Over 100 residents of the Montauk Motel and several members of the Montauk Fire Department's ambulance squad were administered preventive antibiotics this week after three men were sent to Southampton Hospital with symptoms of bacterial meningitis.

On Friday county health officials dispensed antibiotics to over 100 adults and 17 young children, none of whom attends school, as well as intravenous doses for three infants, all living at the Montauk Motel. The Montauk Ambulance Company declined to say how many of its members had been similarly treated.

The measures were precautionary, health workers, including the deputy county health commissioner, Dr. Martin Mayer, stressed, and the two men who were kept at the hospital ultimately tested negative for meningococcemia.

Family History

On March 4, Dr. Gavino Mapula treated a man, whose name was not released, whose daughter, now 6 months old, had tested positive for the virus in January and was treated successfully with antibiotics.

After an examination, and in part because of the infant's history, Dr. Mapula determined the need for further testing on her father and suggested that ambulance volunteers transport him to Southampton Hospital.

Later in the afternoon the patient's brother appeared on Dr. Mapula's doorstep with similar symptoms. He, too, was taken to Southampton Hospital, where he was examined as a precautionary measure and released.

Then, last Thursday, one of the family's neighbors began to display classic symptoms of the meningococcemia virus. He went straight to Southampton Hospital, where, he, too, was admitted, and where he remained until Tuesday.

Common Symptoms

According to Dr. Mayer, meningococcemia is a form of meningitis in which bacteria spread to the bloodstream, where they rapidly grow and produce toxins which can be fatal. The virus is transmitted through droplets of blood or mucus among individuals in close contact with each other.

Symptoms include high fever, a stiff neck, a red rash, nausea, and diarrhea, Dr. Mapula said, as well as a sensitivity to light.

The captain of the Montauk Ambulance Company, John Salmon, said that the flu making the rounds in Montauk this week, which is accompanied by a bad headache, was "paralleling the scare of meningitis."

Preventive Measures

The two men who were admitted to the hospital were treated with antibiotics, but Dr. Mayer and Dr. Mapula said their blood cultures came back negative. "If they haven't grown by now, after five days, they're not going to," Dr. Mayer said on Tuesday afternoon.

The infant's immediate family, including her father, had been treated with a course of preventive antibiotics at the time of her illness. Dr. Mayer said the antibiotics might have altered the results of the blood culture taken last week, but indicated that he thought that unlikely.

Members of the Montauk Ambulance Squad who handled the call were also put on a course of preventive antibiotics - "just as a precaution," Mr. Salmon said. "We always have to imagine the worst-case scenario to protect our volunteers," he added.

Meanwhile, rumors spread through the hamlet over the weekend that children attending the Montauk Public School had been stricken.

"Not true," said Jack Perna, the Superintendent. "There were no school-age children involved; this hasn't affected us at all."

By 9 a.m. Monday the school nurse, Sonya Scofield, said, she had already received over 20 phone calls. A flier sent home with the students that afternoon attempted to alleviate parents' concern by assuring them that, besides the infant girl, who was infected in January, there had been no other confirmed cases of meningococcemia.

Two seals, Scraggy and Peek a Boo, are released to the wild Tuesday at Sagg Main Beach in Sagaponack after treatment by the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research. Scraggy, a male harbor seal, had been with the foundation since January 5, when it was picked up in Center Moriches suffering from hyperglycemia. Peek-a-Boo, a female harp seal, was found in Mattictuck on November 29 and had an elevated white blood cell count. Kimberly Durham, the foundation's stranding director, is seen releasing Peek a Boo.

Last fall and then much of this past winter I spent in my house here writing and rewriting and then editing a novel set in East Hampton and to be published this spring. It begins with these words:

"Here, if anywhere in America, you could still find the sweet life . . . "

I love East Hampton and I meant those words. And in casting about for ways to illustrate why this was so and how special and lovely a place this is, I began by describing the road on which I live and which plays a central part in the story. I tried to explain what makes it different and then to compare it to far-off places of equivalent beauty. Here was how I reached for the words:

"Further Lane is only two miles long but offers bonus glimpses of the Atlantic as it ambles parallel to the ocean across rich men's lawns and working corn fields and slim groves. Green farms, blue waters and crashing surf; you might well be in Mayo or elsewhere on the west coast of Ireland. . ."

My mother's parents were both born there, in Ireland, my grandmother in Mayo itself outside a town called Castlebar. On a farm, I guess. Their name was Kennedy. She married a man named Winston, also Irish, after both had immigrated to New York.

My father's parents were American-born, but also of Irish extraction.

I was living and working in London as a correspondent in 1959 or '60 when I first saw Ireland and then it was the North. The British Government was providing tax breaks and other benefits to U.S. companies that would open plants there and create jobs for the chronically depressed North, and I flew over to a place called Coleraine to have a look and file a story.

That was an Ireland that was foreign to me. Like smooth water with a bad undertow flowing beneath, uneasy-making, disturbing.

There was no fighting then and the countryside was green and lovely and the little towns we drove through quaint and placid. But sad. You couldn't miss seeing the men standing there on the sidewalks, looking up to see us pass and then looking down again, men leaning against old walls smoking and, I suppose, waiting for the pubs to open. They were men in worn suits and cloth caps, skinny, small men most of them, with the dole money and nothing more, sufficient for a pack of smokes and a pint of lager or a stout.

There were no jobs for those men; that was the trouble and the root of the troubles to come. There were men in those little towns and in the cities like Belfast who grew up, lived their adult lives, and grew old and died without ever having held steady work.

That's why they wanted the Yanks there. Not that they loved us but that we might come in and open plants and mills and hang out the "help wanted" signs.

I make no claim of seeing into tomorrow. But it would have taken a fool not to have seen the awful tomorrows that eventually came.

A couple of years later, an entirely different Irish experience.

We were living in Paris with two small children born there and we flew in an old high-wing Fokker from Le Bourget to Dublin on holiday.

There were poor people and the unemployed there, too, of course. But there was a healthy bustle about Dublin I hadn't seen in the North. The streets were busy with cars and trams and bicycles and through the portals of Trinity College and onto the green courts within, hurried the students and the dons, and the theaters were booming with queues for tickets at both the Abbey and the Gate, and shop girls and stenos and young men from the ad agencies and the banks and offices took lunch on a nice day sprawled on the grass of Saint Stephen's Green at the top of Grafton Street. We had a couple of rooms in the Russell that looked out onto the Green.

And we went out to Phoenix Park to the zoo, where brazen monkeys capered and chattered and our daughters capered and chattered back in delight and we rented a car and drove out from the city along the sea, following lanes so slow and sleepy, sheep blocked the road, and you sat there and waited for the shepherd to finish his smoke, and to chivvy the sheep on their way so we could pass.

That Ireland was better.

Here in New York and in the Hamptons we have our professional Irish who go on and on, the usual blather about the Old Country, so splendid a place you wonder why they don't pull up stakes and go back. You have the fierce golfers who sign up for elaborate tours, six Irish courses in seven days. And the suckers who put up cash to finance the bomb-throwers of the I.R.A. And the Irish who cannot watch a rerun of "The Quiet Man" without a bout of weeping, and bad imitations of "Squire Danaher" and Barry Fitzgerald and of "Himself," John Wayne as Soldier Thornton, the Irish-American everyman finally gone home to the whitewashed cottages of the past.

For a place like East Hampton, so inexorably linked to the WASP establishment and to England (wasn't it crusty Puritans from Maidstone, England, who came via the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1640, who founded this town?), there is here an odd pull toward Ireland. Maybe it's Montauk that does that, our local equivalent of a Land's End, beyond which there is only 3,000 miles of ocean . . . and the Old Country.

Or maybe it's those delightful summer kids who arrive mysteriously from Ireland each year when the season begins, drawn by the bucks and the adventure of America and the summer sun, and they find jobs in the motels and bars and restaurants, and party now and then, before going back in the fall for another year of college. Or their first real, grownup jobs. In either case, sunburned and full of wide-eyed tales. They are temporaries here, those Irish, but welcome. Nice kids, most of them, and when they show up, you know it's summer.

I've been back a half dozen times myself, usually to write, some assignment or other, some brief and outrageous junket more likely. Yet I'm never drawn to stay.

A few years back, I traveled about Ireland for a week, from Shannon to Dublin, and then back south again on a wonderful train, to embark from Cobh aboard QE2 for New York. In the old days, Cunard and the other steamship lines called regularly there. But not during the recent "troubles," not with the bombings, and a ship like QE2 such a marvelous and tempting target.

But now, after perhaps 15 or 20 years, there she was, a mile or two offshore at dawn, waiting for the lighters to take us out through the shallows to the channel and the great ship, while all around us that morning were these hundreds and hundreds of Irish sailboats and motorboats and small yachts and fishing craft and ferries and horns and shouts and waved flags: a lot of Irishmen and Irishwomen cheering a British ship bound for America.

How it must have been 100 years ago, if slightly less glamorous, when my own people first crossed. . .

James Brady is a weekly columnist for Advertising Age and for Parade magazine. His new novel, "Further Lane," will be published June 1 by St. Martin's Press.

Governor George E. Pataki announced on Tuesday that he would allocate $4.2 million from his Clean Water - Clean Air Bond Act fund to pay for the preservation of the 339-acre Sanctuary property near Montauk Point.

"It's great news. I'm totally delighted, after all the efforts of East Hampton Town and two governors, that the Sanctuary is finally going to be preserved," said Town Supervisor Cathy Lester yesterday.

Supervisor Lester noted that nearly all of the land around Montauk Point is preserved, with various parcels owned as parkland by the Federal, state, and town governments, and the Sanctuary "would complete the painting."

In all, the Governor proposed allocating for this year $100.9 million of the $1.75 billion fund approved by the voters in November. Other downstate projects include improvements to the drinking water supply system at Jones Beach State Park, to the pump-out station for commercial boats at Captree State Park, and to a fish hatchery on the Connetquot River.

The State Department of Environmental Conservation will hold public hearings around the state on the criteria used to give approval to the various projects, but the final decision on the Sanctuary rests with the Governor. The hearing on Long Island will be at Bethpage State Park next Thursday at 7 p.m. Speakers may address the merits of particular projects.

The acquisition of the Sanctuary, a wetlands-studded parcel that overlooks the ocean and is adjacent to the state holding at Camp Hero, has been a top priority of the state for years.

In an about-face, the State Department of Environmental Conservation announced on Monday that it had canceled its plans for a major upgrade of the Sag Harbor Golf Club at Barcelona. At the same time, however, the D.E.C. revealed that it will transfer jurisdiction of the course to the State Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, effective immediately.

The Parks Department, in turn, has announced that it will take over the management of the course when the Sag Harbor Golf Club's contract expires at the end of April.

"We're in the process of having the land deeded over," said George Gorman, director of recreation for the Parks Department's Long Island Region. "This will be the first new state park on Long Island in about 10 years. We're going to try to do more things at that course to make it better known to the public."

New Fee Structure

Under state control, the fee structure will change. Golfers now pay $10 for unlimited play during the week and $15 on weekends. When the Parks Department takes over, greens fees will be $10 for a nine-hole round during the week and $12 during weekends. Mr. Gorman said that is $2 less per round than at other state courses.

The state will also offer a $200 yearly pass, good for off-peak play Monday through Thursday after 3 p.m. Golfers can now pay $220 for an individual, or $350 for a family, for unlimited play at any time.

"My preference is that the Sag Harbor Golf Club should continue to manage the course and should be given a long-term lease because they've done a good job," said Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. "This is better than the request for proposals, but it is still unnecessary in my opinion."

Prefer Status Quo

Mr. Thiele, along with members of the nonprofit club, has spearheaded the drive to maintain the status quo at the nine-hole course since the D.E.C. announced earlier this year that it wanted to turn it over to a private manager willing to invest up to $1.2 million in capital improvements over the next 20 years.

The Sag Harbor Golf Club, formally incorporated in 1949, has run the course under a year-to-year contract with the D.E.C. since 1990, after the state acquired the 341-acre Barcelona Neck preserve.

The state's decision to take over the course "goes back to 1995," according to Mr. Gorman, "when a New York State audit stated that the course was improperly managed. There were significant control and accounting weaknesses. Loss and thefts could occur and not be detected."

He added, however, that the state's report "didn't accuse anyone of anything."

Turned A Profit

Marshall Garypie, president of the club, conceded that an audit had cited "sloppy bookkeeping" procedures, but he added that the D.E.C. "had never given us any direction" as far as financial controls were concerned. Last year, the state "set some guidelines for us and we followed them right to the letter," he said.

Once those changes were instituted last year, the club turned a profit of $65,000, which has been earmarked to repave the entrance road, and made at least $35,000 in capital improvements, including the purchase of a new tractor, a mower, and the construction of new tees, with mostly volunteer labor, Mr. Garypie said.

"The state has acknowledged the fact that they are going to lose money the first year and probably the second year," he said. "And we've generated a profit."

Although Mr. Garypie said the club "is trying to get a spirit of cooperation between the state, the towns, and ourselves," he said he was "still concerned about the fact they are kind of misleading the public" about the club's management of the course.

Paul Bailey, a member of the club's board of directors, said the state would lose money "because if the Sag Harbor Golf Club is out of the picture, you will have to pay someone to do that work" which is now handled by volunteers. The club currently employs two full-time workers, adding part-time help as needed.

"There's an extreme irony here," he said. "You have a Governor whose agenda is to privatize everything from hospitals to jails. Here we have a private club operating at a profit, and now it will be staffed by civil servants and lose money. It doesn't make sense."

Irrigation Planned

But Mr. Gorman said the state does not anticipate a "significant loss" this year and plans to upgrade the tees, greens, and sand traps. The state expects to turn a profit in the coming years, he added, and if it does, it will invest $300,000 in an irrigation system.

Mr. Thiele has called on the state to extend the club's lease at least another year and, if it does not want the club to run the course, set up a management committee made up of government officials from Sag Harbor Village and East Hampton and Southampton Towns, all of which have passed resolutions supporting the club.

"If the state is going to operate the course, it shouldn't be operated from Albany or up west," he said. Under the new state plan, "the taxpayers won't do as well, and golfers will play less," he said.

Development Fears

Club members have already gathered well over 1,200 signatures on petitions, which, along with scores of letters in support of the club, have been sent to state officials. "Everyone feels that if the state comes in, it is really going to take the golf course away from the local people," Mr. Garypie said.

"We'll have a Montauk situation," he added, referring to the state-run course at Montauk Downs. "In Montauk, it's almost impossible to get on that course unless you are staying at a motel or have some connections," he said.

In a letter to the State Parks Commissioner Bernadette Castro, Mr. Thiele has asked the state to agree to restrict development on the remaining 300 acres of the Barcelona Preserve "to insure they remain in their natural state in perpetuity." When the D.E.C. first announced its plans for the course this year, fears were raised that the property would be developed.

Mr. Thiele has also asked the state to reconsider its fee structure to offer discounts for golfers who want to play 18 holes and to allow season pass holders to play before 9 a.m. He has also asked that the off-peak season be extended to let pass holders enjoy unlimited play before Memorial Day and after Labor Day.

On Friday, Ms. Castro and the acting D.E.C. Commissioner, John Cahill, toured the 50-acre course with a reporter from Newsday. Local reporters were not invited.

Mr. Garypie said he feared the state was trying to generate UpIsland support for its takeover bid. "This is their next step to try to squeeze us out," he said.

More than 1,000 people attended a funeral service for Stanley Fink last Thursday at Manhattan's Riverside Memorial Chapel. A Democratic Speaker of the State Assembly for seven years, Mr. Fink, 61, was a part-time resident of Wigwam View Lane in East Hampton, near Three Mile Harbor. He had cancer and died on March 4 in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Mr. Fink was "a veritable giant in the New York State Democratic Party," said Judith Hope of East Hampton yesterday. Ms. Hope, the chairwoman of the State Democratic Committee and a member of the Democratic National Committee's executive board, credited Mr. Fink with establishing the State Legislature as "an equal party with the Governor, professionalizing its staff, and creating an Assembly agenda."

She noted that as early as 1979, he introduced legislation providing for public financing of statewide campaigns for office, a bill she said "dies each year in the Senate." It has been reintroduced in its near-original form by Speaker Sheldon Silver, she added.

Among those attending last week's funeral was Montauk's Perry B. Duryea Jr., a former Republican State Assembly majority leader. Yesterday he called Mr. Fink an "outstanding legislator, a great person, and a dear friend." Mr. Fink loved the East End, he said, calling his death "a terrible loss at the prime of his life."

"When Stanley Fink was born, they threw away the mold," Jerry Kremer of Bridgehampton, a Uniondale attorney, said yesterday. Mr. Kremer, a longtime friend who had served with Mr. Fink as the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee chairman, characterized his colleague as "hard-driving and brilliant."

During his 18 years as a lawmaker from Brooklyn, Mr. Fink developed a "progressive and highly ambitious Assembly agenda," Mr. Kremer wrote in Newsday Monday. The New York Times credited him with forging a "powerful alliance with the Republicans who controlled the Senate, repeatedly leading the Legislature to block the policy initiatives of two Governors in favor of its own agenda."

The Times also noted that as Speaker, he was among the nation's first prominent government leaders to speak out about the "need for infrastructure investment." Among his accomplishments was an $8 billion overhaul of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's aging subways, buses, and commuter railroads. He also was remembered for championing legislation for school funding, including increased support for the City University of New York.

Mr. Fink had "great strength and an unfailing sense of humor," Mr. Duryea said, "no matter how critical the issues."

Born in Brooklyn on Feb. 6, 1936, Mr. Fink attended New Utrecht High School and Brooklyn College, graduating in 1956. He earned his law degree three years later from New York University Law School and afterward he joined the Air Force, serving with the Judge Advocate General's office as a commissioned second lieutenant.

Following his discharge as a captain in 1962, he returned to Brooklyn to practice law. In 1968, he became chief counsel for the Assembly's Committee on Mental Hygiene and won his first election to that body. He became majority leader in 1977 and the 98th Speaker two years later.

He decided not to seek re-election in 1986 and worked for several years thereafter at the Manhattan law firm of Bower & Gardner. In 1994, he became a senior vice president at NYNEX, acting as a chief negotiator for the NYNEX-Bell Atlantic merger.

Mr. Fink is survived by his wife, Judith, and two sons, Marc and Keith Fink, all of Manhattan.

Most Holy Trinity, East Hampton's 103-year-old Roman Catholic Church, will have a parish hall at last. Construction of the 7,200-square-foot multipurpose building, just west of the church's school on Meadow Way, could begin as early as May, church officials confirmed this week.

More than twice the size of the historic Buell Lane church, the proposed structure will accommodate some 600 worshipers at Christmas, Easter, and summer-weekend masses.

The existing building, of wood with a wood shingle roof, seats fewer than 400. In recent years, overflow parishioners have attended the more popular masses via closed-circuit television in the church vestibule.

Most Holy Trinity families number about 1,500, according to Jacqueline Little, its business administrator.

St. Philomena's

The original church was built by George E. Halsey of Water Mill in September 1894 and was named the Church of St. Philomena. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The parish hall will be called the Dempsey-Ryan Pavilion, for the late Steven Dempsey of Amagansett and the late John M. Ryan of Springs, longtime parishioners who left sufficient bequests to cover its roughly $1 million cost. The word "pavilion," church officials noted, is reminiscent of the years when a tent was erected for overflow crowds who were seated outdoors on a concrete slab.

Additional funds will need to be raised, however, for furnishings, carpeting, landscaping, and such.

Dempsey-Ryan Pavilion

The Dempsey-Ryan Pavilion, to be built where the basketball court is now, will contain an altar and sliding doors, permitting its use for social events, meetings of church and community groups, educational gatherings, and wedding and other parish receptions.

A warming kitchen, from which food can be served though not prepared, is also contemplated.

Additional parking for 62 cars is planned for the 8.13-acre property. Including street parking on Buell Lane and Meadow Way, 235 cars will be accommodated.

Center To Rent School

For the past three years, the church has rented its 12,000-square-foot school building to the East Hampton School District for its kindergarten, which moved last month to a new wing of the John Marshall Elementary School.

The Most Holy Trinity school building will again be filled with children's voices, though. Several organizations have expressed interest in using it, but Robert Grau, a church member who handles leasing, confirmed last week that the Child Development Center of the Hamptons probably will occupy it beginning July 1.

The development center, a nonprofit preschool for children with special needs, is raising funds to build its own facility off Industrial Road in East Hampton.

D.R.B. Gets Plans

Also on Most Holy Trinity grounds is a convent building, now the site of the business office, several garages, and a barn used mostly for storage. A baseball field, which East Hampton Town and Village have been using for youth programs, has been rented to the Ross School.

Frank B. Hollenbeck, an East Hampton architect who is a member of the congregation, presented preliminary plans for the new parish hall to the East Hampton Village Design Review Board on March 5.

Its exterior, he said, will be yellow brick, closely matching the school building. Its roof probably will be of Ultraslate, a synthetic material resembling slate but lighter in weight, with a lifespan of at least 40 years.

Permit Process

Robert Hefner, the village's historic-preservation consultant, and village engineers are expected to review the plans and make recommendations to the D.R.B. before it gives the church "conceptual approval."

After that, Most Holy Trinity will need to obtain a special permit from the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals for any proposed construction in a residential zone.

The D.R.B. will decide on final site-plan approval after the Z.B.A.'s action.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre is reviewing the plans as well and is expected to give its blessing to them within the month.

A drive-in movie complex with three giant screens and enough parking for more than 1,400 cars could be the next coming attraction for Wainscott.

The East Hampton Town Planning Department received a set of plans and a permit application this week to build the "Summertime Drive-In" on the sprawling former sand pit behind Wainscott Sand and Gravel Corp. on Montauk Highway. The plans call for the development of more than 24 acres of the 71-acre expanse.

"The goal is to create a full-service drive-in movie theater reminiscent of an earlier time, where the entire family can be entertained on a summer evening," the application states.

The plans were submitted on March 5 by Wainscott Properties Inc., whose principal is William Tintle of East Hampton. Mr. Tintle is a co-owner of Wainscott Sand and Gravel and owns a similar business in Quogue.

Three Screens

The proposed drive-in complex would feature three screens - a 60-foot-high screen with parking for 642 cars and two 45-foot-high screens with spots for 382 cars each. According to the site plan, drawn by Christopher Coburn of Sag Harbor, the complex would be laid out in a triangle, with a screen at each point and a concession building in the center.

The site is flanked by Wainscott-Northwest Road to the east, the private Hedges Road to the west, and the railroad tracks to the north. A former sand pit, the property is no longer used in connection with the adjacent sand and gravel business.

According to the plan, the entrance and exit to the drive-in would be from Daniel's Hole Road, where it meets the railroad tracks, at the northeast corner of the property. The access would be just south of the intersection of Daniel's Hole Road and Industrial Road. A "theater circulation road" would loop around the entire site.

Permitted Use

Mr. Tintle could not be reached by press time regarding the plan or what is proposed for the remainder of the site. Before proposing the drive-in plan, Wainscott Properties had been pursuing a subdivision of the 71 acres into 16 parcels, all zoned for commercial/industrial use. The drive-in project would leave more than 45 acres free for other commercial/industrial uses.

There is no special provision in the Town Code for drive-ins, but "motion-picture theaters" are permitted in commercial/industrial zoning districts (as well as neighborhood-business and central-business zones) with a special permit from the Planning Board.

However, the Town Code restricts the capacity of a cinema facility to a maximum of 500 seats, "regardless of the number of theaters involved in the plan." The application does not address that restriction.

Expects Opposition

Rumors of the proposal had made their way to the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee as early as three months ago. The committee had been closely following the previous Wainscott Properties' application. Told about the site plan yesterday, the committee's chairman, David Eagan, said he expected opposition to the plan.

"I would anticipate there being some real serious questions about this," he said. Noting this would be the only facility of its kind in this area, he said the project would be a large draw for those from out of town.

"I don't know if that's the type of development we need, considering the traffic problems we already have in Wainscott. . . . I'm not one of those people that is against everything, but I think this will get the blood pressure up."

Earlier Drive-In

This would not be the town's first drive-in movie theater. The Hamptons Drive-In operated for many years on what is now a portion of the Bridgehampton Commons shopping center.

The Planning Department has just begun its initial review of the project. Neither Lisa Liquori, the town's planning director, nor Marguerite Wolffsohn, the planner assigned to review the plan, returned phone calls yesterday.

The project is expected to be on the Planning Board's agenda at its next meeting, Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

Historical Record

Wainscott

March 4, 1997

Dear Helen,

Your Feb. 20 article about the planned Rough Riders reunion is just one more reminder of the persistence of historical mythology, in this case sponsored by the Suffolk County Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation.

The proposed reunion celebrates the centennial of the Spanish American War and the subsequent military encampment at Montauk. It appears that the Rough Riders and Teddy Roosevelt will be glorified to the exclusion of all other participants, and reference is made to the famous Battle of San Juan Hill. Let's get the record straight.

Teddy and the Rough Riders never set foot on San Juan Hill during the assault. The hill was taken by units of the First and Third Brigades, including all the black regulars of the 24th and 25th Infantry. When the hill was taken, the man who led the charge, Lieut. Jules Ord, lay dead at the top.

It is not my intention to belittle the bravery or performance of the Rough Riders, but they were amateurs while the black soldiers were professionals. In an earlier engagement, some reports had it that the black soldiers saved the Rough Riders from extermination. It is interesting to note that Camp Wikoff was named after Colonel Wikoff, who was the only brigade commander not to hold the rank of general. His brigade, however, contained two of the four black regiments in the campaign, and they rightly share the honor.

Any celebration in Montauk that does not recognize the outstanding performance of the black regiments, the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry, would be not only an injustice but a flagrant disregard of the historical record.

Very sincerely,

HENRY CLIFFORD

Simplest Arithmetic

Springs

March 9, 1997

Dear Helen,

Do the village fathers really think we are all idiots, incapable of doing the simplest arithmetic? They graciously abandon their plan for a $250 yearly parking sticker only to sock it to us with a $10 nightly fee. Translated into charges for 12 months - let's say at even just three nights a week for 40 weeks, that comes to a whopping $1,200 annually! No way we should let them get away with that.

None of us park at the East Hampton station because the Ladies keep it so pretty or because the lights are so wonderful. We park there because it's where we live. I'd much prefer to go to Bridgehampton or Southampton - where neither village nor town practices extortion - but it would mean hitting the clogged Montauk Highway, and the point of taking the Long Island Rail Road in the first place is to avoid that.

This is by no means my last word on the subject, and I hope that all the people who've told me they share my outrage will make their voices heard.

With best regards,

SILVIA TENNENBAUM

P.S. Southampton, Bridgehampton, and Speonk charge nothing, even to out-of-town cars. Patchogue has a free lot for them. Huntington Town charges $30 a year for parking stickers.

P.P.S. I was wrong about the East Hampton Village beach sticker charge - it's $150, not $120.

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

Imagine this scenario: You have a baroness and a Venetian doge seated at a table in the restaurant where you are the sommelier, and since they speak no English you must communicate with them in French. They've selected a bottle of champagne as well as a bottle of red (a Long Island red, of course), and you have 10 minutes to serve both wines properly.

Doesn't sound so difficult, right? Well, not necessarily. This scenario was the final test, the practical portion, put to four of the country's leading sommeliers who competed Sunday at Pellegrini Vineyards in Cutchogue, on the North Fork, in the Sommelier Society of America's championship round.

Two of the four hadn't quite completed their tasks for the practical test when the 10 minutes were up, including the one contestant who was proclaimed the winner Sunday night at a dinner at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor.

The Winner

Competing for the first time, Andrea Immer, the only woman among the four finalists and one of only three women in the United States to hold the title of master sommelier, won the competition.

Ms. Immer, a member of the society's board, will represent the United States in Austria in the spring of 1998, at the Concours Mondial des Sommeliers of the Association de la Sommellerie Internationale. She is the beverage director for B.E. Group, the company that operates Windows on the World and the Rainbow Room, both in Manhattan.

The other contestants included the runner-up (by a very slim margin), Michael McNeill, a master sommelier and the sommelier at Lespinasse restaurant in Manhattan, who was judged the best sommelier in the U.S. in French wines and spirits in the Foods and Wines From France (SOPEXA) 1994 contest, and competed in Tokyo in 1995, after winning that year's Sommelier Society of America contest.

Written Exam

Joseph Spellman, a master sommelier and the sommelier at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, the 1996 winner in French wines and spirits in the SOPEXA competition, and George Serna, the maitre d'hotel at the Regency Club in Los Angeles, who has experience working in Monte Carlo, Italy, and France, also competed.

Before the practical exam, in a quiet room, the contestants had completed a two-hour written exam, including 60 questions on wine theory, correcting mistakes from a nine-page wine list, precisely identifying and describing a red and a white wine after a blind tasting, and then naming what wines they would pair with a meal, in this case Austrian food from Hans Gasthaus in nearby Aquebogue. The chef's grandmother, those gathered were told, was a chef in Austria and had suggested the menu.

While the questions on the written exam were tough, the pressure intensified with the practical exam. Not only the judges but members of the press and public watched as they tried to do everything as perfectly as possible against a time limit and in a non-native language.

In the average restaurant one does not encounter a sommelier or have wine served the most elegant, proper way. It is a sight to behold.

The Wine List

The sommelier's work at a restaurant, of course, begins with compiling the restaurant's wine list. A sommelier must pair selections with the restaurant's cuisine, gear it toward the price range of the average customer, and have a thorough knowledge of the wines so as to be able to help the diner choose what best suits their meal and palate.

But the selection is only the beginning, as Sunday's practical exam made clear. Roger Dagorn, the chairman of the Sommelier Society of America, a master sommelier, and one of several judges of the exam, introduced the service scenario.

The fictitious lunch menu brought chuckles from those gathered since it played on the names of both contestants and judges, like "Long Island Immer duck," named after the winner, and smoked Olson salmon with Petroske caviar, named after two judges, Steve Olson, the secretary of the society, and Barbara Petroske, another judge and the society's administrative manager.

Points Deducted

Contestants were judged on a checklist of some 60 items, approximately half for the bottle of champagne and half for the red. They ranged from the competitors' general appearance and cordiality to their French language skills, choosing the proper glasses, cleaning up, and properly clearing away the ashtray with the cigarette butt in it.

Points were deducted for spills, for clinking the bottle or, in the case of the red wine, the decanter, if the bottle rested on the lip of the decanter, for blowing out the candle used for decanting, as opposed to putting it out with one's fingers, and for not bringing one's own corkscrew and matches.

The champagne should be opened without a pop, the cork presented on a plate, a taste poured for the host, the guest served, and the bottle returned to a bucket of ice and water. The red wine should be presented in a basket, properly decanted, tasted first by the sommelier and then the host, and served in the proper glass, only half-full.

Distinct Styles

Even the casual observer could notice some of the mistakes made by the contestants, as well as some of the differences in their styles. Different styles do exist, said Ms. Immer in a telephone interview Monday, and part of her preparation for next spring's international contest will be working and studying with different sommeliers.

Her preparation will also include practicing her French, making herself more comfortable with the different kinds of equipment used in serving, and blind tasting practice. She said she found the blind tastings and the practical exam the most difficult.

Ms. Immer worked as an investment banker in New York before switching careers to indulge her "real passion," wine. She has included some Long Island wines on the lists where she currently works, she said, including a Lenz Chardonnay, a Palmer merlot, and SagPond's Domaine Wolfer Chardonnay. Limited supply prevents her from including some others that she particularly likes, like Bedell's Reserve merlot and Paumanok's late harvest dessert-style wines.

Ideal Conditions

Following Sunday's competition, Russell Hearn, Pellegrini's winemaker, offered barrel tastings of Chardonnay, cabernet franc, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and "Select" red wines not yet ready for the bottle to the contestants, judges, and others attending Sunday's event. Fittingly the tasting took place in the cellar among rows of oak barrels.

He also discussed Long Island's ideal growing conditions, which can be attributed to a long growing season, sandy soil that can handle our rainfall, and a maritime climate that keeps the weather mild. The area has been described as having a similar climate and rainfall as Bordeaux, one of France's premier wine-producing regions.

"Perhaps no other wine-producing area has achieved the level of recognition that Long Island has attained in such a brief time," a society release said of choosing the island for the event. Indeed, in relatively few growing years, Long Island wines have come a long way.

Backhanded Compliment

Bob Pellegrini mused that a recent French visitor, though not completely adept at speaking English, tried (he thinks) to pay his wines a compliment when she said, " 'It tastes like real wine.' "

Having the society hold its final competition at his vineyard was an honor for Mr. Pellegrini. "These people know wine. They live and breathe wine," he said.