The Mast-Head: On the Road

I should apologize at the outset to the man my kids and I call Wrong-Way Guy, but we’re kind of obsessed.

Maybe you’ve seen him — a white-haired man dressed all in black, who rapidly walks along Main Street in East Hampton with his sneakers treading on the white line at the side of the road? Leaning forward with his arms held just so, he looks as if he is ready for a fight or about to swat an oncoming car right out of the way. Weekday mornings, as we drive to school, keeping an eye out for Wrong-Way Guy is a way to pass the time. 

For a while we had a more ordinary game involving work and municipal vehicles. Electric trucks, tree trucks, and school buses, for example, were 5 points. A cesspool truck earned whoever spotted it 20 points. The wildcard was Ken Sacks, the father of one of the kids’ schoolmates behind the wheel of his old car. He was worth 50 points, but we only saw him once. Interest in the game waned, and watching for local characters took its place.

When I was young we would keep an eye out for Snow, an older man who walked the streets around Bridgehampton. I remember listening to WLNG one night during a blizzard. A caller phoned the radio station to say that it “looked like Snow!” was on the street. Not understanding, the host went along: “Yes, it sure does look like snow.”

“No, I mean, Snow! The man!” she said.

I never knew Snow’s real name. I think he might have been a Bridgehampton migrant worker who came for the potato crop and stayed. Someone knows, I’m sure, and I am going to make the effort to find out about him one day.

Captain Shipwreck was Amagansett’s answer to Snow, and of him I know somewhat more. His name was Richard Halliday, and until about 1980 he could be seen walking on Montauk Highway between his house on Oak Lane and Vinnie’s Barbershop wearing a striped engineer’s cap and, most days, hip boots. “Cappy Dick!” my teenaged friends and I would yell as we passed by in our cars.

Halliday was known as Captain Shipwreck after a series of misadventures at sea, including a swordfish trip that ended on the rocks at Montauk and the day a trawler sank from under him off Block Island. 

One winter, he spent more than a week anchored on the east side of Gardiner’s Island after his dragger’s engine wouldn’t start. He stayed there until his food and coal for heating the cabin ran out. Then he pulled anchor and began to drift. His boat was eventually spotted, and he was taken to shore. He died in 1981, and Amagansett seemed a lot duller.

An architect friend who lives in Sag Harbor shares my admiration for local figures. More than once, he has told me of his hope that someday he could join their ranks and wander into the village in his bathrobe to buy the morning paper. I tell him it’s a fine thing to aspire to.