A Call To Arms

It must have seemed like an inspiration from on high. Otherwise, how to account for it? Picture the long-suffering members of East Hampton Village's traffic-calming committee, brows furrowed in contemplation of yet another summer of boiling-mad drivers hopelessly orbiting the Reuterhan lot in seach of parking spaces.

Suddenly a light bulb brightens. Two arms! Mechanical barriers, one at the lot's Main Street entrance and the other on Newtown Lane, spitting out time-stamped tickets as cars approach. An ingenious way to enforce the two-hour parking limit - relatively inexpensive, logical, easily implemented! No more messy chalk on tires!

Tomorrow, in fact, barely a week after Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. first embraced the arms - "a major step, and apropos of America's most beautiful village" - the Village Board will decide whether to advertise to buy the new equipment. Since the board has deemed a public hearing unnecessary, its 11 a.m. meeting at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street offers residents their only chance to comment.

The East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, for one, is thoroughly dismayed by the prospect. Its members envision traffic backed up the length of Main and Newtown while drivers fumble for tickets, and fear a mass exodus of frustrated shoppers to parts west. Power failures, vandalism - almost anything could clot the arms' flow and make the village's central parking lot inaccessible.

The Chamber is right to be worried. Even should it work to perfection, a barrier like the ones proposed - albeit with the best of intentions - would be just that: another hurdle in the daily race, a new pain in the neck to have to cope with, one more reason, maybe, to think about moving to Nova Scotia.

Like gnats, it's the small things that really get under your skin. There is still time, tomorrow, to make that clear to the Village Board. What was it that the Prince of Denmark said? Take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end them.