures and carefully chosen words we squared him away before he exited to the beach, at which point a mighty guffaw erupted from the bathhouse boys and we rolled on the deck in a state of high glee.

The old wooden bathhouse burned down years after I went on to more sophisticated employment. I don’t know what happened to the retired woolen bathing suits, whether they went up in flames, a classic end to their historic reign, or were sent off earlier to a thrift shop where they were claimed by bargain hunters who hadn’t heard of the upheaval in the bathing suit business. Amazingly, today you can buy woolen bathing suits on the Internet for as much as $180. If someday this summer I spot a guy on Long Beach walking spraddle-legged like the proverbial drunken sailor, I’ll know that someone has foolishly chosen style over comfort. As for me, I’ll stay with my knee-length, surfing jams. Come to think of it, they’ll look mighty cool held up by a pair of colorful suspenders. 

By Richard Gambino

 

I recently celebrated a landmark birthday. As a character in the musical, Chicago, says, “I’m much older than I ever intended to be.” So it’s no surprise, I guess, that I’m seeking to understand who I am now that I am a long-term “senior citizen” in 2009. I don’t mean self-obsession or even self-absorption, which I don’t need, and of which there is already too much in the world. Instead I’ve turned out from myself. For me, experience of nature pulls me out of myself even as it connects me with my own deepest internal nature. So I’ve turned to it. It’s a long-time practice of mine.

Luckily, in my lifetime there’s been a spirit at work on the East End preserving nature against the relentless push for overdevelopment. I first saw the coast of Montauk in 1953, and since 1970 have lived in two places on the South Fork and one on the North, and I’ve seen much change. Some of it not good. (As I write this, a deer is about twenty feet from me, outside my window, a stubborn holdout against encroaching suburbia.)

I remember the fight in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, led by people like Carol Morrison, today a vibrant 89 year-old,  to preserve land from Napeague to Montauk against the developers and some politicians  who wanted to turn it into yet another mass of McMansions, plus condominiums.  (Today, multi-story condo complexes hang by threads like so many Swords of Damocles about to drop on Sag Harbor.) Thus sixty-five percent of the land between Napeague and Montauk Point is now preserved, mostly as town, county, state and federal preserves and parks. I treasure the time I spend in these natural areas.

In the past weeks, I’ve spent the start of  a new age of my life taking walks along the jagged cliffs above the ocean just west of Montauk Point, at Camp Hero State Park, a state preserve since 2002,  and Shadmoor State Park, a state preserve since 2000. My mind goes back to the G.I.s of World War II who looked out to the sea when these were military installations. Dull duty manning massive coastal guns never fired at the enemy. But all that is left as nature has reclaimed the land are some squat buildings and circular slabs of concrete on which the heavy artillery rested. Still, I can almost hear the soldiers whistling, “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree,” “The G.I. Jive,” and other tunes popular then.

I imagine too that I see the generations of Montaukett Indians who gazed at the sea from these cliffs in the more distant past. The ocean was a great bounty to them, providing them with much food, and no doubt instilling in them the same awe I feel in looking at it. I wish I knew their songs, and could contemplate their minds. What would they make of us? How would their elders appraise the lives we lead? And I imagine someday my grandchildren when they are adults standing on the cliffs and wondering what I thought about while there.

It is in this  mind that I look out, awestruck, on a day with a strong south wind. The white water surges in from the blue sea against the weathered bluffs and beaten beaches. The waves follow each other so closely that at low tide they send an almost constant hiss to my ears. Strength and energy without measure. Yet they are not conscious. It’s human consciousness, my consciousness, that illuminates them, and in so doing lights my soul. I hope I don’t sound like a pedant when I relate that in reflection on these walks high above the ever-moving sea, I’m reminded of a favorite quotation I’ve used in the classroom. Some fifteen centuries ago, Boethius, a statesman and thinker who lived very much engaged with  the extremely turbulent late ancient Roman world,  said, “In other creatures ignorance of self is natural; in humans, it is vice.” These Montauk moments help keep me at least sometimes from this vice. These times illuminate the harmony of nature out there and nature within me as I engage a world very different from the one in which I was young.

Recently I stood on one of the cliffs, leaning into a strong wind flapping my clothes like uncontrolled sails, holding my tripod and camera hard against it. If anyone had seen me, they would have seen a lunatic. But thank God for such lunacy. The photos I took of the cliffs and the white water: Life’s cycles — and it is a wonder-full adventure to live mine. Back in 1950, a great psychologist, Erik Erikson, said the good life is to be had in a full-souled embrace of the truth that the meaning of life for  a person depends on the integrity he establishes for himself in the context of his time.  In the end, the best integrity I come to starts with the harmony of nature within and without, and then engagement with the world.

Another great psychologist, William James, in 1902 characterized a “healthy soul,” as one  insofar as  he relates to reality with enthusiastic connection and freedom. On the other hand one is a “sick soul” insofar as he relates to the world solely from his self-centeredness, and its mates, fear and all the other self-centered emotions. James tells a story of a person walking on a narrow ledge on a completely dark night. He slips, and for a long time hangs onto a tree branch in terror. Finally, exhausted, he falls. Six inches. James cites the moral of the story as the urging of, “giving your private convulsive self a rest, and finding that a greater Self is there.”

I come home from my immersions in nature more able to love those I love with all  my being, which is at the same time so ephemerally fragile, yet  powerful. And better to recognize the pettiness of “chasing the dog tail of my little self.” Also more committed to the justice of fighting against those whose love of themselves, power or money would have the rest of us chase theirs.

We lose too much of ourselves when we become alienated from nature, and so suffer a great handicap in living in an ever-challenging world.  Fortunately, the preserved lands nearby also can help preserve us from the vice of ignorance about who we really are. But being only human, it’s good to keep a sense of humor about ourselves. We should remember that even if there’s a 50-50 chance of getting something right, being human there’s a 60% probability  we’ll get it wrong. The good life comes from caring and trying. So my spirit encourages me on, with Walt Whitman’s injunction:

 

      Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me,

      and still urge you, without the least idea of what is our destination,

      Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.

 

RICHARD GAMBINO loves the “fish’s tail” (a.k.a. the East End), and the waters in which it swims.    

 

By Robbie Vorhaus

Up in the northeast corner of Indiana, about 25 miles south of Fort Wayne, Sag Harbor’s Colleen Saidman Yee grew up wanting to work with Mother Theresa.

“I remember being in the fifth grade and reading a Life magazine article on Mother Theresa and thinking, ‘I want to work with her,’” Colleen said, sitting quietly on the wooden floor of her one-room yoga studio, Yoga Shanti, here in Sag Harbor. “I grew up a devout Catholic, wanting to be a nun. I felt if I couldn’t be Mother Theresa, I wanted to work by her side.”

Colleen began writing letters to Mother Theresa.  “I always wanted to serve.  I wanted something more than just going to confession and complaining about how my brother picked on me” she said. “I wanted to make a difference, not whine.”

In both junior and senior high school, Colleen pursued her love of service and worked as an activities director in local geriatric wards, organizing exercise classes, bingo and crafts for the patients. Moving to Muncie, Indiana, Colleen attended Ball State University, leaving after a year to pursue a career in modeling.

In 1979, Colleen moved to New York City, and in 1983, after signing with renowned modeling agency, Zoli, became a super model, splitting her time between Paris and New York.

In 1986, living in New York’s SoHo, Colleen’s next door neighbor suggested she try yoga, and she soon became a regular attendee.

“Yoga touched me deeply,” Colleen explained. “Although I was very active in sports, practicing yoga was an opening, an experience I had never felt before.”

As a model traveling around the world, Colleen continued writing letters to Mother Theresa, and at the height of her career, in 1988, she received a note from Sister Pricilla, an aid to Mother Theresa, who wrote, “You are now ready to serve the poorest of the poor.” Within one week, Colleen was flying off to Calcutta, India.

“Getting on that plane was the highlight of my life,” Colleen said. “I worked with Mother Teresa at her Missionaries of Charity and was reminded daily that true peace only comes through service. I’m certain that getting up at 4:30 a.m. every morning, working with the poor and destitute, and serving the sick, homeless and hungry, I received more in blessings than I ever gave in time.”

A year later, in 1989, Colleen returned again to her successful modeling career. And in 1994, pushing her way through a heavy aerobic workout, Colleen injured her back, resulting in surgery and three months of bed rest. “I’ve been a yoga girl ever since,” Colleen said. “And I’m in the best shape of my life.”

In 1998, after graduating from Jivamukti’s Yoga Training Program, Colleen began teaching yoga. And in 1999, opened Yoga Shanti in a small walk-up space near Murph’s Back Street Tavern.  The room could only hold approximately 15-18 people, and in 2001 Yoga Shanti moved to a larger space, now occupied by a hair salon in the Harbor Shops.  Then, in 2004, Yoga Shanti moved to its current location, at 23 Washington Street.

 

On a recent cool May day, students begin to meditate in preparation for their next yoga class as soft light fills Yoga Shanti, bouncing against the freshly painted walls designed to the colors of the ancient chakra system.

Colleen explains, “Mother Theresa said, ‘The fruit of silence is prayer; the fruit of prayer is faith; the fruit of faith is love; the fruit of love is service; and the fruit of service is peace.’  My work in yoga is the fulfillment of my childhood desire to serve.”

Colleen and husband, Rodney Yee, a world renowned yoga instructor, recently became co-directors of the Integrative Therapist Yoga Program for fashion designer, Donna Karan’s Urban Zen Foundation. Together, Colleen and Rodney are teaching over 100 yoga teachers to work alongside classically trained health-care professionals, providing in-bed yoga movements, restorative poses, breathing awareness and meditation to the sick and infirm.

“Many people thought that our efforts to bring yoga into the hospital setting would be met with resistance,” said Colleen. “In fact, the doctors and nurses have completely embraced our work.”

Together, Colleen and Rodney are raising four teenagers.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, 13-year-old daughter, Rachel, a Pierson eighth-grader, will soon be traveling to small villages in the Republic of Senegal, on Africa’s west coast, helping to modernize peanut crushing, donating both her time and equipment.

“Rachel’s got the service bug,” said mother, Colleen. “We are so grateful living here in Sag Harbor where the Pierson administration supports her work. I feel for the first time in my life that we’re part of a community. Sag Harbor is such a wonderful place to bring up children. A place where we can walk to school, allow our kids to hangout in town because we know it’s safe, and still explore their freedom.”

Colleen continued, describing Sag Harbor from a yoga point of view.

“It’s so easy to be quiet in Sag Harbor,” she said. “Yoga is all about breathing, and here in Sag Harbor we can luxuriate in the quality of our clean, fragrant, light and magical air.  Sag Harbor is so esthetically pleasing, and we feel so lucky being here.”

From Calcutta to Sag Harbor.  Yoga, in our town, Sag Harbor.

 

 

by Jean Held

Sag Harbor celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2007 referring back to 1707. But why, of all the pivotal dates in Sag Harbor’s history, was 1707, selected for its settlement or founding date? Then we might ask, And when did Sag Harbor know it? The final question is whether or not 1707 is accurate.

The question of determining a founding date appears to have been first posed as late as May 15, 1924, in a Sag Harbor Express headline, “Trying to Fix Date for Welcome Sign,” followed by a number of possibilities, starting with the 1690s, when the reason to go to Great Meadows (now named Sag Harbor) was to harvest salt hay for cattle. The next founding date comes from a passage in the History of Suffolk County, published in 1882: “The first mention of Sag Harbor by name is in the town trustees book in 1707, where the clerk makes a charge— ‘For going to Sag Harbor to evidence for ye towne, 3s. 6d.’” Variations in “Harbour of Sagg” replaced the name Great Meadows when the waterfront was found to be a convenient harbor for citizens of Sagaponack.

Also considered was 1714, a year mentioned in an entry in Joshua Hempstead’s diary telling of his sailing from New London to “Sagg and ye Harbor” to sell his rum. By 1730 the place was still a swamp, and as the story goes, Sag Harbor had just three dwellings, and these huts were built into the side of old Turkey Hill. The hill was leveled to fill in what is now the business district. When you climb the steps from Main Street up to the police station, you are climbing the remains of Turkey Hill. Several divisions of land and lots in 1738, 1745, and 1761 make those years other possibilities.

The most prestigious dates came next, when Sag Harbor was established the first Port of Entry in New York State in 1789, followed by 1803, when Sag Harbor’s firemen formed one of New York’s first volunteer fire department, and in the process, established a fire-district border later to become the Sag Harbor Village border in 1846. Yes, old Sag Harbor was not incorporated until 1846. The most qualifying date for founding is the date of incorporation, but 1846 seemed not up for consideration for the sign.

Given these choices for the Sag Harbor welcome sign, 1707 was certainly most useful to attract tourists. (If anyone has a photo of the sign, please contact the Sag Harbor Historical Society.) Sag Harbor’s prime tourist promoter at the time, the Long Island Railroad, soon adopted the date for its travel brochure, “Sag Harbor—In the Land of the Sunrise Trail—1707-1929.” 

Further evidence that Sag Harbor only woke up to the usefulness of 1707 as late as 1924 is that Sag Harbor was quite unaware that 1707 could be a founding date when, in 1907, the village took no notice of the date — not a word of it reported in the local papers — nor held any celebration. And plenty of opportunities arose to do so in 1907, especially when, thanks to Mrs. Russell Sage, ground was broken for Pierson High School and items of the day were placed in the cornerstone without a token mention of Sag Harbor’s founding or settlement.

But the Village of Sag Harbor didn’t miss the next possible date to celebrate and attract tourists. In the June 10, 1932, Sag Harbor Express, Mayor G. Augustine Kiernan announced: “To all native sons and daughters, former residents, guests and friends. We extend to you a most cordial and hearty invitation to join with us the week of July 3-9, 1932, to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the settlement of our beloved Sag Harbor.” The word, “mentioned,” in the quotation referring to Sag Harbor in 1707 had been corrupted to mean “founded” or “settled,” and still is.

The final question, whether or not 1707 is accurate, is not so easily answered as the two others, for after reading the volumes of Southampton Town Records* and asking for help with the East Hampton Records, I am unable to find the primary source for the quotation. By “primary” I mean finding the phrase, “for going to Sag Harbor to evidence for ye towne, 3s. 6d” in the Town Records, with page and volume number. What I did find may suggest we should start planning now to celebrate Sag Harbor’s 300th Anniversary in 2010.

If there is any source associated with the quotation, it is usually The History of Suffolk County published in 1882. The quotation appears in the chapter on Southampton, attributed to Southampton Town historian William S. Pelletreau (1840–1918), but I wonder if he saw the edited version.

In 1862, Pelletreau discovered two rolls of the earliest Southampton Town Records in an attack. Over the years he recorded them into the first volumes of the records. So what follows is a chronological arrangement of what Pelletreau had to say about the first appearance of the name “Sag Harbor.”

Published in 1878, Pelletreau’s introduction to the Southampton Town Records, Volume 3 reads, “In process of time the population of Sagaponack and Meacox [sic] had become quite numerous, it was necessary to find some nearer port of landing, and thus save much of the time and labor in transporting their goods. This was the origin of Sag-Harbor, which was called for many years ‘Sagaponack harbor,’ and in bills of lading as late as 1760, was called ‘the Harbor of Sagg.’ The exact time at which a permanent settlement was made at this place is unknown.”

In the History of Suffolk County, published in 1882, is Pelletreau’s much quoted “This was the origin of Sag Harbor, which was for many years called ‘Sagaponack Harbor’ and ‘The Harbor of Sagg.’ The first mention of Sag Harbor by name is in the town trustees book in 1707, where the clerk makes a charge— ‘For going to Sag Harbor to evidence for ye towne, 3s. 6d.’” Note, first, that no page or volume number is quoted, and second, that in the founding days of Southampton the trustees and board members were the same thing.

In 1915, Pelletreau recorded the following item from the Town Records, Volume 2, “Page 119. Thomas Cooper sells to Theodore Pierson, one-half of a lot of meadow in ye Great Meadow at Sagaponack harbor, being lot No. 5. Price 40s. April 19, 1710.” Pelletreau then comments, “Note. The above is the first mention we have seen of what is now Sag-Harbor. It was afterwards called ‘the harbor of Sagg.’”

“1710” is Pelletreau’s last word on Sag Harbor’s first mention.

Help! I will award $100 to the first person to find the primary source for the quote dated 1707. Otherwise I’ll be celebrating in 2010. 

*The Southampton Town Records contains the minutes and abstracts of Town Board and Trustee meetings. Editors’ essays and comments are included.

 

Jean Held is interested in the unsolved history mysteries of Sag Harbor.

 

[725-2690 or jheldsofo@aol.com]

By Jim Marquardt

When it met in New York City in the summer of 1789, the First Congress of the infant United States found itself facing bankruptcy, with a debt of $77-million. Under the original Articles of Confederation, the Federal Government had no power to tax and had borrowed from France and Holland to finance the War of Independence. Congress and President George Washington responded quickly, passing the Tariff Act of July 4, 1789 which authorized collection of duties on goods coming into the country. The newly established U.S. Customs Service named Sag Harbor a Federal port of entry and appointed Henry Packer Dering U.S. Customs Master. Henry was the son of Thomas Dering, a patriot who moved his family to Connecticut during the war to escape the British. While there, young Henry studied at Yale College and his framed diploma dated 1784 hangs today on the wall of the Customs House.

Busier even than the port of New York City, Sag Harbor became a major source of the young country’s finances. For the next three decades, Dering met vessels entering the harbor and levied duties on their cargos – 10 cents a gallon for Jamaican rum, two-and-a-half cents a pound for coffee, five cents a pound for wax or spermaceti candles, four cents a pound for cheese, two cents for soap, ten cents for snuff, and seven cents a pair for shoes, slippers or “goloshoes” made of leather. By 1835, customs revenues alone had reduced the national debt to zero.

Henry purchased what became the Customs House when he married Anna Fosdick in December 1793. The house then was at the corner of Union and Church Streets. He added to the home in 1806, probably because he and Anna raised nine children and he had also become Sag Harbor’s first postmaster. In a letter to a relative, Anna wrote “Our leader George Washington has appointed my own dear husband Henry to serve as Customs Master here in Sag Harbor. The tea I buy will still be taxed (I chuckle to think my husband will be the one issuing that!) but I will sip that tasty brew more happily knowing that the money it brings in will help support our own new nation rather than go in some king’s pocket across the ocean.” Martha Washington reportedly sent Anna a cutting from a boxwood bush at Mt. Vernon for planting in her yard. As a community leader, Henry invited David Frothingham to the village in May 1791 to establish Long Island’s first newspaper, The Herald.

The fully-furnished Customs House presents a fascinating look at the lifestyle of a comfortable Long Island family between 1790 and 1820. Just off the side entrance is the customs room furnished with Dering’s work table and ledgers, and stand-up and roll-top desks made by Sag Harbor craftsmen. Henry raised a corner of the ceiling to accommodate a tall case-clock made in mahogany by William Claggett of Newport. Shutters on the inside of the windows slid shut for privacy as Dering did his official work.

Important guests, including James Fennimore Cooper, were welcomed into the elegant parlor with its Federal settee and Chippendale tea table and side chairs. A large chest, like others in the house, made up for lack of closets. In one corner is a violin and case crafted by Sag Harbor’s Zebulon Elliott. Opposite stands another tall case-clock, this one built by Nathanial Dominy of East Hampton.

The dining room is equally gracious, its mahogany table set with porcelain dishes carried as ballast in ships returning from China. Dinner guests sat in Duncan Phyfe chairs and ate with two-tined forks and engraved silver flatware. On a sideboard inside large glass chimneys are Sheffield lamps that could be lit with candles or whale oil. A “crumb cloth” protects the carpet and strips of wall paper border the ceiling.

In the big kitchen fireplace a trammel suspended cast iron pots, pans and kettles over the flames. Early American versions of labor-saving devices helped servants prepare meals — a toasting rack and waffle maker, a tin reflector oven, a cabbage chopper, a wooden rolling pin with ivory handles, and a butter churn. In the pantry is a jar of brandied peaches put up in 1839. The kitchen has space for a spinning wheel, a baby-minder, a dish-drying rack, a pie-safe to keep out flies and children, and a tin bathtub shaped like a huge soup bowl.

In Henry’s bedroom upstairs is a chest from his parent’s home in Shelter Island and a fancy commode cabinet used when it was too dark or cold to get to the outhouse. A brass and copper bed warmer fought the chill, and on the floor next to the four-poster rests a pair of shoes, in those times neither right nor left but shaped by the feet of the wearer. The smaller children’s rooms overflow with straw-filled, wrought iron sleigh-beds, toy furniture, doll cradles and slates for school work.

When Henry Packer died in 1822 at age 58, he was succeeded as Customs Master by his son Henry Thomas. Almost all of the Derings are buried in Oakland Cemetery. By the 1940s, the once grand house had become an abandoned derelict and was about to be demolished. The Olde Sagg Harbour Committee appealed for help to Charles Edison, former New Jersey governor and son of the famous inventor, who summered in the Hannibal French House on Main Street. Edison loved Sag Harbor and donated part of his property as a new site for the Customs House. It took three days to make the careful move, with the lighting company detaching overhead wires along the way. The Society for Preservation of Long Island Antiquities studied the building’s original interior design and located a large number of family pieces, aided by Anna Dering’s own household inventories. In 1971 after a three-year restoration, Sag’s Customs House was designated a National Landmark.

This summer when you’re wondering what to do with those weekend guests, give them a peek at local history. The Customs House is open weekends beginning Memorial Day, daily in July and August, and weekends from Labor Day to Columbus Day.

By Julie Penny

I had to go away to find out something about home. Not that I went that far. It was serendipity that brought me to the Rocky Point Jewelers on a bitter cold day last year, and serendipity that I ended up speaking with the store’s owners, Anthony Bongiovanni junior and senior. It was not because of the errand that brought me to the shop that I stumbled upon a nugget from Sag Harbor’s past, but something I had noticed hanging on the shop’s wall that piqued my curiosity—I can’t now even remember what it was that had drawn my attention. But, it ultimately led me into an animated conversation with the store’s owners who are history buffs. It also led to Mr. Bongiovanni, Jr. bringing out a binder book of “scrip” from his vault that he’d been collecting from different places in Suffolk, including Sag Harbor. Scrip is any substitute for legal tender and has been used as a form of credit in the course of our 233 year history whenever we’ve been whiplashed by troubled economic times. Resorting to creating a local currency “scrip” when banks closed temporarily and when there was a shortage of coins was a way to keep the economy afloat and for trade to continue during hard times, as in periods of depression or war. In this case, the “scrip” were pretty certificates of various designs that included the name of our village: “Sag Harbor.”

Mr. Bongiovanni showed me some that he’d collected. One was of a $3 note that was issued by the Suffolk County Bank in 1844 on the heels of a long depression that began with the panic of 1837. The Suffolk County Bank had a relatively short history in our town. It opened its doors in 1844 and closed in 1867. It’s listed in the 1840’s business directory with John Hand’s name next to it—whether as bank manager or as its owner, I’m not certain. I don’t know where it was located. A part of its tenure overlapped for seven years with that of the Sag Harbor Savings Bank located on the northwest corner of Main and Spring Street which opened in 1860 and merged with the Apple Bank 120 years later in 1989. It’d be interesting to know if they, too, have some old certificates moldering away in their basement; although, the only extant copies of these notes seem to be have been issued by the Suffolk County Bank in different denominations. The ones I saw were in 3, 5, 10, 25, 50-cent and $3.00 banknotes.

Between 1844 and 1862 our own local merchants issued their own scrip through the Suffolk County Bank. Among them is a 10-cent note that Mr. Bongiovanni says was known as “private scrip.” It was “issued by J.E. Smith through the Suffolk County Bank.” Smith was a shipbuilder involved in the whaling trade. To Mr. Bongiovanni’s knowledge, this “…note produced in the 1840’s represents the earliest of any note issued by the Suffolk County Bank…It is unlisted in reference books and is presumably the only known specimen.”

It turns out that in 2003, our own local historian, Dorothy Zaykowski, of the Sag Harbor Historical Society, was able to sketch out the backgrounds on the other issuers of our hardscrabble currency when Mr. Bongiovanni had inquired about them. He had a 5-cent note for “W & G.H. Cooper – Dealers in Dry Goods, Groceries, Paints, Oils” that was issued in 1862, during the Civil War. In fact, the Historic Society / Museum of which Dorothy is the administrator is headquartered in the old “Annie Cooper Boyd” home on Main Street right next to the old Cooper homestead. Annie was the daughter of William Cooper who owned the store and who was also involved in the whaling industry. These homes are located several doors south of the Main and Spring street intersection.

The last of these certificates that I’ll mention is a 25-cent note issued on November 15, 1862 and that actually circulated as currency. The issuer was William Buck who was one of Sag Harbor’s early pharmacists. In her letter to Mr. Bongiovanni, Dorothy says: “His first store which opened in 1844, was on the east side of Main Street on the ground floor of the Mansion House Hotel. In 1859 he moved into a new brick building on the west side of Main Street, a building that has housed drug stores continuously through the years and is now the Sag Harbor Pharmacy. William Buck was in the drug business until 1873.”

The way things are going, who knows, maybe one day we’ll be lining up at our local merchants, “scrip” in hand. The necessity of a community based credit system has been a recurrent theme in our history, and maybe one that we’ll need to look at again in imaginative ways. Certainly, community banks, having been more prudent in their lending, are in a better position than the behemoths that are taking us down. 

 

by Joseph Hanna

“No, you are wrong!” said my boss. “Radio is the most intimate medium there is. You are speaking into someone’s ear, right into their head. Try it again from the top, and speak like you are talking to someone you know.”

The exchange had begun while I was attempting to read some copy for a bank commercial that would be replayed on five area stations including WLNG. I was trying to use my FM radio voice, the deep one, properly articulated, sonorous, oily, and as phony as a starlet’s promise of undying fidelity.

“It’s got to be real,” said my boss. “The hardest thing in broadcasting is honesty – and when you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Did I mention he was a wit?

I lived on Howard Street in those days. I was so close to the WLNG signal tower that I could pick up the station at three places on the dial. I got the main carrier signal plus the harmonics, which are usually too faint to matter. I used to joke that I could pick it up on my toaster, but that was only half a joke, It came through my guitar amp, my reel to reel recorder, my microphones and anything else that wasn’t well grounded.

When we moved to Sag Harbor after a touring the South and Midwest with a country band, I had heard a lot of stations around the US, from LA to backwoods Arkansas. Our mandolin player (from East Meadow, Long Island) loved to imitate the drawling fundamentalists from the giant, unregulated, high-powered stations in Texas. We called them “blowtorches” because their signal from the big transmitters across the border from Del Rio could toast bread. You could pick them up all the way to Indiana on a clear winter night. I had heard a lot of radio on thousand mile drives and I thought I had heard it all, but WLNG was unique. There was nothing else like it in the entire country.

What would make a radio station so … eccentric?

It was filled with weird anachronisms like the little 5-second musical station IDs. My boss at the studio had been a jazz vocal arranger. He knew how to fashion a chord using human voices that would make a hep cat flip his wig. The station IDs for WLNG sounded as if some wiggy, flipped out hep cat had done the vocal arrangements. Why? How? By the ‘70s when I first heard the station, hep cats were hippies and they played fuzz guitar and sang in trippy monotones. What was going on?

This is how I found out.

The boss bought an ancient RCA ribbon microphone from an antique shop in New York to use as a stage prop for his ultra-modern control room. A ribbon mic uses a microscopically thin ribbon of metal to catch sound waves – hence the name. A good one is extremely delicate. A friend of mine ruined one by putting it down on its side. They have a particular sound, or as we used to say, they color the sound they pick up. Sound engineers can recognize the type of mic used for a particular recording. When the boss tired of the dusty old thing, he asked me to give it to Paul Sidney as a kind of gag. You have probably seen those mics in old movies. They were the size of a cocktail shaker, shaped like a suppository and had ribbed sides. RCA with a lightning bolt was emblazoned on the side.

“What did he say?” asked the boss on my return.

“He said thank you.” I answered.

“That’s it?”

The joke was on us. A couple of weeks later I had to deliver some spots to the station after the receptionist had gone for the day. I entered quietly because I knew from my car radio that Paul was live on the air. He didn’t see me come in. He had his back to me. The announcer booth door was open. He was talking fast, gesticulating like a pushcart fruit vendor and dancing on one foot. He was directing his energy, his words and indeed his personality into the ancient RCA ribbon mic! It was back on the air! Back from nowheresville! He was using it in real life! That’s how he was getting that particular sound that I noted on the drive to the station.

When the recording studio in Bridgehampton was shutting down, it was my job to offer Paul another piece of equipment, the old Ampex mono tape recorder. It had been converted from tube to transistors in the ‘60s. The American tape recorder came from an intelligence operation in Germany during the war. An Army unit was sent to a radio station to close down a “live” concert in the middle of the night. They discovered a tape recorder and a lonely and terrified engineer. Tape recorders had been developed by Germany in secret just before the war. The men had never seen anything like it. It was shipped to California as war booty, where it was copied and produced by the company that became Ampex a few years later.

Paul’s eyes lit up when he saw it. He put it into immediate service and it was still being used the last time I looked about eight years ago. While I was there, Paul showed me around the facility. He explained that he grew up in love with radio in the classic era just before television took over much of the entertainment load. He found a place in Buffalo that was going out of business and bought all their old station IDs. He wanted the old sound. He wanted the old vocal arrangements. He even ran his signal through an obsolete spring reverb and a compressor to get that specific, high-energy but out-of-focus sound we associate with the early rock and roll days. He thought about everything he did. Nothing at the station just happened by accident. The eccentric sound was one man’s vision, worked out detail by detail.

I tried not to listen to WLNG in those days. My wife and I played in a local band and we tried to project a certain professional cool. But it was impossible not to listen to it because it was a true community resource. The on-air personalities called out our son’s birthdays, told us who died, told us who to call for used boats and motors, garage tools, firewood, septic tank services. Paul and crew ginned up excitement for thousands of pancake breakfasts, whaler’s festivals, parades, basketball games, football games, Santa visits and all the happenings that gave a sense of community to our town. It was an eccentric station for an eccentric town. It was completely honest in a dishonest medium.

“Look at those numbers!” said Paul as we concluded the tour. He pointed excitedly at the latest Arbitron survey. WLNG was the most listened to station in the local market. His eyes were on fire. This (in every sense) was his baby. In a world dimmed down by sameness and franchised offerings that varied not at all from sea to shining sea, WLNG stood out like a ’57 Chevy with hood scoops in the valet parking lot for a charity ball.

“Those are good numbers,” I said.

“Those are great numbers,” he said.

The numbers didn’t lie. They told me what I already knew through experience, that WLNG was the voice of Sag Harbor and the East End. It was brought to you by Paul Sidney, who was passionate about radio and what it could do. In a sense, it was a giant toy, but some of the best things in life are created by people who enjoy what they do. When you love your job, it’s like play time all the time. We will miss him.

Has the world turned black and white or is it me? I rarely complain in print. I save my griping and moaning for my small (and strangely dwindling) circle of friends. In fact, I gripe and they moan.

“You know what ticks me off?” I said the other day.

“Oh no, what?” they said in unison. One of them slipped away to the bar. He thought I didn’t notice.

“How headlines on the internet news services pose their latest alarm in the form of a question.”

“Groan.”

“It’s like the whole world has gone into Final Jeopardy. We know all the answers, it’s the questions that we have to figure out. I am waiting for a headline that reads, “World To End Friday – Is Friday The Best Day?” I guess you are supposed to blog your opinion. Have you read some of the opinions? Who has time for reading playground level sarcasm spiced with scatologically tainted menacing? If I wanted that, I would just tell people how I vote.

“The other day I read a Pearl Harbor sized e-headline that went, ‘Is Jen Single Again?’ Well, duh! That’s why I go to the darned internet to find out if Jen is single again. How would I know unless I was the one who dumped her? Or, how about ‘Congress Gives 600 Billion to AIG – Will This Work?’ How would I know? I just moused up the internet to find out if Jen was single again for a few minutes so I could get on Facebook and tell her that Brad really isn’t …”

“You go on Facebook?” said the beloved. Her ears perked up so violently it made bumps in her new hairdo.

“Ah … I may have. Is that a problem?”

“Who is Wanda Meaka?”

“I … ah … someone I knew once a long time ago. Why do you ask?”

“You got an email saying she had written on your wall. What does that mean?”

“Ah … in Facebook …. You know what Twitter is?”

“Another old girl friend from your hippie days?”

“No. I told you. That one’s name was Glitter Starshine. She had it legally changed from Bernise Katzenschlitter. Wouldn’t you?”

“Who is Wanda Meaka, and what is she writing on your wall? For a good time call Wanda?”

“Er, no, not exactly. She is on her fifth husband, well not on, exactly, I guess he left with the hot tub to live with someone he met in a chat room, so she was just innocently looking up old friends from college. Is that so terrible?”

“Were you two …?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m not suggesting anything! I’m asking pointblank. Were you?”

“Not really. But, it was the sixties. Wasn’t everybody?”

“I’m about ready to blog you one upside the head. Is that what you want?”

“Do you even know what blog means?”

“Do you want to find out?”

“Can we change the subject?”

“We have dance class tomorrow night. Are you going to wear some nice pants?”

“Groan. Tomorrow?”

“Last week was the rumba, this week is the meringue. Don’t you want to learn the double turn? Haven’t you any sense of romance?”

“I was pretty romantic when I had hair. Whoever heard of a romantic bald guy?”

“Do you want me to rent the King and I again?”

“Good lord, no! Do you want me to wear my Hammer Time gold harem pants to dance class?”

“Well, do I have to rent Towering Inferno?”

“Bruce Willis?”

“He’s bald isn’t he?”

“Yes, but he has a wig. You want me to get a wig?”

“It might get you to shut up about your hair. Do you want to try one?”

“I’d rather go to dance class. When do we learn the part where you wear a red dress cut down to you know, and you twitch your butt to make the fringe fly and then I throw you between my legs?”

“In your dreams. Can you even do the rumba without saying ‘quick, quick slow’ aloud and looking at your feet?”

“That bothers you?”

“Do you see Yul Brenner counting his steps?”

“Do you see his leading lady actually trying to lead?”

“What are you saying?”

“Maybe I should lead?”

“This is the 21st Century. Women lead. Is that a problem for you, buster?”

“What would you say if I said yes?”

“Suck it up?”

There was electricity in the air as the orchestra’s maestro raised his baton and then gave the signal for a downbeat. A line of song and dance people on stage went into their act. They were all members of the Long Island Association of Developers, Realtors & Overdressed Lawyers. (L.I.A.D.R.&O.L.) The developers were in coveralls, borrowed from some of their workers — the garments still sported the owners’ names on their breasts, like “Brick,” “Moose” and “Julio.” Having not picked up a hammer in years, the developers’ coveralls fit like … sausage skins. The realtors wore tasteful blue blazers. Each tasteful blazer sported a tasteful button that said, tastefully, Hey big spender! Spend some time with me! The overdressed lawyers were, well, overdressed — pinstripe suits, Guccis, gold cufflinks.

The troupe started with a time-step, holding out their hands to His Honor, and the town fathers (and mothers) on the village board and committees in the front seats. Then, they burst into song, while gazing with headlight eyes at His Honor and the town fathers (and mothers). We wanna be loved by you, they belted out, just you, and nobody else will do! His Honor’s eyes and those of the town fathers (and mothers) grew moist. We wanna be loved by you alone, boo boop pe do! His Honor now sobbed, softly, while some of the town fathers (and mothers) brought handkerchiefs to their noses, discretely.

The L.I.A.D.R.&O.L. performers pirouetted in unison, more or less, then dropped down on one knee, a few wincing in pain as they did so. Two or three of the sausage-skin coveralls split, but the troupers paid no heed as they stretched out their arms to His Honor and the town fathers (and mothers), and sang on, voices deep in heart-felt passion, We couldn’t aspire, to anything higher, than call you our own!

This night of Sag Harbor nights was organized by the three fab gals, Tiffany, Amber and Wendi to celebrate the Hamptons City condo complex, formerly the Bulova factory, in which the three fab gals spend sensational summers, another multi-story condo sprawling along Ferry Road to block all views of the water, and all the other condo complexes covering the town, giving Sag Harbor its exquisite Queens Boulevard cachet. The three fab gals were inspired to reenact the long glorious struggle His Honor and the town fathers (and mothers) had fought not so long ago, through good times and bad, to turn Sag Harbor into the urban condoland of the East End.

“It’s only fitting that we honor His Honor and the town fathers (and mothers),” said the Highly Reverend Paul Schmuckler. “After all, Sag Harbor’s ‘the most hamptony of the Hamptons.’” He was quoting a famous phrase from His Honor. You see, during the heroic campagin for the condo complexes, some vile reactionary said that Sag Harbor should remain “The Un-Hampton.” Whereupon His Honor thundered, “We’re tired of being put down like that! Sag’s gonna be the most hamptony of all the Hamptons!”

And then that vile, vile Group for the East End sued in court about the town not having filed a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Bulova project, as required by the NYS Environmental Quality Review Act. This included the trucking of thirty thousand cubic yards of potentially toxic soil in 3,750 trips by full eight-cubic yard trucks past countless homes and schools. His Honor fought that picky-picky Group in court with truly inspiring righteousness. At much taxpayers’ expense. “The great cost is more than worth it,” His Honor boomed. “It’s time that these environmentalists be taught to get their priorities straight!”

So the three fab gals approached their Wall Street hubbies for financing. “No problem,” they said, “even in tough times.” You see, Uncle Sam had bailed them out, so each was able to pay himself his usual multi-million dollar bonus right on schedule. The next step was to hire a producer-director-choreographer for the extravaganza. At His Honor’s suggestion, the three fab gals approached the off-off-Broadway figure, Quinton Terpsichore, who had recently retired with his wife to their Sag Harbor summer cottage. “I’m afraid that this is not quite in my line,” said Mr. Terpsichore, picking up on a cue from his wife who stood behind the three fab gals in the cottage’s kitchen. Amber pleaded, “But we’ll pay you three hundred and fifty to do it.” Mr. Terpsichore smiled politely, and was about to decline again when Tiffany added, “That’s three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” Mrs. Terpsichore had to hang on to a kitchen cabinet to keep from falling.

There were some slight hitches during rehearsal time. For example, Wendi’s husband had given one of his p.r. people the job of preparing the evening’s program. This young woman had listed Wendi as “Mistress of Ceremonies.” Well! Wendi could be heard from one end of Hamptons City to the other screaming on the phone to her husband that she’d “never be anybody’s freakin’ damn mistress!” Her hubby promised to re-do the program, and simply list Wendi as “MC.”

With a similar nod to reality, a decision was made finally to give a public explanation of why so many exceptions were made to favor huge condo development in Sag Harbor. Trivia. Such as the town refusing to file for the Bulova project an EIS as required by law, and not building thirteen units of affordable housing. Instead the developer donating $2.5 million, i.e., about $192,300 per unit, which would not even buy an outhouse in Sag Harbor. So a great legal scholar strode majestically to center stage and explained the legal reasoning, regally. “Ipse dixit, null mens rea, hic et nuc,” he said, “pax resurgum utsupra damnant quod non intelligunt ex mero motulocus in quot hoministot sententias.” Amber, pressing her thighs together, swooned, “I love it when a man talks French!” But no one heard her for the loud acclaim by members of the audience, like His Honor, who shouted, “Bravo! Brilliant! You reporters — you make sure you get it right this time!”

Much too soon, it came time for the finale, which Quinton Terpsichore introduced as, “The orgasm of musical climaxes that will make all other musical climaxes seem like they need Viagra!” But there was a short delay. You see, the clean-up crew, made up of former owners of the village’s long-gone mom and pop stores, were a bit slow in sweeping and mopping the stage between acts, to earn three bucks an hour. “Everybody wants to be in show business,” muttered a frustrated Quinton Terpsichore.

The curtain rose, and there were the three fab gals, wearing dancers’ leotards with thong bottoms, best to show the results of their stay last winter at the St. Moritz Divine Derrieres Cosmetic Surgery Center. Behind them was a chorus line composed of His Honor and the town fathers (and mothers). They had wanted to wear thong leotards like the three fab gals, but Tiffany set them straight. “Look,” she said. “I know you’re saving your pennies to go to the Devine Derrieres Center, but you haven’t made it yet, so it’s ordinary leotards for you!” As she later explained to the press, “Sometimes you gotta be cruel to be kind.”

The music started and the three fab gals and the official Sag Harbor ensemble went into their act, dancing, and singing to the members of the L.I.A.D.R.&O.L., who were now in the audience, You can make us do [hard hip bump to the right], what you want us to [hard hip bump to the left], but you gotta know how! You can make us do like this [double hip bump to the right], and you can make us do like that [double hip bump to the left], and, ohh, you sure know how!

 

 

RICHARD GAMBINO loved the show.

By Hope Harris

What is wrong with this country?! With us? What led us to believe that each one of us could have anything he or she wanted? What made us believe each of us could own a 40,000 square foot house, or a $40,000 car or write a great book or be a great artist? Our culture makes every one of us famous for a day and tells us we can own and be anything we want. And for the past ten years, we’ve been borrowing money and thinking we never had to repay it!

And look what happened!

But the irony is that unlike people in the rest of the country, we turn out to be luckier than most. While the financial meltdown has affected everyone to some extent, Manhattan and The Hamptons have not been hit hardest. Granted not many houses are selling or renting, but conversely, very few owners are in foreclosure or have declared bankruptcy. There are no long lines for food stamps or jobs. Some people did get “Madoffed,” but they’re not entirely wiped out. Sure, some second-home owners would like to sell their houses, but not if it means taking a tremendous loss. Owners would like to rent, but if they don’t get close to what they’re asking, they’ll use their second homes themselves.

In truth, what’s happened here is that, unlike others, we’re in Park. Not Neutral. Not Reverse. Park. We can turn off the (real estate) engine, park the car and do something else until the market shows renewed signs of health. It might be two years, it might be longer, but very few people in our unique and (still) moneyed area, will go under. This is not Ft. Myers or Phoenix or Detroit.

So, if we can hold on; all of us—brokers, teachers, police, first and second home owners, retailers (not Ralph Lauren and Tiffanys—we know they’ll make it through), restaurateurs, pharmacists, car dealers — we’ll be OK, and might, in the interim, learn to live differently. On less.

We can sit down, take a deep breath, and think. We can stop running and think. About what we’ve always wanted and wanted to do; about helping people less fortunate; about spending less and enjoying more. We can stop shopping. We can clean out our closets and give the clothes we never wear to people who can use them. We can eat at home. Volunteer this new time we have. Turn down the heat. Read more books. And for God’s sake, we should turn off the television and the media which is working overtime to scare us to death. Daily. Hourly. Weekly. Monthly. Maybe for years to come.

We can try to learn to live without “things.” “Things” is what got us into this mess in the first place: every new gadget, cars and houses and things to put in our houses; trips and clothes and fancy restaurants, and big parties, and bigger cars and then bigger houses and before we knew it, we were all in over our heads. The mortgage companies gave mortgages to people who couldn’t afford the monthly payments and credit cards gave us unlimited funds. Didn’t we learn anything from the Tech Bubble? How long can everyone have everything he or she wants?

So let’s just leave the car in Park, get out, look around, take a walk. Re-think who we are and what we truly need to be happy. Let’s all hope the answer isn’t money because—for a while anyway—there isn’t going to be a lot.