125 Years Ago 1899
From The East Hampton Star, December 22
Everything points to the return of the glove fitting sleeve, recalling the discomforts of several years ago, when for a woman to raise her arms above her head was an impossibility without the accompaniment of ripped seams and bursting elbows. Now that women with one accord remove their hats in theaters, the serious question arises of how it is to be accomplished. By using one arm only a hat can be dragged off at the expense of sadly disarranging the hair, but to readjust one’s headgear is another matter and quite impossible without retiring to the dressing room and unfastening one’s bodice.
Washington goes hatless to evening entertainments, a convenient scarf being the only head covering, and triumphs over New York in this display of personal comfort and common sense. If some fearless spirit would inaugurate this sensible custom here it would, once established, be eagerly followed.
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Golf balls are going up. This is due, not to the formation of a clique on the part of manufacturers, but to the enhanced cost of gutta-percha, resulting from the increased demand of the popularity of golf. It is estimated that the United States will need about 2,000,000 golf balls next season.
100 Years Ago 1924
From The East Hampton Star, December 19
To each county in the State where a Christmas tree farm shall be established, the New York College of Forestry at Syracuse University will contribute 5,000 young trees to help start the farm.
The Christmas tree farm is a new idea. The demand for Christmas trees in the United States, probably between ten and fifteen million annually, is making profitable the artificial production of trees for the holiday market. This demand opened an opportunity for municipalities, Boy Scouts, rural and city schools, and the individual in the growing of Christmas trees.
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Residents of East Hampton, including men, women and children, have, within the past few days, received the reward of their weekly Christmas Club savings. They started the club last December, with this December and either $25, $50, or $100 as their objective. Some have won and others have partly won, and the prospects for a much larger club in the coming year are bright.
The East Hampton National Bank instituted this idea of the Christmas Club several years ago, the first year the checks amounting to over $2,000. This year the bank has mailed out $8,443 in Christmas Club checks to 120 members. The 1925 Club has already started with weekly dues of fifty cents, $1.00, $2.00, or $5.00.
75 Years Ago 1949
From The East Hampton Star, December 22
The announced intention of the Public Service Commission to carry out an investigation of the Long Island Railroad with particular attention to the carrier’s finances, rates and relationship with the Pennsylvania Railroad has the full approval of Suffolk County. A resolution endorsing the proposed inquiry was adopted Monday by the Board of Supervisors, which also called upon the railroad to restore express passenger service on both the north and south forks of Long Island.
Holding that “the proper operation of the Long Island Railroad is essential to the life, progress, and prosperity of Long Island,” the board promised its support and cooperation in the P.S.C. investigation.
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The Old Barn Book Shop, which has been subjected to a long series of petty thieveries, was broken into again on Sunday evening when Mrs. H. LeRoy Satterlee and her daughter, who had been working there all afternoon, went out for dinner; it was during that time that a pane of glass was broken with a stone and the cash drawer left hanging open. Luckily, they had left no money in it. The thief left footprints — man size — in the shop. He entered by stepping on the cover over an oil tank at the back of the shop, and removed a row of little Santa Claus figures from a shelf hanging across the window, before he reached in, lifted the catch, and entered. The little Santa Clauses were left in a neat row on the box, out in the rain.
50 Years Ago 1974
From The East Hampton Star, December 19
A Town’s Public Works Superintendent can be no one but that Town’s Highway Superintendent, a State Supreme Court judge ruled last week. East Hampton’s Public Works Superintendent had always been the Highway Superintendent until last Jan. 2, the day after the newly elected Democratic Superintendent took office, when a Republican Town Councilman was appointed to the Public Works post by the majority vote of himself and the other two Republican Councilmen.
Highway Superintendent John Bistrian sued, claiming that the Town Board was “ousting” him as the duly elected Superintendent and “denuding” his legal authority. Justice Charles R. Thom agreed, in a brief decision declaring the Republicans’ appointment “null and void.”
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Several East Hampton Village residents, owners of oceanfront property off Lily Pond Lane, plan to build a fortification against the sea. Their project has apparently encountered little difficulty with permit requirements or opposition from environmentalists; the Group for America’s South Fork, indeed, considered it harmless, as well as necessary, from the property owners’ point of view, to save their houses.
What is planned is a 760-foot revetment set into the base of the dune, running from an existing rock jetty at the west of Mrs. Morgan Whitney’s property, across the front of Mr. and Mrs. John McCulloch’s, to the eastern boundary of Mrs. Woodin Miner’s. It would consist of buried rocks and “Sta-Pods,” topped by a two-foot layer of “blanket stone,” topped in turn by a layer of close-set boulders.
25 Years Ago 1999
From The East Hampton Star, December 23
There is a whole generation of Montaukers who learned not to hear the ZZZZZt that sounded every 15 seconds on their radios beginning in the early ‘60s and ending in 1979. Most locals knew the sound was made by the big radar dish out by Montauk Point, but few knew of the major role the small sound was playing in the cold war.
Three years after the end of World War II, an Air Force base was superimposed upon the United States Army’s Camp Hero, an artillery position during the war. The gun emplacement held three 16-inch cannons, each capable of hurling an explosive projectile weighing nearly a ton over a distance of 15 miles.
Montauk’s guns, along with a series of fire-control bunkers placed at intervals along the coast, were built in 1942 as a result of increased U-boat activity. The Air Force’s 773rd Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron took over the old Army base in 1948 in order to adapt Montauk’s geographically important location to the cold war.
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The Department of Agriculture is considering making its Plum Island Animal Disease Center a “bio-safety level four” facility where it would do research on viruses and other agents that transmit lethal diseases.
“Personally, my concern is terrorism more than anything else,” Jean Cochran, Supervisor of Southold Town, where Plum Island is located, told East End officials. “The island is open to anyone who wants to go on it — morning, afternoon, or night.”
