The Invisible East End, by Frank Vespe

Having my four kids home for the summer was special. Having them join me for dinner, together, was very special, but trying to fit four big kids as if they were toddlers into a booth at Pizza Village in Montauk wouldn’t work, so it came with great joy when my daughter, Elizabeth, made a startling suggestion after she caught Jeff Foxworthy of “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” scream, “The best buffet in the U.S.A.!” in a Golden Corral commercial.

“Let’s go to Golden Corral!” she shouted.

“Yay!” they all screamed.

Quickly their “yays” turned to “nays” when I discovered the closest Golden Corral was in Middletown, N.Y., 175 miles away from our home in Springs.

Huh?

Without missing a beat, my determined son Paul grabbed the remote, said, “I’ll take it from here,” and surfed until another appetizing dining commercial appeared.

“Look!” he proclaimed, pointing at the 42-inch flat screen in our living room. “Let’s go to Cici’s Pizza instead!”

“Yay!” they shouted.

Again, their “yays” were muffled when I learned the nearest Cici’s was in North Brunswick, N.J., 148 miles to the west.

What the —

My son Anthony then hijacked the clicker and locked in when he saw two familiar Lenny and Squiggy look-alikes sitting side by side in a car enjoying the best day of their lives relishing tiny hot dogs. It was the Sonic commercial.

“I love hot dogs with all the fixin’s,” he said, fist-bumping his siblings.

“Yay!” they screamed.

Sadly, the only Sonic on Long Island is in Deer Park, 70 miles to the west.

Bummer.

While pondering the dread of driving to Deer Park in the height of summer traffic to eat tiny hot dogs, my wife flung at me a piece of paper and then thrust her index finger in my face.

“You can’t go anywhere!” she yelled. “Allstate cancels at midnight! Pay the &%$@# bill!”

As if on cue, the computer-generated General character for the General Insurance TV spot came on, so, faster than a New York minute, I called the number on the screen hoping they would write a policy so I could avoid being without auto insurance, happily postponing for another month a premium payment.

“Are you in Louisiana?” the agent asked.

“I’m on Long Island,” I answered.

“Our locations are in Louisiana, we don’t write insurance on Long Island,” the customer service agent said.

“But you advertise on a Long Island TV channel?” I asked.

“Sorry, call Progressive,” and she hung up.

Frustrated, I hopped out of my recliner to pop an aspirin to relieve my throbbing migraine, but in doing so I aggravated my already herniated sciatica, dropping me to the floor in damning pain.

“That’s divine intervention,” Elizabeth gasp­ed. “The Spine Institute is on TV right now. Maybe we should take you there?”

Barely able to move from my fetal position, I searched on my Galaxy 5S “Spine Institute” to schedule an appointment.

“We’re in Philadelphia,” the service agent said.

“But I’m in great pain,” I pleaded. “You advertise here on Long Island, so you must have a Long Island location, right?”

“Sorry, our only location is in Philadelphia,” and he hung up.

That sucks.

I sat confused, distraught, and angry, staring at TV channels that rarely advertise a restaurant, hotel, nightclub, store, or activity east of Riverhead. If not for the News 12 anchor Doug Geed having a summer home in Southold or Mattituck, the East End and its hundreds of businesses would be invisible on Cablevision. At least when the plagued and bankrupt Plum TV existed, Channel 18 in East Hampton, many East End businesses, notably high-end businesses but East End businesses nevertheless, were seen. 

For some peculiar reason, seldom have advertisers and their polished commercials from this part of the world bombarded our cable channels as have similar businesses miles and miles to the west. Perhaps Cablevision believes East End businesses do not need to advertise, or recognizes the three-hour drive each way from Bethpage for their account executives isn’t worth the trip.

Too bad.

An hour passed, the pain from my sciatica subsided, and so my four kids, my famished wife, and I squeezed into my five-seat Honda CRV and headed east, back to our ol’ friend Pizza Village in Montauk for two large pies and a salad dripping with their secret, mind-blowing dressing, the recipe for which our waitress, Carmen, for years has refused to sneak to me.

This time, we took up two booths.

Frank Vespe is a regular “Guestwords” contributor.