Consider the Sources

If you think of life as an unending story that’s whispered to you, shouted at you, otherwise presented, and then knitted together with the wool you’ve gathered — and I do — then you learn to consider the sources.

One of the best things about living in a small town like East Hampton in winter, Montauk in particular, is how the sources stand out, come into relief against the quiet backdrop. Of course, the best source is personal experience. I’d heard by way of a friend while waiting at the checkout at the 7-Eleven on Friday that local boats were doing well on cod.

This was a surprise given the dim reports from Down East where the catch has been so poor that the species has been put off limits for the next six months. I’d heard that boats out of Freeport had been reporting strong cod action, so it seems a more robust population is visiting the waters off Long Island this season.

Since Christmas, the fishing has been good enough for Montauk’s Viking Fleet to run two party boats out into the general vicinity of Coxes Ledge. I thought about boarding one of them on Saturday, but was put off by the forecast that called for wind, rain, perhaps snow. Wintertime sport fishermen are a breed apart, and while I’ve experienced glorious, sunlit days offshore in January and February, I’ve also frozen my butt off confined to the cigar-smoky salons of head boats as their bows took green water in heavy seas.

I should have gone. I met the first Viking boat to return late Saturday afternoon. Snow was blowing on a strengthening east wind, but they’d had a good day of fishing with anglers limiting out on cod up to 22 pounds. I missed the fishing, but more than that I missed listening to the people. Long Island fishermen are New Yorkers by and large, and New York fishermen share the indigenous brand of straight-talk, the no-nonsense gift of gab that’s served up with a healthy dose of acerbic wit found nowhere else in the nation. 

Having denied myself that firsthand source of story, I used Saturday to meet with two individuals in the back room of Montauk’s Naturally Good store at its new location on Main Street across from the Shagwong. Naturally Good has become a cafe of sorts where folks can sit around, drink coffee, and palaver.

At 11:30 a.m. I met Michelle Swaverly, who is helping to bring the Oceans Institute of the Montauk Lighthouse Museum (Montauk Surf Museum) to fruition. We were talking about potential installations that would include profiles of notable surfers, among them Ricky Rasmussen, part of the Westhampton tribe of surfers who rose to international fame during the ’70s. Ricky was a gifted and fearless big-wave surfer who unfortunately fell into the grip of heroin. He was busted while attempting to export the stuff from Indonesia, and was eventually murdered while scoring dope in Harlem. It’s a well-known, cautionary tale among surfers of a certain age, one that made it to the pages of The New Yorker.

A couple were sitting at the next table. “Excuse me,” the man said turning to me. “Did you say Ricky Rasmussen?” I said, yes. “He was my informant. That was 35 years ago,” he said, going on to tell how he was with the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time and put Rasmussen to work tracking drug sources after he was busted. “He was murdered,” he said. I said I knew and asked if he had been on the job at the time. “No,” he said. “We told him to stay out of Harlem. I saw him at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital just before he died.” Here was a firsthand source to a sad, but colorful piece of history. Could I get his name, I asked. “No,” he answered. “That was 35 years ago, a different life.”

At 1 in the afternoon the same day, I met a young man named Najib Aminy. He had called a few weeks back and told me he’d studied journalism at Stony Brook University. He was working on a story about Stuart Vorpahl, a former East Hampton Town trustee, commercial fisherman, town historian, and expert on our founding colonial writ of 1686, the Dongan Patent.

Aminy had met with Stuart and now wanted to pick my brain. As a reporter for The Star, I’d probably written the equivalent of a book about Stuart over the years. I consider him a friend, a great source of historical info, one who continues to insist that, legally speaking, the right to fish “without lett or hindrance” (without taxes or other legal obstacles) given East Hampton residents in 1686 remains in effect today.

Over the years he was cited a number of times for fishing without a state license. Each time, prosecutors saw fit to dismiss the cases on technicalities rather than challenge the legal foundations of the Dongan Patent, which, Stuart points out, were kept nearly intact when New York became a state back in 1777. Quaint as it may sound, it’s Stuart’s quixotic crusade that’s helped keep the patent viable, so that when the state government set out to administer a federal sportfishing license a few years back, the East End townships that were founded by colonial patents sued and won to keep the right to fish in their waters without a license. Najib is of Afghani Pashtun heritage. He intends to go Afghanistan to seek his roots someday. I want to hear that story.

Had I gone fishing on Saturday, I probably would have made a cod chowder Sunday morning. You start by boiling the head. I have a great recipe that I got from a source, who got it firsthand from an old-timer, who probably got it from . . . and on and on. Instead, I wound up with a rich, story chowder. Satisfying, but I think a boiled cod head would have made it better. I can almost taste it.