Connections: Sidewalk Society
As far as I recall, our little ARFan is the first dog I’ve ever taken on walks. In the old days, whether we were living in Amagansett or here in the village, we simply opened the door and let our dogs roam free. This was the common practice well into the 1990s. Even when we were at our house down on Gardiner’s Bay — and when the door was opened our dogs had unchaperoned access to a wide and usually desolate beach — they didn’t take off. They knew where hearth and home was; it was as simple as that.
In years gone by, the village had a number of Main Street canine celebrities. Min Spear Hefner, our advertising manager, reminds me that a mixed breed called Ruxton was considered the mayor of the village for quite a long time and that there was a famously peripatetic bassett hound who used to be almost a mascot at the East Hampton Middle School on Newtown Lane.
I’m not sure exactly when modern dogs stopped seeming trustworthy enough to be let loose — niceties of modern-era pooper-scooping aside. We do have more traffic on the roads these days, it’s true, but the speed limit today is actually lower than it was back then. In any case, as the years went on, freelancing canines became a less-common sight, and it became more common for helpful neighbors and bystanders to swing into alarmed action when they came upon one unaccompanied.
It was quite a long time ago, maybe as late as the year 2000, when someone last called the Star office to ask whether the lonely black dog hanging around in front of Guild Hall belonged to the Rattrays. Was it Tanya? Or Goodie? I cannot recall which previous ARFan it was. But can you imagine what would happen today if we were to just open the front door and let our dogs come and go at will? Certainly, the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons would recall the dog, for starters. A good Samaritan might even try to press charges.
One of the reasons Sweet Pea, our current ARFan, has to be taken out for proper walks, rather than just let out into our well-fenced yard for a spell, is that we adopted her in winter. She had come to ARF from Puerto Rico in the wake of one of the hurricanes, and was adamantly opposed to the cold and snow. Even on sunny and snowless days, she was completely unwilling to step through the door, and if we managed to carry or drag her through, she would just turn around, plunk down on the steps, and stare back in at us with a tragic expression. She hated the ice so much that she would try to walk on two paws, instead of four, lifting her limbs into the air like a circus performer.
The upshot is that Sweet Pea and I regularly take walks around the neighborhood, which have not only added a beneficial 25 or 30 minutes of healthy activity to my morning routine, but a pleasant dimension to daily life. Even though we live only a short stroll from the business district, my longstanding habit has been to jump in the car when running an errand upstreet. Out walking with Sweet Pea, I’ve gotten to know some of my fellow sidewalk regulars — a pair who march purposefully each morning toward Main Beach with Starbucks coffee cups in hand, the cookbook writer out for a constitutional, a couple who call Sweet Pea by name.
I’ve also begun to feel again that I actually live in a village, a village made up not just of buildings and landscapes but of people. It brings a certain ineffable sense of well-being, and I love being reminded how pleasant village life was and still can be. My word to those suffering from internet-age social isolation: Get a dog.