125 Years Ago 1897
From The East Hampton Star, December 24
It takes time to get fat just as it takes time to grow thin. The candidate for added flesh should get all the sleep possible — from nine to ten hours. In addition, a nap in the middle of the day will help. While napping, no stays, tight shoes, or bands must be worn. If one cannot sleep, one should lie down in a darkened room at least thirty minutes instead.
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Chase Filer was driving his brother’s horse along Main street yesterday afternoon when he overtook Frank King, whose horse had fallen in the road. Mr. Filer jumped out to assist Mr. King, and when the fallen horse raised up from the ground, Filer’s horse started into a run, tore down through the street until in front of Mrs. E.M. Hedges’ house, where he turned onto the sidewalk, the buckboard striking one of the big trees with a terrible crash.
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John Jo. Butler was caught Wednesday evening walking off with Dr. J.F. Bell’s bicycle, which had been left standing in front of Meyer’s store. Mr. Butler was arrested on Thursday morning and taken before Justice Sherrill. The justice, in his customary way, came prompt to the vital point and after reading the charge asked the prisoner if he was guilty. The prisoner responded, “Yes.” “Ten dollars fine or ten days in jail,” declared the court. “To jail,” replied the prisoner.
100 Years Ago 1922
From The East Hampton Star, December 22
Springs school closed Wednesday afternoon for the Christmas vacation. A program consisting of songs, recitations, exercises, and a play was rendered, after which Santa Claus came and presented each child with a box of candy.
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Two more Amagansett sportsmen were arrested this week for trespassing on the Montauk property and this time it looks as though something definite would result. Those arrested were Sheldon Miller, Justice of the Peace, and Frank H. Edwards.
They were hunting last Friday on the Montauk property, the hunting privileges of which are leased by John H. Prentice. They were accosted by Jesse L. Milliard, one of the game wardens hired by the Montauk Company. No fuss was made by either the hunters or the warden and it was a mutual agreement that the two hunters would appear before Justice C. Louis Edwards.
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At a special meeting of the Bridgehampton Spud Lifters’ Pedro Club on Monday night, Grand Mogul Harry Fay arose and offered the following resolution, which was adopted without a dissenting vote: “Whereas, this club has been dubbed by the East Hampton cracker barrel team as a lot of ‘has beens’: Be it resolved, that this club make another dying effort to lift that beautiful championship cup that has been slumbering in the attic of Count Molaski, East Hampton, all these years.”
75 Years Ago 1947
From The East Hampton Star, December 25
Families of veterans who are buried overseas should be warned of unscrupulous groups who engage in rackets concerning these honored dead, James Van Orden, director of the Suffolk County Veterans Service Agency, warned ex-servicemen’s organizations this week.
“Some misrepresent themselves as being officially associated with the return of war dead from foreign shores and offer, at a fee, to provide special care of the veteran’s grave or to obtain photographs of it,” said Mr. Van Orden. “These, of course, are faked,” he continued. “Overseas military cemeteries are under the jurisdiction of the United States government, and the best of care possible is given them.”
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A community sing has been planned by the Guild Hall Winter Committee for its next “At Home” Day for members and their friends on Sunday, December 28, from 4 to 6 o’clock in the Moran Gallery.
Mrs. Louis Vetault is chairman of arrangements and will be assisted by Mrs. John F. Williams, Mrs. I.Y. Halsey and Mrs. Hugh Gage. This committee has not only planned the program but will also furnish refreshments.
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Mrs. N.H. Dayton, chairman of the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society’s Cook Book Committee, asks everyone to send in recipes for the new book at once, before Jan. 1 if possible. She has been promised many interesting recipes, both new and old family dishes.
50 Years Ago 1972
From The East Hampton Star, December 21
The East Hampton Village Planning Board held an open meeting Friday night to find out what the public thought of “Pondview,” the development proposed for 17 vacant acres behind Guild Hall, and to answer questions about it. About 15 persons, half of the audience, spoke for the public; one expressed enthusiasm for the project and the rest indicated varying degrees of polite dissatisfaction with it. Several suggested that it might be limited but none that it could be prevented altogether.
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The East Hampton Village Board at its meeting last Friday night covered such subjects as dedication to the Village of a subdivisions reserved area, a possible purchase that would apparently assure Village residents of access to Georgica Pond, and street lighting on Main Street between Huntting Lane and Guild Hall.
The South Fork can be a model to conservationists if this area remains a place where people can come to have their spirit restored, Dr. Ian Marceau, executive director of the Group for America’s South Fork, told a meeting sponsored by the Sag Harbor Conservationists on Dec. 14.
The meeting included a discussion of the proposed sewage treatment plant for the Village.
25 Years Ago 1997
From The East Hampton Star, December 22
Outgoing East Hampton Town Republicans, in a parting gesture of defiance, last Thursday night approved a hotly debated measure to expand the Town Trustees’ authority over waterfront development.
The incoming Democratic majority, however, called the action futile.
Supervisor Cathy Lester said the new board’s “first order of business” would be to repeal the Trustee environmental review permit, as the law is known.
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As Jay Schneiderman walked with a group of Ross School students along the oceanside cliffs in Montauk last spring, he had no idea that the unusual rock he’d found might turn out to be a fossil of an extinct tropical plant, perhaps as much as 65 to 120 million years old.
Mr. Schneiderman, who lives in Montauk, was teaching sixth graders from the private East Hampton school about erosion and showing them how rain “carves out these incredible shapes in the cliffs there,” he recalled this week.
He was pointing out evidence of erosion all around them, even on rocks worn smooth by the sea, when “all of a sudden I looked down at a rock that didn’t look like the others. . . . It was quite heavy. It was hard for me to pick up.”
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Increased numbers of people have been calling on local food pantries this year, the apparent result of the growing number of seasonal workers who call the South Fork home. And, while managers report the pantries are well stocked now, they have issued a call for contributions in the winter months ahead.
The pantries are in the middle of their busiest season now, making sure the poor, the elderly, and the just-barely-making-it have enough, not to feast on, but to eat.
