125 Years Ago 1898
From The East Hampton Star, July 8
The fireworks at the Maidstone club Monday night comprised about the only celebration of the Fourth in East Hampton. The display was the best ever made at the club, and was witnessed by hundreds of people. The fireworks used cost in the neighborhood of $200.
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Poultry Notes
All old males should go to the market or soup pot.
A few broods hatched out in August will make nice broilers early in the fall.
Fall chickens are easily raised provided the lice are kept off.
Do not neglect to feed the fowls now and expect them to live off of grass.
Keep the coops and yards sweet by freely using air-slaked lime.
If the hens are afflicted with lice when they are given a brood of checks, the lice will leave the hens and infest the chicks.
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Bridgehampton
O.C. Lane, Jr., well scorching the road with his wheel on Friday last, was thrown from his machine and rendered unconscious, in which condition he remained three hours. He was given careful medical attendance and although is now able to be out, he is still suffering from the shock. Lane is a clerk in D.L. Chester’s store.
100 Years Ago 1923
From The East Hampton Star, July 6
Last Friday evening over 150 members of the East Hampton Fire Department and several guests enjoyed the annual firemen’s dinner at the Three-Mile Harbor pavilion. The seating accommodations in the large dining room were rather limited, after the firemen had filed in and taken their places at the long tables, of which there were several. Proprietor and Mrs. Andrew Carson had made every effort to ensure prompt service and had provided for every comfort of their guests.
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The “Vegetation of Montauk,” by Norman Taylor, a curator at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, has just been issued by the garden as part one of the second volume of its Memoirs. The region is little known, although its rolling grass-covered downs excite the interest of all who see this most picturesque landscape, which is at the extreme easterly end of Long Island.
More wind blows there than at Hatteras, and it blows with greater velocity than anywhere else on the Atlantic coast.
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Starting last Saturday and ending tomorrow night, Edwin C. Halsey Post, American Legion, has been conducting a lively carnival on the Maidstone Park property, near the freight station. The grounds were packed with people seeking enlivenment and pleasure on Fourth of July night, after the fireworks display at the bathing beach.
The Legion boys are working in conjunction with Andrew Prudent and his carnival company of Patchogue. This year Mr. Prudent brought a new $7,000 merry-go-round to East Hampton, which has given much enjoyment to both young and old.
75 Years Ago 1948
From The East Hampton Star, July 8
Lee A. Hayes, son of Mr. and Mrs. G.L. Hayes, has graduated from the two-year course in Aircraft Maintenance and Operation at the Long Island Agricultural and Technical Institute at Farmingdale, L.I. Lee served 39 months with the Air Force and graduated from East Hampton High School in 1942.
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A new history of Amagansett, in limited edition, will be published very soon by the Amagansett Village Improvement Society, it was announced by Mrs. David U. Snyder, President. This new history is part of Amagansett’s contribution to the Tercentenary Program now in progress.
There will be brought together for the first time a comprehensive collection of material from various sources about the village of Amagansett, settled only a few years after East Hampton.
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The East Hampton Town Police Department, Harry M. Steele, Chief, reports the following activities for the month of June:
Complaints investigated and closed, 34; reports, 68; telephone calls, 165; arrests, 10; fires attended and investigated, 1; missing persons, 1; missing persons located, 1; special requests, 25; general alarms, 19; cancellations of general alarms, 7.
50 Years Ago 1973
From The East Hampton Star, July 5
After ten years of legislative indecision and the permanent loss to Suffolk County of more than 4,000 irreplaceable wetlands acres, New York State last week threw its enormous financial and administrative muscle behind the fight for wetlands conservation as Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed into law a bill which will preserve and protect the estimated 150,000 acres remaining in the State.
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The White House “enemies list,” allegedly authored by Charles W. Colson, former special White House counsel, points an accusatory finger at not a few South Fork residents and visitors.
Although there are only a couple “enemies of the people” named whom we can claim as “locals,” the fact that the entire New York Times was cited clearly puts us over the top. The woods are full of Timesmen — past, present, year-round residents or part-time. To name a few — Alden Whitman, Harold Schonberg, Ted Strongin, Pat Peterson, Craig Claiborne, Amory Bradford, Herbert Mitgang, Theodore Bernstein. . . .
In addition, a cursory glance of the scores of names on the lists attributed to Mr. Colson and to John W. Dean III produces the following, who have visited this area from time to time: Paul Newman, in the “top 20” — he was number 19 — Leonard Bernstein, Barbra Streisand, and Pete Hamill.
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Montauk
The first of the free concerts to be given at Gosman’s Dock will be held on Sunday, from 5 to 7 p.m. The featured performer will be a Down Beat Award winner, Toots Thielemans, a guitarist and harmonica player who is a featured player with Quincy Jones. Guests have been asked to bring their own chairs or pillows.
25 Years Ago 1998
From The East Hampton Star, July 9
East Hampton Town has begun prosecuting employers who hold Suffolk County Health Department permits for “migrant farmworker housing,” even as the employers protest that in the face of town law and a tight market they are putting up their much-needed seasonal workers as best they can.
“There’s not much out here in housing that our workers can afford. I equate it with Aspen and other prominent resort areas — they have the same problem — but our labor force has to come from somewhere and workers have to get affordable housing,” said Jack Whitmore, whose family owns a nursery and landscaping firm.
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“Praise God! Hallelujah! I’ll never build anything else in this town.”
So declared the Rev. Donald Desmond, the pastor of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church, on July 1, on receiving permission (after what seemed to him an eternity) to build a 7,200-square-foot parish house on the church’s 8.13-acre Buell Lane property.
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Imagine a place with crystal-clear ocean water, gentle winds, thousands of leaping and frolicking bottlenose dolphins, grazing whales, sashaying sharks, and bullet-shaped tuna plowing the blue-green surface after dense schools of prey.
On the shore, bathers shout happily about the ocean’s rapid warming as they wade into it, their only complaint an increasing number of jellyfish, including the stinging red lion’s mane.
Those lucky enough to have been offshore, or even on shore, in the last few weeks will recognize the place as the East End.
