A Million Bucks

The sign with upside-down letters hangs like an alien landmark on the corner of Shinnecock Road and Foster Avenue, and I know something’s up. When I reach the top of the Ponquogue Bridge I can see a helicopter on the right side of the parking lot and a tented area on the left. At the beach pavilion, people are clumped together on the deck.

“What’s going on?”

“They’re filming a New York State lottery commercial. See that sports car by the tent? Some guy’s gonna drive it across the bridge.”

“How cool.”

I am surprised that this scenic vista in Hampton Bays isn’t used more often in advertisements and movies. I’m the last one over the bridge before the copter with the film crew lifts off like a giant dragonfly.

Three months later my husband calls me from where he’s watching TV. “Hey Dee, check this out.” Pointing to the screen, he asks, “Isn’t that the Ponquogue Bridge?”

Cruising in a Jaguar XKE across the bridge a regular-looking guy, somewhere on the far side of 40 with a sense of wind in his cropped hair, muses the question, “What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about money?” The camera scans the pewter bay and the ocean, a silver screen lit with golden rays.

Since I rarely buy lottery tickets the chance of my becoming an instant millionaire seems slim, but the good news is, as grand as it would be, I don’t need a cashier’s check with a series of zeros to feel like a million bucks.

Throughout my life I have felt rich because of my ability to enjoy others’ good fortune. The next best thing to driving a dream machine of a car, or owning a house with a fabulous view, or taking a trip of a lifetime is to have friends or relatives who do. Rich by association.

This feeling extends beyond possessions. Because my friend Irene Tully is on the board of every museum on the East End, I feel more cultured. Knowing Irene’s husband, Bill, a lobster fisherman, gave me more cred as a local when I was a suburban transplant 45 years ago. Interesting by association. Vicarious pleasure is my winning ticket, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the real thing.

Having coffee with Irene recently, I mentioned that I had perused Isa’s Consignment Shop in Hampton Bays for the first time and was impressed at the quality of the merchandise: Searle coats, designer dresses, high-end bags and shoes. She asked if I had bought anything.

I bragged about the broadcloth white shirt with French cuffs I purchased for $25 and confessed that I was lusting after an Hermes scarf that lured me to the back of the tightly packed shop, where it hung with a few others on hooks behind the owner’s desk. Even from a distance their colorful designs called to me; I sensed Hermes. To me an Hermes scarf is more than a cut of silk. It’s classic elegance with an air of Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy, idols of my youth.

I admitted that I have always wanted one but could never justify the price for an accessory, even $250 for a secondhand one. Shoes, pocketbooks, or jewelry, yes, but a 35-inch square of material, no. But as each birthday nears, I think, “This will be the year I’ll treat myself.”

Irene, who appreciates my love of finer things, chirped, “I have one. It’s been a decorative piece in my drawer for years. I never wear it; you can have it.”

The next day she delivered the silken treasure. The gift had outgrown its signature orange box with brown trim, but I was giddy with delight. The scarf was appropriately called Les Clefs, or The Keys, designed in 1965 with a royal blue border and 47 golden keys. When I wore it for the first time with jeans, my new crisp white shirt, and a blue cashmere cardigan, two friends commented on how great I looked. I have arrived. I now own an iconic fashion statement.

At our annual Labor Day champagne breakfast on the beach I posed the question, “What makes you feel like a million dollars?” I prompted my friends, sitting in a semicircle in our beach chairs, the ones low to the sand, to think outside the family and the things we know really matter. I was pushing for something material like my scarf, but except for flying in first class, they listed simple things that make them happy: coming home from anywhere, eating ice cream from the container, slipping into bed under a down quilt, having a good hair day when it counts, laughing until you are doubled over, reading a book you can’t put down.

I am not alone, however, in thinking that a piece of clothing can make one feel rich. On my return lap on the bridge the other day I walked with Barbara, a woman who lives down the road. She asked when I was going to have another yard sale since she loved the things she bought at my last one, especially a black fox headband. She told me that she wore it to work during this winter’s polar vortex and her co-workers wanted to know if she had won the lottery.

“No,” she said, but she felt like a million dollars.

Denise Gray Meehan is working on a book of essays called “Bridge Walker.”