A lottery scam that local police say has victimized Latino communities throughout Long Island and in New York City struck the Village of East Hampton Friday afternoon, the second time this year.

At about 1:30 p.m. that day, Sgt. Gerard Larsen's suspicions were aroused by the actions of four people in a white Chrysler Fifth Avenue with New Jersey plates. Sergeant Larsen said he first noticed the four driving slowly near Hook Mill, staring at a young man who was walking a bicycle on the opposite sidewalk, from Pantigo Road toward the village business center.

In front of the Devlin McNiff real estate office, Sergeant Larsen said, the car pulled over abruptly. One of its passengers, later identified as Carlos Torres, 42, of Elmhurst approached the man, Elmer Guzman Garcia, a 22-year-old who lives on Morris Park Lane in East Hampton, and struck up a conversation.

A Cut Of The Prize

According to the story Mr. Garcia later told police, Mr. Torres asked him if he spoke Spanish, and, when he responded in the affirmative, first said he was ill and then told him he had a winning lottery ticket worth $160,000, which he could not cash in for lack of proper identification.

Police said this week that the approach was typical. The victim is promised a cut of the prize if he or she will provide their own cash and help the con artist claim the money.

Indeed, Mr. Garcia told police, Mr. Torres promised him $4,000 in return for his help.

As Sergeant Larsen continued to watch, a second man got out of the Chrysler and approached the two on the sidewalk. Mr. Garcia told police they gave no sign of knowing each other.

Playing Their Parts

All three began walking toward the CVS drugstore, eventually stopping by the bench in front, where they were watched by Sergeant Larsen and a seasonal police officer, Brian Lester, through binoculars from the unmarked car, which was parked nearby.

As they walked, said Mr. Garcia, Mr. Torres was telling the story of the lottery ticket to his confederate, who played the part of an eager listener. He, too, could help, he said, and pulled out a wad of cash and identification to prove it.

Meanwhile the white car, with two others still inside, parked on nearby Gay Lane.

Mr. Garcia was soon seen to hop on his bike, headed north in the direction of his house. The car, now with four occupants, tried to follow, police said, but, unfamiliar with the roads, lost him.

Fifteen or 20 minutes later the victim met up with the two men again on North Main Street, this time carrying a green knapsack. As police watched, he showed them the cash and jewelry inside.

Car Takes Off

"There was a lot of hugging going on," Sergeant Larsen said, and then the three walked back to CVS. The Chrysler headed that way, too.

In front of the drugstore, one of the men handed Mr. Garcia a piece of paper - purportedly a prescription to be filled - and, he told police, offered to hold his knapsack while he went inside.

As soon as he entered the store, the two men and the others in the car took off. Police said they drove down the wrong side of Pantigo Road and through the empty parking lot of the former Mark R. Buick dealership to avoid a red traffic light.

Sergeant Larsen, watching all the while, made a quick U-turn and followed, while Officer Lester went into CVS. A Spanish-speaking employee of the drugstore helped the officer explain to Mr. Garcia what had just happened.

Meanwhile, the driver of the Chrysler, later identified as Jose Ramon Oliva Garcia of Elmhurst, 39, looked through his rear-view mirror and apparently realized he was being followed. Unexpectedly, he stopped the car on North Main Street, and Mr. Torres got out. He was immediately arrested.

Car Kept Going

The other three in the Chrysler, perhaps hoping police would be satisfied with this sacrifice, did not wait. The car headed up Cedar Street and turned left onto Stephen Hand's Path, only to be stopped by another officer near Bull Path.

There, Jose Garcia and his passenger and girlfriend, Katherine Gonzalez, 37, of Corona, were taken into custody.

Somewhere between North Main Street and Stephen Hand's Path, according to police, the third person in the car got out and fled, leaving a yellow polo shirt he had been wearing earlier behind. The man, described as six feet tall and possibly Oriental or Hawaiian, remained at large as of press time.

Elmer Guzman Garcia's knapsack, filled with $2,020 in cash and $750 worth of gold jewelry, was found on the side of the road by Bull Path.

Mr. Torres, Jose Garcia, and Ms. Gonzalez were each charged with fourth-degree grand larceny and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property, felonies, and fraudulent accosting, a misdemeanor. The man who fled faces the same charges. Police said it was unlikely he is still in the area.

High Bail Set

Mr. Torres, who turned out to be wanted by New York City police on two charges, third-degree grand larceny and armed robbery, was additionally charged with third-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, a misdemeanor. Police said he gave them a false Texas identification that named him Alberto Martinez. His real identity was discovered through a fingerprint check.

Jose Garcia was additionally charged with second-degree aggravated unlicensed driving; police said he was driving with a suspended license.

Bail was set Saturday in East Hampton Town Justice Court for all three: at $22,500 for Ms. Gonzalez, who police said was born in Mexico and came to this country just eight days before her arrest; at $20,000 for Mr. Torres, who police said is also Mexican, and at $20,500 for Jose Garcia, who police said is Colombian.

As of press time all three remained in either the Riverhead or Yaphank county jail in lieu of bail.

Not As Lucky

A woman who fell for a similar scam in the village in March was not as lucky as Elmer Guzman Garcia. Rosa Zhagui was cheated out of $1,950 in cash and $500 worth of jewelry. No one was ever arrested in that incident.

Police said they do not believe the people arrested last week had any connection to the March incident.

Police were, however, working with Riverhead Town police this week to determine whether there is a connection between Friday's incident and a similar one in Riverhead several weeks ago.

Assault Charge

In other arrests in the village, an East Hampton man was charged with assaulting his former girlfriend; police said he punched her in the mouth and tried to strangle her.

Henry O. Roa-Posso, 35, was pick ed up at his Springs-Fireplace Road residence shortly after midnight last Thursday and charged with second-degree burglary, a felony, as well as third-degree assault, a misdemeanor.

Police said Lupe Abuchaibe had come to headquarters that night and told them Mr. Roa-Posso had illegally entered her King Street house and punched her, giving her a split lip.

She struggled with him as he tried to strangle her with a clothing hangar, Ms. Abuchaibe told police, who said, however, that they could find no marks on her neck.

Mr. Roa-Posso was arraigned Friday morning. As of Tuesday he remained in the county jail in Yaphank in lieu of $10,000 bail.

Making Graffiti

A youth was charged Aug. 26 with making graffiti, a misdemeanor, in connection with the scrawling of the words "I farted" on a public bench in July. Police said Michael H. Fabrizio, 17, of Manor Lane, Springs, "acted in concert" with 16-year-old David O'Shea of East Hampton, who was charged earlier in August, with putting the graffiti on a teak bench on Main Street.

The Fabrizio youth was released on his own recognizance after arraignment.

An East Hampton man was arrested on a bench warrant at East Hampton Town Justice Court last Thursday for failing to appear at an earlier court date. Bradley W. Gaines, 37, of Town Lane is facing charges of petty larceny and fifth-degree criminal possession of stolen property.

Mr. Gaines was released on his own recognizance with a new court date.

On Aug. 27, Sag Harbor Village police picked up Matthew Leggard, 21, of Harrison Street, Sag Harbor, on a Southampton Town Justice Court warrant. Police said he was wanted on a charge of criminal possession of stolen property. He was held for arraignment the next morning.

Heed The Warning

Amagansett

September 1, 1997

Dear Mrs. Rattray,

I received the following letter from an old friend, who asked me to forward it on to you. Hope you had a pleasant summer.

Sincerely,

ALEC BALDWIN

The letter from Mr. Baldwin's "friend" follows. Ed.

To The Editor:

Perhaps you have been wondering what happened to me. Many have asked "Where you been, Milo?" And "Why no letters in The Star for so long?" Because I've been cooling off for so long, that's why. After Clinton and his cronies were elected, I was so distraught, I left the country. I went to several continents. I thought of bringing a load of heroin or cocaine back into the country with me to unleash on an unsuspecting inner-city population of bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, welfare cheats who are leaching the blood out of this great country. Instead, however, I return to the East End to confront my demons head on, and thus the coming local election.

Hear my warning and hear it now! You have been warned, so heed the warning. Those who do not heed the warning will know my terrible wrath and God-like vengeance! Don't piss me off! Or the body count will reach heights that will make Cambodia look like a dodgeball game.

Anyone in town government is not to be trusted. Make that anyone in town government is scum. Make that puke. No, vomit. No, anyone in town government should be shot. And hung. After violent torture. Roar! Roar! Hear my wrath, East Hampton. I will personally get in the face of anyone who does not heed me. Attention all candidates! Call me. I will rate you and handicap you and spiritually advise you. If you don't call, you die. You won't get a table at a restaurant in Montauk; you won't get a tow truck, a Band-Aid at a first-aid station. You won't get extra cheese on a pizza. You will be cut off, and you will shrivel up and die. Roar! Hear my warning!! Don't piss me off!!

Anybody makes a move without checking with me, you die. Your whole family too! Roar! Now come out clean. No kidney punches. Let's settle this election thing like men. (Any women try to vote, they die.) Roar! Ding, ding! There's the bell.

MILO A. WILDHEAD

Letter Home From Boynton Beach

August 28, 1997

Dear Editor,

On Oct. 16, 1940, some 16 million young American men between the ages of 21 and 35 signed up for the military draft. In the preceding months of 1940, a number of local men, rather than be drafted into the Army, enlisted in the branches of service of their choice. A few, after they had signed up in the October draft, opted to serve for a year, and, upon completion, be placed in the inactive reserve. Some served a year and had been home for only a week when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. In a matter of a few weeks, they were back on active duty.

Among the local men who volunteered for the one-year program were Charlie Keyes, Frank Mullane, and Hunt Smith. With others from nearby communities, they reported to the Southampton railroad station. When they arrived, a large crowd, entertained by a high school band playing John Phillips Sousa marches, was prepared to give them a resounding departure. Years later, Charlie recalled that one would have thought we had already won the war, as euphoria enveloped the crowd.

They boarded the train, which took them to Patchogue, and from there they went to Camp Upton. Upon arrival at Upton, they received a somewhat less enthusiastic reception. They were lined up by an acting corporal and were marched through mud to some drafty looking tents, where they placed their belongings on very narrow and rather uncomfortable looking cots. As Charlie later said, "The honeymoon ended very abruptly." Frank Mullane and Hunt Smith became enamored with Army life and made a career of it. Charlie, though, returned to East Hampton and his beloved Eleanor.

Quite a few young men, upon completing high school entered the service in the '30s, because there wasn't any employment for them in the civilian world. Times were tough, and in the armed forces they would receive $21 a month, food, shelter, and clothing.

Four early enlistees in the U.S. Army were Raymond Hamilton, Carl Hettiger, Melvin Hulse, and William Schellinger. After the completion of their training, each one eventually was assigned to the First Infantry Division, the Big Red One. They landed in North Africa in November 1942, Sicily in 1943, and on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. In the North African campaign, Hulse received a battlefield commission.

After the end of hostilities in May 1945, they returned home. Ray Hamilton married Helen Talmage and made his home in East Hampton. While in the service, Billy Schellinger married a Connecticut girl and subsequently made his home in the Nutmeg State. Melvin Hulse and Carl Hettiger returned to the service to make a career of it. When his Army days were over, Melvin retired as a full colonel. For Carl, though, he was less fortunate. When he returned to pursue his Army career, he was assigned to the 24th Infantry Division, which was stationed in Japan.

While Carl was in Japan, the Korean War broke out, and the 24th Division was sent to Korea. After that conflict ended, he returned home. I saw him one afternoon and had quite a long chat with him. During our conversation, he told me that he had had a physical examination and the result was not favorable, as he had leukemia, with about a year to live.

He said to me, "I have come home to die. And to think of all the combat I have experienced, there wasn't a bullet or a shell that had my name on it, and I will die from a disease of which a great deal is not known."

Somewhat amazing is how the four of them survived the many battles and skirmishes they participated in. If a person wants to live a long life, and most do, the infantry in wartime is no place to be. Life expectancy there is rather short, as statistics show.

In the Solomon Islands area of the Southwest Pacific, two young East Hampton sailors were lost when their ships were sunk. In November 1942, Chief Petty Officer Andrew Gilbride, a seven-year veteran, went down with all but a few of his shipmates, after the light cruiser Juneau was torpedoed. Among those lost were the five Sullivan brothers, for whom a destroyer was later named.

Another young man lost in the Solomon Islands area was Rob Woodward when his ship, the U.S.S. Quincy, was sunk in the Battle of Savo Island, in August 1942. Many naval vessels, both American and Japanese, were sunk in that area, and it became known as Iron Bottom Sound.

In the battle of Iwo Jima, Marines Felix Dominy and Wilmot Petty were killed in action in the bloody conflict. Wilmot had first experienced combat in the August 1942 invasion of Guadalcanal. A close boyhood friend of mine, Roy Hulse, Melvin's older brother, was a marine on Iwo Jima, and afterward often wondered how he ever survived.

Shot down over Europe were Ray Clark and Bert Olsen, both aerial gunners. Killed a short time later after they landed in Normandy were infantrymen Johnny Byrnes and Linwood English. Other infantrymen killed in action were Randolph Lester, William Raynor, and Vincent Tarazavich, who lost their lives in the German Ardennes offensive, which is more commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge.

There was another young East Hampton soldier, who for heroism under fire was awarded the Silver Star, the United States Army's third highest award for gallantry in action. Bobby Hudson was a nice, quiet kid, and during most of his school days his mother walked him each day to and from school. He was called a sissy by some of the thoughtless students, and had he been struck down, he would have arisen and offered his other cheek. Bobby was a religious kid and considered studying for the priesthood. After high school graduation, he entered Fordham, and in his junior year he was drafted into the Army. Rather than serve in a combat unit, he chose to serve in the Medical Corps, where he could render aid and comfort to the wounded. After the completion of his medical corps training, he was assigned to a ground force unit.

In Germany, at the risk of his own life, he treated and rescued some wounded GIs who were lying in an exposed area. For that heroic action under fire, he was awarded the Silver Star. A very short time later, while administering aid to the wounded, he himself was wounded by enemy fire, and on the following day he died in a U.S. Army hospital in Belgium. Bobby must have been a very brave young man, and one wonders whether the ones who called him "Sissy" would have been as courageous.

In the Town of East Hampton, there were nearly 40 young people who lost their lives while serving in the armed forces. Air crashes took the lives of Vincent Barsdis, Jimmy Corwin, Jack Dakers, Halsey Dayton, Bruce Ryan, and Adam Thompson. In the merchant marine, David Field and Tony Marasca were lost. Others died of disease and wounds in a war that encompassed the world. Pray God that we never have another.

Victor Cote was a rugged young high school kid who enjoyed playing football and wrestling for the Maroon and Gray. After graduation, he, like a number of his age around the country, enlisted in the service. On the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Victor was on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. He was among those Americans who surrendered, survived the Bataan Death March, and were imprisoned in Japan. Victor withstood the privations and tortures of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and was among those fortunate Allied servicemen who were liberated in 1945.

Herbie Byrnes, who grew up on Osborne Lane, was an aerial gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, assigned to the Eighth Air Force, based in England. On his last and 25th mission, his aircraft was shot down over the continent. Somehow the crew managed to land safely behind Allied lines, but it took some time before Herbie made it back to his base in England. A number of years later, after a Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting, he told me of his last mission.

He asked me, "Do you remember those days, before the war, when we went gunning down on Sammy's Beach and had a great time shooting at those poor coots, as they flew over the beach? Well, let me tell you something. When you are up in an airplane, flying over enemy territory, and those guys on the ground, behind those 88s are shooting at you, you are the coots, and it's not so much fun."

Among the young men from the Town of East Hampton who served in the Armed Forces in World War II, there were 31 Kings, 28 Bennetts, and 24 Millers. I wonder how many of those old East Hampton names are left in town?

When the GIs came home, they found a number of changes in the old town. The Montauk fishing village was gone, having been replaced by a naval installation. Further east, near the Lighthouse, there was an army installation which was constructed to resemble a New England hamlet, with its clapboard sided buildings. It was named Camp Hero.

At the Maidstone Club, only nine holes remained of the old 18-hole East Course. At Amagansett, the nine-hole golf course on Amagansett-Springs Road had been plowed up and turned into potato fields.

On the lighter side, the original Jungle Pete's in Springs had burned down and was replaced by a building moved from Three Mile Harbor Road. The old Candy Kitchen on Main Street next to White's Drugstore was now the headquarters building of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The Continental, located in the LeRoy Edwards building, also on Main Street, was now the Blue Goose. It would later be Gene Labbat's cozy oasis, Chez Labbat. Down on Three Mile Harbor Road, Palma's Tavern, with its bowling alleys, was now owned by Peter Fedi.

The greatest change, however, was that unemployment, as we knew it in the 1930s, no longer existed, as work of all kinds was available to any young man. Building contractors hired veterans to learn building trades, and they were taught by the best teachers available, the old-time craftsmen who knew every phase of their craft. Most of those old-timers enjoyed passing their knowledge on to the young apprentices.

There was a scarcity of automobiles because it would take some time for the plants to change from war production to peacetime operation. A few GIs had some money, and one of their peacetime dreams was to own a new car. Local automobile mechanics did an excellent job keeping pre-war cars on the road. Lumberyards had difficulty obtaining lumber and building materials for the local contractors, as the demand for new homes and structures was greater than it had been since the building boom of the 1920s.

By 1948, the town was experiencing an economic boom, as new businesses were opening all over town, and the construction of new homes kept the contractors very busy. The 300th anniversary of the founding of East Hampton was commemorated that summer, and the pageant, held on the Village Green, climaxed the summer's activities. It, indeed, was a memorable year.

As a whole, most everything was inexpensive. For example, a group could rent a gallery in Guild Hall for an evening at a cost of $5, and the fee for the use of the kitchen was $1. The wage for union carpenters was $2.10 an hour, and No. 1 grade red cedar shingles were $11.50 per square. To build a house was not all that expensive, and, as times were good, many young people were building them. Interest rates on home mortgages were 4 1/2 percent. Truly, it was a great time to be alive.

On the local sports scene, East Hampton and Amagansett belonged to the newly created Sunrise League that played baseball on Sundays. After the war, the Village of East Hampton passed an ordinance that allowed baseball to be played on Sundays at the Herrick Playground. The Amagansett Fire Department sponsored the Amagansett team that was managed by Arthur Ryan. In some ways, they reminded the older fans of the old Brooklyn Robins when they were managed by Wilbert Robinson. They played their home games on the field where the American Legion building is located today.

Left field was on an incline, and the field itself left much to be desired. Ground balls took crazy hops, and sometimes the fielders stumbled over the rough terrain as they sped after fly balls. Like the Brooklyns of old, their fans were true-blue.

The rivalry between Amagansett and East Hampton was keen, similar to the old New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers rivalry. The two teams that were fighting for first place, most of the time were the Bridgehampton White Eagles and the Bridgehampton Blue Sox. Their's, too, was a keen rivalry. Among other teams in the league were Sag Harbor and Southampton. The old-time fans who followed town team baseball in the 1920 were delighted to see local baseball make a comeback. After a few years had elapsed, the enthusiasm wore off, and town team ball simply faded away.

(To Be Continued)

Sincerely,

NORTON (BUCKET ) DANIELS

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

Please include your full name, address and daytime telephone number for purposes of verification.

A month ago it looked as if the battle to get a real estate transfer tax on the November ballot in East Hampton Town had been won. But by yesterday afternoon the fight for the legislation, which could raise $20 million for open space preservation over 10 years, seemed ready to continue to the bitter end.

If Gov. George E. Pataki does not sign the legislation by tomorrow, a proposal to pay for open space purchases with funds gathered from a 2-percent tax on higher priced real estate sales will not make it onto the East Hampton ballot this year.

To get on the ballot, the local law on the transfer tax must be filed with the Secretary of State tomorrow.

Delivery Glitch?

The State Senate and Assembly approved enabling legislation weeks ago and the East Hampton Town Board is unanimous in support of the plan, but the Governor's office is apparently claiming the legislation was never delivered for him to look over. Supervisor Cathy Lester said the Governor's office requested a copy of East Hampton Town's Open Space Plan in connection with the transfer tax legislation last Thursday.

A representative from the office of Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli, who supported the bill along with Assemblyman Fred W. Theile Jr. and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, hand delivered a copy of the legislation to the Governor's office yesterday.

In anticipation of Governor Pata ki's signature, the East Hampton Town Board adopted a local law on the 2-percent transfer tax last Thursday, believing his approval would be forthcoming. Now, board members are not so sure.

Calls to the Governor's press office were not returned by press time.

Realtors Lobbied

A 2-percent real estate transfer tax to fund open space acquisitions was first proposed more than a decade ago, but was shot down by the State Legislature year after year. This year, with a coalition of real estate brokers, builders, business persons, conservation groups, Republicans, and Democrats in local and state government behind the transfer tax, it finally won passage in the State Legislature.

While a number of local realtors supported the transfer tax, the powerful State Board of Realtors has continued to lobby against it, claiming the 2-percent surcharge will deter buyers and questioning whether a similar tax could be used for general municipal projects as well.

If the Governor doesn't sign the legislation, some think it will be because he was won over by the realtors' arguments against it.

Price Cap

The tax, which would be paid by the buyer, would affect sales of improved property over $250,000 and unimproved land over $100,000. Only the portion of the price that exceeds those caps is to be taxed. So, for example, if a house sells for $278,000, the buyer will be required to pay 2 percent of $28,000 into a community preservation fund. That $560 surcharge will, in turn, be tax-deductible.

If East Hampton voters do get to cast their ballots on the measure and if they approve it as local lawmakers are confident they will, the law would go into effect on March 1, 1998, and would sunset on Dec. 31, 2008.

The proposal has been gathering momentum for a number of years and probably passed in the Legislature this year because it had the backing of some of those who have traditionally opposed such a measure - the real estate and building industries.

Industry Divided

"We've had our disagreements. We support the preservation of open space," Michael DeSario said at a public hearing on the law last Thursday, "but not all of us are supportive of the transfer tax."

Mr. DeSario, a broker with Cook Pony Farm Real Estate in East Hampton, is on the board of directors of the Hamptons and North Fork Realty Association. He had several long discussions with brokers in other communities with transfer taxes before deciding to support this bill. "It's well crafted in that, for it to have passed, the community has to have shown a commitment to preservation," he said.

Last November 71 percent of East Hampton voters approved a $5 million open space bond issue. Supporters of the transfer tax often point out that residents have again and again supported spending for preservation.

Floated And Sank

The hearing last Thursday was more a stage for congratulatory comments than a heated debate on the transfer tax. Several supporters who had been on the front lines of the effort - Robert DeLuca of the Group for the South Fork and Richard Amper and Edwin M. (Buzz) Schwenk of East End Forever and the East End Land Bank Coalition commended the Town Board for working together, across party lines, so effectively.

"East Hampton has continued to set the standards for other towns to follow," said Mr. DeLuca, president of the Bridgehampton-based conservation group, which has members in East Hampton and Southampton Towns. He praised the board for working so ferverishly on a bill that sometimes "floated and sank in the same day."

"It's a tremendously responsible action," Mr. Amper said. "No one is making political hay about this." While some argue that limiting development limits the tax revenue for town services, Mr. Amper said that the cost to provide needed services when development levels increase is greater than the increase in tax revenue.

Fear Land Squeeze

"The South Fork is outdistancing the Town of Brookhaven every week in building permits issued and Brookhaven is the biggest town in the county," Mr. Schwenk added.

East End Forever

"If we had $450 million we might be able to maintain the landscape and preserve the quality of life we enjoy now," said Stuart Lowrie of the Nature Conservancy, pointing to the need to raise funds through more than just bonds.

Brokers in favor of the tax have said that further preservation efforts will increase the value of land, but a few at the hearing worried that higher prices will have a deplete affordable housing and land in a town that already has a serious shortage of both.

Joseph Kelley of Montauk, a long-time watcher of town government, said that in setting properties aside for open space there would be less and less available when the younger generations wanted to build homes of their own. He cautioned the board not to depend too much on the "congratulatory comments" at the hearing.

Who Will Benefit

"Who is this land going to benefit?" June Laufer of East Hampton asked. "The Town Board has steered policy toward the summer people and toward the rich. The service people are being squeezed out."

Town Board members countered that the transfer tax specifically contained a provision to exempt affordable housing and affordable land. As for taxing higher priced real estate sal es, Councilman Thomas Knobel said "for $350,000 it's fair to expect a $2,000 donation for a better East Hampton."

"It's the right thing to do," East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach said. The village completed its own open space plan this spring and would like the town to consider using money from the community preservation fund to help purchase some of its priority parcels.

Village's Stake

Real estate sales in the village will also be subject to the 2-percent surcharge, and Mayor Rickenbach suggested an intermunicipal agreement to assure that the village shares in the proceeds of the tax.

He asked that an acquisition plan required as part of the legislation include properties from the Village Open Space Plan, that the seven-member advisory board charged with overseeing open space purchases include someone from the village, and that the village or a mutually agreed upon third party manage any acquisitions within the village.

According to the Mayor, real estate sales in East Hampton Village over the past year accounted for 38 percent of the total sales in the Town of East Hampton; the village represents 20 percent of the total taxable value of the town. Mayor Rickenbach suggested a formula for spending from the community preservation fund be worked out based on these figures.

First, The Governor

The Town Board still has its fingers crossed that the Governor will put his pen to the legislation. Board members will rescind their approval of the local law, which was conditional on Governor Pataki's signature, at a special meeting today at 2 p.m. in the Town Hall conference room, and will pass a second resolution approving the local law only if the Governor signs the legislation.

"The proper order of things would be for the Governor to sign the legislation then for the town to act," Assemblyman Thiele said yesterday. Down the line, "you want to avoid the argument that the Town Board didn't have the authority to enact the local law." But, he added, "the bottom line is, if the Governor doesn't sign it, there's not going to be a referendum anyway."

However, after speaking with the Governor's office yesterday afternoon, Assemblyman Thiele said he was optimistic the Governor would sign the legislation on time.

Other Business

In other recent business, the Town Board:

Appointed Eileen Roman Catalano of Accabonac Road to the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee for the rest of the year.

Appointed Peter Garnham to fill a vacant seat on the Town Open Space Committee, on the recommendation of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee.

Retained Cameron Engineering to oversee the modifications to the chemical storage tanks at the town scavenger waste treatment plant on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton. The work will be done by the Deer Park company Fenley and Nicols Environmental. Cameron Engineering prepared a contract, plans, specifications, and bid documents on the project for the town.

Authorized additional payments to consultants on two recently completed studies. Abeles, Preiss, and Shapiro of New York, and Land Ethics of Annapolis, Md., the groups that conducted the Amagansett Corridor Study, exceeded the $55,000 budget by $1,220.42. The transportation component of the Town Comprehensive Plan, prepared by L.K. McLean and Associates of Brookhaven, will cost the town $9,120 more than the anticipated $136,600.

Denied mobile home permits to Andrew Ingraham for his Lazy Point Trailer Park on Merrill's Road, and to Theresa Streibel for the Three Mile Harbor Trailer Park. Both have been the subject of tenants' complaints.

On Monday night, the tail end of Labor Day, police floodlights illuminated the eastern end of the Napeague stretch where the new and old Montauk Highways meet. Five people had been injured there in a serious motor vehicle accident, including the driver and passenger of a 1997 Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Most seriously injured in the 8 p.m. crash was the motorcycle passenger, Audrey Russell, 29, who police described as incoherent and bleeding severely from head wounds, though conscious, when help arrived. On Tuesday she was listed in stable condition with a fractured skull at Stony Brook University Medical Center, where she was transferred Monday night upon her arrival at Southampton Hospital.

Head-On Crash

The driver of the Harley, Mark B. Austin, 32, of New York City was in fair condition at Southampton Hospital as of Tuesday afternoon. Police said he suffered multiple leg fractures as well as lacerations. Both he and Ms. Russell were wearing helmets, which saved their lives, "no question about it," according to Capt. Todd Sarris of the East Hampton Town Police.

A number of persons were witness to the accident, in which a blue Honda driven by Hubert Lewis Jr., 33, of the Bronx hit the motorcycle head-on. "It was a horrible thing to see," said one, Laura Jensen of Brook hav en.

According to police, Mr. Lewis, westbound, stopped on Old Montauk Highway at its intersection with Route 27 before striking the brand-new motorcycle, which was headed east from 27 onto the new highway. Mr. Lewis was ticketed for allegedly failing to yield the right of way and driving without a license.

Mrs. Jensen was driving west when the motorcycle passed her. She glanced in her rear-view mirror, she told The Star, and saw the Honda pull "right out" in front of it.

"Oh my God, they got hit," she exclaimed to her husband. The couple, who had spent the holiday weekend in Montauk, stopped, and Mrs. Jensen grabbed a towel and pajamas from her bag to put over Ms. Russell.

Kept Talking

"She was bleeding a lot," said Mrs. Jensen, a clinical nurse assistant at the Veterans Home in Stony Brook. She talked to Ms. Russell as much as she could, she said, trying to keep her conscious.

Mr. Lewis and two of his passengers, Anita Nelson and Siri Nelson, complained of pain and were also taken to Southampton Hospital, which released them after treatment. The hospital had no record of another passenger, Rose Nelson.

In all, seven members of the East Hampton Town Police Department, Amagansett Fire Department volunteers, and four Montauk and Amagansett ambulances responded to the collision. Late holiday traffic on Napeague was stalled for about an hour.

No alcohol or drugs were involved in the accident, police said. Both vehicles were impounded for safety checks.

Teenager Injured

Two nights earlier on Napeague, a 16-year-old girl crossing Montauk Highway in front of Cyril's Fish House was struck and seriously injured by an eastbound limousine. The accident occurred just before 10:20 p.m., when Jacklyn Greenmann of Summit, N.J., stepped onto the highway to cross over to Navahoe Lane opposite.

Brendan Fay of East Moriches, a driver for Spotlite Limousine of Lake Grove, told police the girl began to cross, then stopped on the double yellow line. He said he let up on the gas and stepped on the brake. Just as he got within 10 feet of the teenager, he said, she stepped out in front of the car. Witnesses said the girl was holding a glass in her hand, but police had no information on what might have been in it.

Though Mr. Fay attempted to swerve, he told police, the front driver's-side corner of the limousine struck the 16-year-old.

She was rushed to Southampton Hospital with suspected internal injuries, and spent two nights there before being discharged on Monday.

When he was in high school Victor Vieira, the chef at Savanna's, wanted to be an auto mechanic, but a providential glitch led him from automotive pursuits to culinary ones. Shop class was full and he ended up learning to use a whisk instead of a wrench.

Now the executive chef at a popular Southampton restaurant that draws hundreds of diners each week, Mr. Vieira lives, breathes, and dreams food.

"I fell in love with cooking," he said. So much so, that in his sleep after a 14-hour day in the kitchen, he continues to cook up new dishes, possible specials for next week's dinner menu, a fresh way of doing an old standard, an innovative combination of herbs and spices.

"In this business, you've got to be creative, to keep coming up with new ideas, keep changing," he said.

Perhaps because of this, the chef is reluctant to classify his cuisine. "A lot of people like to say it's Northern Italian. I hate the word nouveau. It's so many different things - modern American, Portuguese . . ."

He himself is of Portuguese ancestry, and grew up in New Bedford, Mass., which has a large Portuguese community. He admits, however, that his knowledge of his ancestral cuisine is more visceral than formal. To Mr. Vieira, Portuguese means a lot of grilling, very low fats, fresh fish, and light sauces.

"My mother just threw everything together in a pot."

Aside from his high-school cooking classes, the chef has learned by watching, listening, and doing. He teaches the same way. "I never use recipes, I can't stand recipes. I show and tell."

Each Thursday this summer, weather permitting, he's offered intimate cooking classes in a canvas-topped dining area behind the restaurant. On a portable stove Mr. Vieira demonstrates preparation of a four-course meal, discusses how to "marry wines" with the food, then goes in to Savanna's kitchen and prepares the meal for the class to sample.

On a recent Friday afternoon, before the weekend rush began, he sat at an outdoor table in a surprising state of calm. That night, he would probably serve upward of 300 dinners, and if his summer track record played out, 99 percent of those he cooked for would walk away content, with another reservation in the book.

"When people enjoy it, that's a great feeling; it's incredible," Mr. Vieira said. "I've been lucky."

He only mentions as an afterthought that he's worked six nights a week almost since March, when the restaurant reopened under new ownership. He makes the desserts, oversees the butchering of meats and the baking of bread, and, when he's not in front of the oven or stove, tends a small herb and vegetable garden he planted on the restaurant property. Earlier this year there were blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries to be picked; now there are beans and tomatoes.

But though the chef might be slightly frayed at the edges, he hardly seems worn down. "I can't get enough of it. It's not even the money. There's no money in this business."

"Some older chefs talk a lot about the rules, said Mr. Vieira. "I think if people are enjoying it, you're doing it right."

He wears a bandanna in the kitchen, because, he said, "I'm too off-the-wall to wear a chef's hat. It's my world. I make the rules," he said.

Both he and the owner of Savanna's have been surprised at the client list the restaurant developed this year. But Mr. Vieira said that "we've given the New Yorkers a taste of Savanna's, now we want to give the locals a taste."

Savanna's will be open through the winter, with prices brought down a bit, a slight change of menu, and more frequent specials to encourage year-round diners to give the spot a try.

"We'll see. What do they say? If you build it, they will come. If I cook it, they will eat."

Victor Vieira's Lobster Cakes

Ingredients:

(Serves two.)

1 medium red pepper, diced fine

1 medium Spanish onion, diced fine

2 cloves garlic, diced fine

2 whole eggs

4 Tbsp. mayonnaise

2 Tbsp. mustard

3 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 cup bread crumbs

1 lb. lobster meat, chopped fine

Salt and pepper

In a large bowl add all ingredients except bread crumbs. Mix well. Mix in bread crumbs. Let stand for about 30 minutes. Form two-ounce cakes. Pan-sear until golden brown on both sides. Remove from plate and garnish with spicy remoulade.

Spicy Remoulade

Ingredients:

(Makes eight ounces.)

6 oz. Hellmann's mayonnaise

2 oz. capers, finely chopped

1 oz. lemon juice

2 oz. ketchup

1 oz. cayenne pepper

Salt and black pepper to taste

Mix together. Serve over lobster cakes.

The French have a word, d‚paysant, to describe the sort of trip - not necessarily very far away - that refreshes the spirit and makes you feel as if you have gone to a foreign country.

A voyage to Shelter Island in the middle of August-in-the-Hamptons is a step in the right direction, but a visit to Sunset Beach - an outdoor lotus-eatery on the island's graceful Crescent Beach - will take you miles away to some speck of an island in the Caribbean.

The open-air restaurant is a tentlike creation on top of a building at the water's edge. A bar and two dining rooms rise in three steps around the trunk and branches of a huge tree and the place is lit by strings of lanterns. The lively if rather insistent music has a Latin flavor, but it segued into Billie Holiday as the evening mellowed.

Laid-Back Caribbean

The clock here is definitely on Caribbean time - our reservation was for 7:45 but we waited at the bar level until nearly 8:30 before being seated.

That was okay, we were in a good mood (this should be a prerequisite for dining here), we had all the time in the world, and the view was spectacular.

The maitre d'hotel comes straight from five years at Odeon in Manhattan, which maybe accounts for some of the place's laid-back, downtown style.

As dusk turned to night and the sunset faded, the stars were matched by a half-moon of lights twinkling from the North Fork.

Prices: Lower Than Local

The wine list is small but well-chosen and reasonably priced. We chose the cheapest white wine on the list, a Les Chanvilles Macon-Villages. It was $18 and very good, which augured well for the other choices.

Prices at Sunset Beach are generally lower than equivalent South Fork prices; appetizers are from $7 to $12 and entrees from $17 to $24.

A mixed green salad with herbs was large, fresh, and carefully dressed but the slices of melon which accompanied prosciutto were a disappointment, particularly as good melons are one of the joys of the end of August.

Warm crabmeat served with mustard crisps was an interesting and unusual start to a meal, while the smoked salmon with candied orange creme fraiche was fabulous.

Ze Chicken? Non

Maybe because it was the end of a frantically busy season, the waiters, many of whom were French, were a little distracted. (This was mitigated by the fact that they were adorably charming and cute beyond belief.)

One in particular, who looked like a young Gerard Philipe, seemed to be present more in substance than in spirit. He arrived at our table with four entrees. "Ze shrimp," he said with a flourish. Yes, that was right. "Ze salmon!" No, no one ordered that. "Ze chicken?" No, sorry.

He then stood there looking completely baffled until we suggested it was probably an order for another table. "Aah!" he said in delight, and wandered off in search of a table with hungry-looking people at it.

Island Asparagus

Ze shrimp - actually chilled tiger prawns with pickled cucumber and avocado - were fine when we finally obtained our allocation, but upon consideration would have been better as an appetizer, cold entrees always being somewhat of a letdown.

(Gerard Philipe passed our table five minutes later, still clutching a plate of salmon, glancing from right to left with an air of desperation.)

Far more exciting was the loin of veal with mushroom fricasee, which was tender and smokily grilled. The sweet, intensely flavored asparagus that accompanied it tasted like the ones I remember from my youth - they were so different from supermarket asparagus that I believe they must have come from some Shelter Island garden.

First-Rate Vacation

The roast duck came with a plum compote and was tender and moist with crackling skin, its fat evaporated away until all that was left was a brittle shell of flavor. A soy-glazed rare tuna with sweet onion puree was also first-rate.

Most of the desserts having run out, we tried just two. They were beautifully presented, as were all the dishes, but the chocolate mousse did not have enough chocolate flavor and the peach crisp wasn't.

It says a great deal about the charm of Sunset Beach that, in spite of a three-quarters-of-an-hour wait for a table and an entire waitstaff who might have mistakenly ingested Maui wowie for lunch, our mood went from good to better to elated. The evening really was a vacation.

Now The Bad News

And now the bad news: We learned as we were leaving that on Labor Day Sunset Beach would close for the season - presumably the whole tented aerie will be dismantled and put away until spring.

But I suggest you take your 1998 diary, pick a sunny day in August when you know you'll have had it up to here with Hamptomania, and mark it "Escape to Shelter Island to d‚pays‚ at the Sunset Beach."

To be at the benefit party held on Saturday night for Robert Wilson's Watermill Center was to be in a Fellini movie, but without the maestro there to call "Cut!"

The unfinished three-story building, which used to be a Western Union laboratory, is impressive by daylight - but by night, transformed by candles and floodlighting, it was deliciously surreal: an unfinished carapace of some strange architectural insect.

The center was founded by Mr. Wilson in 1992 as an international facility for new work in the arts. Over 100 students have participated in summer projects, working with established professionals such as Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Philip Glass, Isabelle Huppert, Miranda Richardson, Dominique Sanda, and Tom Waits.

Three Spaces

Productions developed at the facility have included "Hamlet: A Monologue," "Time Rocker," and the Edinburgh Festival production of "Orlando."

Future productions include a project about the new millennium with David Bowie, Susan Sontag's adaptation of Ibsen's "Lady From the Sea," and a production of Schubert's "Winterreise" with Jessye Norman, who spoke at the benefit.

The evening might be described in three spaces: the building itself, the concert area, and the tent where dinner and an auction were held. And what a tent it was - you could have held the World Series under it in comfort. Not only were there dining tables with chairs in little jackets of white quilted satin, but there were banks of interlocking white divans grouped around oversized white coffee tables where guests could recline like Turkish pashas.

Models To Moguls

The crowd was thick with models, including Lauren Hutton, affluent members of the downtown art scene, a mogul in a suit the color of mint ice cream, an Indian rajah, rich dowagers, and shaven-headed refugees from Greene Street.

With the help of dozens of interns, the building was transformed for the evening - walls covered with draped fabrics, bowls filled with flowers and fruit and vegetables, beautiful objects posed amid the rubble of construction. A candlelit walkway led guests out into the woods to a newly installed, and floodlit, circle of monolithic standing Sumba stones.

The two-story rehearsal room, which on this evening held Mr. Wilson's famous chair collection and a skein of flying ceramic geese, was the largest space, but each room surprised or pleased.

In one room there was nothing but a low oak table massed with lilies, and in another cell-like space were three narrow, white-sheeted beds and a poster of Chairman Mao. One room in the basement was carpeted with gravel, which visitors crossed by way of a path of stepping stones.

But the movie set quality came from the contrast between the evening's luxury and the raw, gutted feel of the unfinished building - doorways hacked through old brick, white gauze hanging against ancient peeling paint, rare artifacts juxtaposed with the raw wood and metal of an unsheetrocked room.

In one place the original telephone exchange still hung from a wall, its plugs and cables covered in dust.

On To The Stage

The building, which will eventually disappear under paint and plaster like an actress beneath her makeup, was an artwork in itself. A flight of stairs down to a bare concrete block room, carpeted half in sod and half in gravel, led to a chair-filled space, between the two wings of the building, which sloped down to the concert stage.

There, against banks of conifers rippling with changing light effects, her songspeak voice androgynously deepened by the microphone and the languid notes of her violin reverberating against the looming walls of the center, Laurie Anderson opened the evening's performance.

The concert ended with a poignant duet between her and Lou Reed. But not before the hallucinatory feeling of the evening had been encapsulated by Mr. Reed, 1960s counterculture incarnate, grinding out songs of the underclasses to an audience that had paid no less than $500 to be there and that, except for a couple of hard-core fans, was visibly unmoved by his performance.

Where Was Nico?

There's a scene in "La Dolce Vita" where Nico (who later sang with Mr. Reed in The Velvet Underground) leads a dancing conga line of drunken revelers through the gardens of a palazzo.

As partygoers on Saturday made their way down the long, wood-chip-covered driveway, having had their car numbers radioed ahead by cell phone, one could almost see her through the dark, leading the fat man in the mint suit, the shaven-headed art tarts, the pearl-laden socialites, the gaunt models, and the freeloading press into the night to the strains of "Sweet Life in the Hamptons."

It could have been a Paul Davis painting: a white clapboard house behind a white picket fence, a man out front sweeping up prunings from his apple tree. Villagers stopping to chat, dogs barking and wagging their tails, and sailboats bobbing in the harbor down the hill. Small-town America distilled into a peaceful and pleasant moment.

In a Paul Davis painting, however, this tableau would seem to have been plucked from the dim attic of our collective unconscious, startlingly heightened, and imbued with symbolic power.

Paul Davis was part of the picture, not its artist. Leaning his broom against the fence, he showed a recent visitor into his cozy Sag Harbor house along with his dogs: two yellow Lab-Afghan mixes, a mother and son.

Striking Visions

"Afghans are known as thieves and escape artists," he said. "They open drawers and steal things. They're sight hounds, and can spot a quarry miles away."

Something of a sight hound himself, Mr. Davis, who last year won the Art Directors League Award and recently received the Prix de Rome, has been scoping out our national scene for the past 40 years.

Who can forget his striking visions of the American heartland, or his often provocative political images? Copies of his famous 1967 "Che Guevera Lives" poster for the Evergreen Review were defaced when they first appeared in subways, and the magazine's offices were fire bombed. The image evolved into a rallying symbol for the counterculture.

Mac The Knife

In 1976, his Mac the Knife theatrical poster for a Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Festival production of "The Threepenny Opera" mesmerized us with the allure of the criminal dandy, while the graffiti-inspired poster for "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" grew to symbolize broken dreams.

Similarly, the artist's mysteriously blissed-out posters and program covers for the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor have become emblematic of drama in the Hamptons.

Politicians, movie stars, cowboys and Indians, family gatherings, jazz musicians, farmers, animals and fields, winter and summer: All have received a kind of definitive homage, a freeze-frame salute from Mr. Davis.

Always There

The elegant wrinkles of Mrs. Phipps of the Saratoga racing family are as vividly rendered as the rather sardonic smile of the family dog Jiggs: lovingly, satirically, but never cruelly, they have been captured for posterity.

"A lot of the paintings I've done seem to have always existed, and all I had to do was paint them," he said. "They look very familiar, and seem to come from a deep core that's accessible because it also exists in other people. I feel like I'm a conduit for some kind of common knowledge."

"As Joe Papp once told me," he said with a laugh, " 'You really have a gift for the obvious.' 'I think I'll take that as a compliment,' I answered."

Mr. Davis's uncanny ability to communicate his heightened vision of things and people springs from a peripatetic childhood, he said.

Parsonage Memories

Born in Oklahoma in 1938, this son of a Methodist minister and a schoolteacher lived in Arkansas from 1940 to 1946 while his father served at various bases as a chaplain in the Army Air Corps.

Back in his home state after the war, he was whisked from parsonage to parsonage and school to school as the church moved its clergy and their families around.

"A lot of my work comes out of that," he said. "Memories of my childhood are much more vivid than my memories of last week, perhaps because we moved so much. And because I came to New York at 17, I think I'm more intensely aware of them than if I'd stayed home, where time might have blurred them."

Personal Past

As he struggled to find his voice as a young artist, rural scenes kept coming to mind. Among many early works, which he did for the Olivetti company, are a series of 12 illustrations for a deluxe edition of Henry David Thoreau's "Walden, or Life in the Woods."

Ecstatic paintings of the pond and its denizens in the changing seasons - a woodchuck on a hummock, a loon, a moonlit frog, the cabin in snow - reveal the animated nature at the heart of his work.

"My paintings are about rural rather than urban America," he said. "They're Tom Sawyer-like, and about the outdoors with people on horseback, out quail-hunting, camping, canoeing, and fishing."

Both his grandfathers were sons of Civil War veterans, homesteaders who lived in sod houses on farms in the Southwest. One of them never even finished school.

Not Talking

"He and his brother just got some horses, rode to Texas, and had wild frontier adventures. Their stories about Indians coming into the house and stealing food, and about the prairie fires in western Kansas, seemed more immediate to me than real life."

At the age of 15 Mr. Davis decided to become a magazine illustrator, and his father arranged for him to study with his hunting buddy, the artist David Santee. The two men would sit for hours in a duck blind without speaking.

"I learned a lot working in his studio," said Mr. Davis. "I was known as a silent type too, and jokes were made about our nonconversations. But I was very comfortable doing watercolors and not talking."

New York Start

Coming to New York, he studied at the School of Visual Arts, at first called the School of Cartoonists and Illustrators, graduating in 1958 after a short tour in the Army. The Abstract Expressionism of Pollock and de Kooning was the rage, and seemed progressive and sophisticated to the 20-year-old. Along with his artist-dreamer nature was a practical side, however; it kept telling him to be an illustrator, not a painter.

"I wanted something down to earth," he said. "I was inspired by the realism of the previous generation, especially of Georgia O'Keeffe, and I knew I'd have to earn a living."

When he was still in school his pragmatic side had prompted him to acquire a portfolio and an agent, and he was lucky enough to sell a few drawings to Playboy before graduating.

Wrong Turn

Thinking smooth sailing lay ahead, he was caught in a spell of foolishness, rushing into marriage with an actress and reverting to childlike drawings inspired by Klee and Miro.

His agent was not amused. "Great, you can do this stuff on your lunch hour," he said.

"Suddenly, everything was a disaster," Mr. Davis remembered. "Be tween us, my wife and I earned $31 a week."

Finally a divorce and a job at the Push Pin Studios, of Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast fame, brought work and stability. His illustrations began to be widely published and exhibited at home and abroad, winning national and international medals and awards.

Target Practice

After seeing a Jasper Johns show, Mr. Davis took to the folk-art tradition of painting targets and, in line with the tradition of shooting two or three discreet bullets at them, threw darts at his.

"I liked the idea of shooting but couldn't keep a gun in my apartment," he explained. "It was an odd practice, but very popular, for some reason."

The '60s and '70s were great years for such magazines as Esquire, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and the like, and Mr. Davis traveled widely on assignments ranging from Greta Garbo, sex at Bard College, and the Kennedys at Hyannis Port, to a tour of France with Fran‡ois Mitterand to create a portrait for his Parti Socialiste poster.

Going On Line

Now, with the decline in magazine circulation, illustration is moving to the Internet. He recently became an Applemaster, one of a group of people, including Richard Dreyfus and Muhammad Ali, who have been chosen to use Apple technology to create special effects for digital storytelling on line and in film.

Mr. Davis met his present wife, the former Myrna Mushkin, at Push Pin Studios. They were married in 1965, moved to Sag Harbor three years later, and have a son, Matthew, who is a television director and editor in Los Angeles. Ms. Davis, a writer and editor, is the executive director of the Art Directors Club.

John, a son by Mr. Davis's first marriage, teaches grade school in Naples, Fla., and has two children.

Contemplating an approaching six-month stay at the American Academy in Rome, the artist said that while having nothing specific to do had always been his dream, it also contained uncertainty.

"I hope I can be open and let whatever comes come," he said. "As Saul Steinberg once remarked, 'If I knew what was going to happen in the studio, I wouldn't bother to go there.' "

"Like that."

The Parrish Museum's "Alfonso Ossorio: Congregations 1959-1969," a series of 25 wall-hung panels encrusted with natural objects of all kinds, is a lavish, spellbinding exhibit of the anti-traditional art of one of the most remarkable artists of our time. It is the first museum exposure of this phase of the artist's work, and the most comprehensive anywhere.

A compilation of sophisticated collages, it is above all a stunning adaptation of the folk arts of embedment and encrustation, in which objects are attached, usually by gluing, to glass bottles, wooden boards, or ceramic jars, in random juxtapositions that suggest new meanings, associations, and ways of seeing.

The show extends the history of collage and assemblage, although Ossorio's way was to disassociate with academic disciplines. He originated new forms and techniques that came directly out of the unconscious, out of a profound not-knowing.

Extensive Vocabulary

He began painting with embedded objects in 1958. His first works, which were shown in an exhibit at the Betty Parsons Gallery, used sand, gravel, and seashells.

Later his vocabulary of materials grew to include mosaic, glass, ceramic dishes and shards, china and porcelain, tortoise and the whole range of seashells, plastic, beads, buttons, costume jewelry, mirror fragments, dice, coins, nails, bolts, screws, bones, eyeballs from taxidermy shops, antlers and horns of all kinds, teeth, handcuffs, chains, driftwood, photographs, glass eyes, doorknobs, skulls, bones, hat and shoe lasts, plastic toys, wheels, nails, and more.

For Ossorio, common things held the gift of surprise. He could look at a safety pin or a toothpick as if he had never seen it before and it was devoid of functional associations - a miracle of object-ness, potent with transformation into new and amazing apparitions.

Beautiful And Banal

Within a year, paint had become no more than a ground in which to embed his superabundance of found objects, for which he hunted and haunted junk shops, garbage dumps, flea markets, and hardware stores.

By 1969, Ossorio was working fast and furiously to make his bizarre and extreme statements of the act of making, just as Jackson Pollock did using paint. Ossorio was far less affected than many of his contemporaries by de Kooning and the other painters of the New York School, whose work, despite their innovations in Abstract Expressionism, was still resonant with the art of the past.

Many works were of major size, such as "Palindrome," some 8 by 6 feet, in which the conglomeration of objects, mounted on a wall panel, become a religious relic, a ritual icon, a piece of folk art - and kindred, as well, to commercial souvenir art such as a Statue of Liberty souvenir. A reliquary for both the beautiful and the banal.

Trusting Impulse

Ossorio chose his objects spontaneously as he pushed and placed them together, not knowing how it would be until the end, truly making it up as he went along.

Trusting chance, random choice, impulse, and blind instinct, he worked, like Pollock, totally in the present, his inexplicable combinations calling forth new expectations, ancient fears, and buried memories. Startling, garish with raw color, blatant, primitive, fetishistic, vibrating with worship and mystery, the aggregation of forms is often disquieting to viewers.

Ossorio himself, who was highly religious and ritualistic, considered them spiritual and spiritualized.

Artistic Influences

Born Alfonso Angel Ossorio y Yangco in 1916 in Manila to a large family of wealth and power, the future artist was sent to some of the best schools in the United States, including Harvard and the Rhode Island School of Design.

The depth of his intellect - he had an astonishingly broad knowledge of philosophy, theology, literature, and psychology - as well as his command of anatomy and physiology (acquired as a medical illustrator in the United States Army during World War II), was to manifest itself throughout his oeuvre as a refined and rich intuitive force informing his search for the primitive.

He was already deeply involved in his experiments, including the multiple imagery that is his signature, when, after his discharge from the Army in the mid '40s, he met Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet, and Clyfford Still in New York City. All of them profoundly influenced him, and he began to collect their work. He was, in fact, one of Pollock's first collectors.

Outsider Art

By the late '40s, Ossorio had firmly rejected the academy and its traditions and begun exploring oil painting, at the same time developing his new techniques of wax resist, ink, and watercolor.

From Dubuffet, he learned about art brut, the art of the insane, and outsider art, the art of people isolated from the culture, uncorrupted by schools, status, money, and power, where the will to art reveals itself as a pure drive out of the unconscious. Later, his collection embraced not only the finest of the avant-garde painters but also outsider art: hobo matchstick constructions and the most ordinary of everyday things made by anonymous folk.

In 1948, Ossorio followed Jackson and Lee to the East End, and soon after bought the Creeks, the East Hampton estate on Georgica Pond where he was to live for over 40 years. He turned it into a magnificent mansion with a renowned arboretum and a legendary collection of objects from many cultures, marking everything he touched with his connoisseurship and lifestyle.

Late Recognition

But his wealth, which gave him the independence to pursue his work as well as the ability to buy the paintings and sculpture of the artists he admired, also worked to his disadvantage.

Although he exhibited with the Betty Parsons Gallery and others, recognition by the New York establishment for the major artist that he is began to arrive only shortly before his death in 1990.

His role as a leading member of the East End Abstract Expressionists in the '50s was celebrated by Guild Hall in 1992 in a memorable exhibit on the artists of the Signa Gallery, founded in 1957 by three artists: Ossorio, John Little, and Elizabeth Parker.

Pure Authenticity

From the beginning, all his works - wood engravings, drawings, oils, etchings, monotypes, sculptural assemblages, to his last vivid, moving "Recovery" series, hasty ink drawings done in the hospital during the final weeks of his life - record the artist's self-imposed struggle for pure authenticity, uncompromised by social forces and institutions of learning.

Unremittingly, he pursued an art that comes from the deepest, truest, most complex and savage self, from a voracious, all-consuming unconscious.

The drawings and paintings that follow "Congregations" keep the spirit of multitude, with the entangling line becoming faces, mouths, phalluses, embryos, breasts. There are drawings crowded with dense, agitated sperm and amoeba-like floating forms, eyes, and signs of the zodiac, all becoming each other with double meanings and no meanings, puns and accidents taking place in the graffiti of a fugitive dream.

A New Art

In trusting the ordinary to become extraordinary without the accoutrements of academic fine art, Alfonso Ossorio made a new art, as outrageous as it was original.

For the success of the Parrish Museum show we have the guest curator Klaus Kertess to thank, in conjunction with the courageous director of the museum, Trudy Kramer, whose conviction of the unique importance of Ossorio's work transcended the reluctance of other institutions in this country to take and travel the exhibit.

The Parrish's presentation is a brilliant and valuable one-time event. The exhibit will remain on view until Sept. 28.

At the Ossorio Foundation in Southampton, 164 Mariner Drive, a continuing 50-year survey of the artist's work may be seen by appointment.

As they begin a new session, members of the United States Senate are embroiled in a controversy over, of all things, laptop computers.

Several techno-savvy Senators want to bring their laptops onto the Senate floor, where no writing instrument more intrusive than a pen or pencil has ever been seen, and use them for taking notes or the retrieval of pertinent information. Others say laptops would be distracting at best, and, at worst, in the words of Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey, "lead to staff instructions on voting and the scripting of all remarks."

There are Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the laptop fence, proving once again that foolishness knows no political bounds.

Bring on the laptops, or any other contrivance that will help make our Senators more efficient and better informed.