A time-honored tradition, the Springs School opera, is ready to take the stage for the 21st consecutive year. This year’s fourth-grade opera company — 79 Watch Us Shine, referencing the number of students in fourth grade at the start of the year — will present its original production, “The Case of the Missing Pollock,” on Wednesday at 7 p.m., the only performance open to the public. It is free of charge.

Not only is this a new date for the opera (it is usually held in January) but instead of Guild Hall, the venue has shifted to the East Hampton High School auditorium. But make no mistake, what remains the same is the level of creativity, professionalism, and enthusiasm generated by the school’s fourth-grade ensemble.

At a rehearsal on Tuesday, the pint-size performers appeared poised and prepared, listening intently to directions from Amanda Waleko, a second-grade teacher, and Meghan Lydon, a fourth-grade teacher by day and the coordinator of the opera event in her down time. There were no signs of stage fright.

“We’ve been practicing for so long that I don’t think any of us are nervous,” said Jocelynn Watson, who, while munching on Goldfish during a break, explained that her family relocated from Texas this year and she started at Springs in September. “No way did I expect this play to be so detailed. I’ve performed in many school plays and nothing has been anything like this,” she said. Jocelynn plays a central figure embroiled in the mystery of a missing Jackson Pollock painting.

Brynley Lys plays a British waitress at the Springs Tavern, who wears a uniform with a shell design on it, the young girl explained. “And I have to speak with an English accent,” she said.

The opera, as is the tradition, weaves together local history, original East End characters, storytelling, and music. This year, however, the group wanted to make it a mystery. The interest in this genre, explained Ms. Lydon, could have been sparked during the students’ third-grade literacy class, in which they read mysteries. In the fall, students began brainstorming names for this year’s production company as well as story ideas. During another annual tradition — the fourth-grade field trip to the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs — a lightbulb went off.

“I think they got especially excited,” said Ms. Lydon, “because of the possibility of really colorful sets and a range of interesting characters.”

Five student writers got working on the script and lyrics with the help of Angelina Molina, the musical directors, and Kyril Bromley, who wrote the original music. Every fourth grader, said Ms. Lydon, gets involved, performing, conceptualizing, costume making, helping with set design, basic choreography, and serving as stagehands and fund-raisers. “We even have our very own P.R. team,” she added.

This beloved tradition has such a lasting effect on students that Dana Chittavong, a 2011 Springs graduate and ex-opera performer, currently at college where she hopes to study theater education, was there at Tuesday’s rehearsal to lend a hand.

Colleen McKee, who plays Annie, one of the detectives on the trail of the missing painting, said she wasn’t at all nervous about next week’s performance. “I’ve done loads of dancing,” she said with the air of a seasoned professional, “so I’m totally used to this.”

Schoolday performances will be held for students from nearby schools but adults have just one chance to see the culmination of months of work by a group of talented theater apprentices.

“The Case of the Missing Pollock” will open for the general public on Wednesday at the East Hampton High School auditorium. Special school performances will be held next Thursday and Friday, Dec. 8.

Two men remained in county jail yesterday morning after being arrested Saturday night, unable to meet the relatively low bail amounts set during Sunday morning arraignments. One of the two is accused of trespassing on Ronald Baron’s Further Lane, East Hampton, estate. The other is charged with menacing as a misdemeanor and may be in danger of deportation.

Michael Antoine Christian, 32, of Baltimore was arrested Saturday night on the trespassing charge. He had climbed a long walkway from the beach over the double dunes that lead to Mr. Baron’s property in East Hampton Village. Mr. Baron was not there at the time. Police said that after entering through a gate, Mr. Christian tried to force open a door, which set off an alarm. Thomas Schiefer, Mr. Baron’s caretaker, was alerted, headed to the property, and held Mr. Christian until East Hampton Village police arrived.

Mr. Christian has a criminal record. Carl Irace represented him Sunday, as part of the county’s program to ensure that indigent defendants have a lawyer at arraignments. Mr. Irace reported that Mr. Christian is facing an open charge in Patchogue.

 On Saturday, Mr. Christian had been on a Long Island Rail Road train headed east to Patchogue, where he has been living, but fell asleep, not waking until the train reached Montauk. “He walked from Montauk train station all the way to East Hampton along the beach,” Mr. Irace told East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky. But he apparently hurt his leg along the way and was unable to stand during his arraignment. Many hours after sunset, Mr. Christian allegedly sought shelter, climbing onto Mr. Baron’s property.  Mr. Baron's 2007 purchase of the property set a United States record for private real estate.

The trespassing charge is classified a B misdemeanor, the lowest possible charge still considered a crime. Justice Tekulsky set bail at $100. If he did not make bail yesterday, he was to be brought back to East Hampton. If he enters a guilty plea, he is likely to be sentenced to time served and released. 

The other man arrested Saturday who remained in custody yesterday was Surith Z. Chavez, 25, of Springs. According to police, Mr. Chavez had been watching television in a Copeces Lane house in that hamlet Saturday night with another man, Francis Burke. In a statement, Mr. Burke said Mr. Chavez was extremely intoxicated and began cursing and shouting while speaking to his wife on the phone. Mr. Chavez allegedly turned his wrath on Mr. Burke, knocking him down and chasing him into the backyard. It is alleged that Mr. Chavez again knocked Mr. Burke down and then picked up a sledgehammer, wielding it over the downed man. “I begged him just to drop the thing and not to hurt me,” Mr. Burke said. Mr. Chavez did drop the sledgehammer, police said.

Mr. Chavez had been convicted of misdemeanor trespassing in East Hampton in 2014. Bail, yet to be posted as of yesterday, was set at $500. However, Justice Tekulsky said during Mr. Chavez’s arraignment that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had classified him as not admissible to this country. It is not clear if a formal detainer request had been made for Mr. Chavez, who is originally from Mexico.

A spirited competition among the East Hampton, Southampton, and Bridgehampton offices of the real estate firm Saunders and Associates to see which could gather the most food for food pantries brought in more than 14,000 donated items of food by the Nov. 15 deadline. Anne White and Molly Sheppard — the former a copywriter with the firm, the latter a graphic designer — helped organize and coordinate the drive, now in its third year.

The East Hampton office, which won the competition by a “fairly good margin,” Ms. White said, donated all it gathered to the East Hampton Food Pantry. That office gathered so much food that it entirely filled the back of a cargo van. 

The Bridgehampton branch donated its offerings to that hamlet’s pantry, while the Southampton office split its goods between the Southampton and Westhampton pantries. 

“It was a group effort,” Ms. White said. “We all pitched in.”

Brokers, agents, and office staff members were all involved. They were given a list of most-needed items to work from. Donors were steered away from glass containers and asked to focus on foods in cans or plastic jars. The list of sought-after edibles included canned vegetables and fruits, soups, apple sauce, tuna fish, peanut butter and jelly, spaghetti sauce, and coffee. 

The effort is part of the company’s ongoing commitment to supporting the communities they are in, according to its organizers. 

It was a “friendly competition,” said Ms. White, who works out of the Bridgehampton office. It was lively, with a sharp elbow or two — all in good fun. Agents in each office would team up, taking in their donations en masse, then challenge others in the same office to match them. As the contest deadline was closing in, someone from the East Hampton office called Bridgehampton, trying to ascertain how many cans they had collected. “East Hampton was very motivated, for sure,” Ms. White said. She warned that the East Hampton office should not rest on its laurels. “We’ll be back,” she promised, laughing, about her office’s prospects in next year’s food drive. 

Ms. White and Ms. Sheppard also coordinated the delivery of the food to the pantries. 

The heavy lifting may be over, but Saunders and Associates isn’t finished with its effort, Ms. White said: Colleen and Andrew Saunders are following up with a donation to the pantries, matching the value of the food collected with cash.

A longstanding East Hampton Housing Authority plan for affordable housing on a vacant 4.6-acre site on the north side of Montauk Highway in Amagansett underwent preliminary review by the East Hampton Town Planning Board on Nov. 15. The property stretches from a long-shuttered restaurant just east of the Amagansett I.G.A. to the Shell V&V gas station and backs up to the Long Island Rail Road tracks.

The plan calls for 38 apartments in seven one-story and three two-story buildings, a mixed-use building with four commercial spaces, each having an accessory studio apartment, an 1,872-square-foot, single-story common building, and a sewage treatment facility.

Each of the one-story buildings would contain one one-bedroom and one two-bedroom apartments. One two-story building is designed for four three-bedroom apartments, while another would contain four one-bedroom and four two-bedroom apartments.

Katherine Casey, the authority’s director, described the financial structure, telling the board the project would be self-sustaining. “There is no ongoing subsidy,” she said. Although some of the tenants would be subsidized under federal Section 8 guidelines, there would be no grants from the town, county, state, or federal government. “Rent revenues carry the project,” she said

Ms. Casey described a tiered rent system. A one-bedroom would start at $1,425 a month, a two-bedroom at $1,630, and three bedrooms from $2,300 or $2,400. Among other details, she said, the studio apartments would house employees of the businesses, and tenants would be expected to be year-round residents. Every year, rents would be based on residents’ income so that no one would be displaced.

Nancy Keeshan, a board member, asked if the tenants would be restricted to those from East Hampton. Ms. Casey responded that those who live or work in town would get preference, but that someone from a nearby area, say Southampton, could apply.

Tony Musso, the project’s architect, also attended the meeting, describing solar panels dispersed across the grounds, a community garden, and a playground.

One of the hurdles the authority faces is a town code prohibition on more than one use on given piece of property. According to JoAnne Pahwul, the assistant planning director, the site is one of two unusual parcels that are in an affordable housing overlay district as well as a limited business overlay district. In 2016, the town board discussed revising the code to allow a property in both overlay districts to contain both uses, she told the board, although it did not act.

The first member of the public to speak was James McMillan, an Amagansetter who questioned the need for businesses on the property at all. He pointed to several business buildings across the highway and noted that some have vacant spaces. Board members echoed that sentiment.

“My initial take is to get rid of the mixed-business use,” Randy Parsons, a board member, said. Another member, Ian Calder-Piedmonte, said, “From a planning prospective, I don’t understand it.”

Board members also were unsatisfied by the extent to which the development cuts into open space, and asked whether the single and two-story structures could be combined. Patti Leber asked if a three-dimensional model could be created so the board could better understand the proposal and its visual impact. Others who spoke were concerned about the number of students the project would add to the Amagansett School. An alarm about this had been heard when the proposal was first approached.

“My children are in Amagansett School. I love Amagansett. I want to keep the character of Amagansett. I understand affordable housing. Amagansett is a small town. For such a small town, it is a very big project,” Randi Ball said, estimating that the project would add about 40 children to the school.

“With this project, you’re dumping everything into Amagansett,” another resident, Michael Jordan, said. He also asked where the workers who service the septic system would come from.

“Everybody loves affordable housing, except when it is in their area,” Mr. Calder-Piedmonte said.

Bonnie Krupinski, a member of the Bistrian family, which owns 35 acres on the other side of the tracks to the north, said that if the proposed property were rezoned to allow two uses on the site, her family’s acreage should also be included. It would otherwise be a case of spot zoning, she said, threatening legal action.

Job Potter, the board chairman, expressed overall support, as did the other members, while Kathleen Cunningham and Diana Weir called for a traffic study to assess the effect on the highway of cars going in and out of the 88 parking spaces proposed. 

A barn on East Hampton Town’s Amagansett Farm property, 19 acres of farmland purchased to save it from becoming a 79-unit luxury housing development, will be demolished, according to a town board decision last week.

The $10.1 million purchase in 2014 was made using the community preservation fund with an eye toward leasing the site to a farmer.

The site was initially developed as a horse farm by its owners at the time, the Principi family, and the barn was set up as a stable. Its second floor has a kitchen and offices and what had been intended for use as an apartment.

The building “was not a well-built building” and is in disrepair, Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, now the supervisor-elect, said Monday. A back deck and stairs that had rotted had to be removed, and there are “major cracks in the foundation,” he said.

The town had received six proposals in 2014 from people interested in the use of the land and the barn, including from a horse breeder, a farming collaborative, a grower of hydroponic greens, and a farmer of aronia berries (also known as chokeberries).

The cost of the barn’s repair and maintenance, however, proved to be an impediment, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “That’s a big building, and it’s a big expense.” In addition, it was discovered that “the quality of the soil is poor at best. Most of the topsoil has been stripped off that land.”

Complicating matters was that questions were raised as to whether the purchase of the acreage with the barn on it was a legitimate preservation fund expenditure under the terms of the program, which is geared toward agricultural, open space, and historical preservation. The question was put to a regional preservation fund advisory opinions board, but, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, the board never issued a ruling.

Meanwhile, a complaint to the Suffolk County district attorney about the purchase of the land and potential leases prompted an inquiry. The D.A.’s office does not comment on potential or ongoing investigations, and town officials have not been notified whether the matter is still under examination.

A town board decision to issue a second call for proposals, with separate ideas sought for the use of the farmland only, or the use of both the land and the barn, was reversed after members of the public, in particular the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, said they would rather see the site remain an open vista.

Future use of the site is likely to include facilities for passive recreation, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, such as trails and perhaps an improved path that could be safely used by people with disabilities or children learning to ride bicycles.

Removal of the barn, however, would not preclude farming there in the future, he said. “I wouldn’t rule it out, personally.” There is a bocce court on the site, he added, which could be retained.

The property was formerly referred to as the 555 site, in reference to one of the street numbers in its address, and by the name of a former owner, a Connecticut development company called Putnam Bridge.

Putnam Bridge retained a four-and-a-half-acre lot with highway frontage, adjacent in the rear to the two lots that make up the town’s 19 acres. That property, zoned for affordable housing, was then sold to the East Hampton Housing Authority, which is planning an affordable housing complex there.

The town is seeking bids on the barn demolition, at a cost not to exceed $35,000. Bids must be submitted to the Purchasing Department by Dec. 7. A pre-bid meeting and site visit, attendance at which is strongly suggested but not mandatory, will take place at the property, at 551 Montauk Highway, at 11 a.m. on Wednesday. Bid specifications are available from the purchasing office.  

Sitting around a table strewn with half-eaten packages of cookies and chips, the Guild Hall Teen Arts Council held its weekly brainstorming meeting as part of an initiative aimed at giving young people a bigger stake in the future of the arts and offering teens more cultural opportunities here on the East End.

But first, the paid council members — students ages 14 to 18 from East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Bridgehampton public schools and the Ross School — had a photography assignment to complete. Jeremy Dennis, a young artist born and raised on the Shinnecock Reservation who uses digital photography to bring to life Native-American stories and legends, asked the kids to take their mobile phones outside and snap images using prompts such as “line,” “rule of odds,” “negative space,” and “frame within frame.” 

Of the 11 council members selected in February through an interview process, only five were present for the mid-November meeting: Lilah Yektai, a ninth grader from the Ross School; Gianna Gregorio, a senior at East Hampton; Frankie Bademci, a junior at East Hampton; Victoria Dudek-Tipton, a 10th grader from Sag Harbor’s Pierson, and Madeleine Grabb, a sophomore from Bridgehampton. The group meets about once a week, for approximately two hours after school during the academic year. Each member is paid $10 an hour for his or her work and, once selected, members remain on the council until graduation, after which a new council member is hired.

The Guild Hall Teen Arts Council is modeled after one that began in 1996 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and was later adopted by arts institutions around the country. Andrea Grover, Guild Hall’s executive director, got a close-up view of a similar teen initiative when her husband, Carlos Lama, ran the teen council at the Contemporary Arts Museum Hous­­ton. 

“Even beyond the actual programming,” said Ms. Grover of her current group, “they bring enthusiasm and renewed energy to Guild Hall. And by paying them for their time and their input, these teens develop an inherent value in the future of this institution.”

The first event unveiled by the council, which came in May as part of the Guild Gathering series, was  “teen takeover,” a creative networking night aimed at engaging, cultivating, and connecting artists, professionals, and the public. 

The young council members enlisted three emerging local artists (Brianna Ashe, Leah Kirts, and Amanda Phelan) to deliver short presentations on the theme of “connections.” Then they orchestrated an interactive art and word exploration based on the “Before I Die” project, a global participatory art enterprise that reimagines the public’s relationship with death. 

At Guild Hall, guests were encouraged to answer — with words or images — questions such as “Where did you see yourself in 10 years?” “How do you lead a satisfying life?” and “What’s your Goldberg’s [bagels] order?” The goal was to find connections between guests and open up a dialogue between people that might not have happened organically. It was followed by a chance for attendees to mix and mingle in the Boots Lamb Education Center, which serves as the teen council headquarters.

“They took over the event entirely,” said Ms. Grover. “It was their idea, and they generated absolutely everything.” The evening, which was free and open to all, was a huge success, said Ms. Grover.

“It was really well attended,” said Gianna, who will graduate from high school next year and therefore leave the council. “We had about 50 people, a mix of students, parents, and friends.” 

In the wake of that success, these teen programmers hope that their weekly workshops will generate even more galvanizing initiatives.

“I’m always inspired after I leave our meetings, to do more,” said Frankie, an outspoken and witty young man who thinks he might like to pursue musical theater in college. Asked to share some of the ideas they’ve been kicking around, the teens generated a rapid-fire list of artsy ways to connect to other teenagers in the area.

“A teen town hall. Vocalize teen issues and get the teens involved.” “Teen nights — a sort of social experiment to help teens be comfortable in the arts and in the theater.” 

“More master classes, more workshops.”

“We need to put the arts in Teen Arts Council.”

“An artist match-up. Artists with similar interests get together for coffee, or something. Without it being creepy.”

“What do you think about a telethon?”

The job of harnessing all this teen spirit falls on Corey Jane Cardoso. She joined Guild Hall three years ago as a company manager, but was asked last year by Ms. Grover to spearhead the teen council. “The hardest part for me is taking big ideas and helping them channel it into possible programming. They’re constantly bubbling over with ideas and grand schemes of what they’d like to produce and it’s really a matter of funding and space that limits them,” she said. 

Having worked at the Ross School’s summer camp for several years, Ms. Cardoso seems undaunted by the task of overseeing this think tank for creative teens. Part mentor and part facilitator, Ms. Cardoso highlighted two of her main goals with the program: First, she wants to show creatively driven teenagers that there are real career opportunities in the arts, that it can be a passion as well as a vocation. Second, she said, “I also really want to provide programming for teens in our community because there is such a lack of events for them. It’s a huge population out here, and when there isn’t anything to do, that’s when teens turn to drugs and alcohol to find entertainment.”

During last month’s fall fair in East Hampton, organized by the Chamber of Commerce, the Teen Arts Council set up and staffed a table in Herrick Park, where they sold a number of memberships to their peers. That surely made Ms. Grover and other managers at Guild Hall very happy, because everyone knows the future of theater lies in sparking the interest of young people.

The Marble Faun had his heart set on a pair of parrots.

Never mind that the porcelain figurines did not date to Big and Little Edie Beale’s era at Grey Gardens. They reminded Jerry Torre of “the better days of Grey Gardens,” of what it had been before he met Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale, as a teenager in the early 1970s at what was by then a dilapidated and overgrown mansion. Mr. Torre, a sculptor, asked Dyanna Nesbitt, a friend in East Hampton, if she would look out for the figurines and buy them for him at the Grey Gardens estate sale last weekend. 

People begin to line up by 8 a.m. Friday morning to be among the first admitted to the sale at the house made famous by Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis’s eccentric aunt and cousin, known as Big and Little Edie. An estate sale is always a popular affair in East Hampton, but this one had a special cachet, with the Grey Gardens name recalling the landmark 1975 Maysles brothers documentary that introduced the world to the Edies, by then living in squalor among a host of cats and raccoons.

Mr. Torre, whom Mrs. Beale nicknamed the Marble Faun, appeared in the “Grey Gardens” documentary and gained his own small degree of fame as the film’s popularity endured and the Beales’ story eventually spawned an HBO feature film, a Broadway musical, and more than a handful of fashion-runway shows. He was 15 or 16 at the time the documentary was made, a kid working on the nearby Getty estate who took it upon himself to lend a hand around Grey Gardens. Mrs. Beale “became like a second mother to me,” he said. “They were dear people. . . . It was the most interesting time in my life.” 

His own book about the time, “The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens,” written with Tony Maietta, is set to be published in January by Querelle Press. In 2012, a documentary of the same name was released, detailing Mr. Torre’s life after Grey Gardens. 

Ben Bradlee, the late executive editor of The Washington Post, and his wife, the journalist Sally Quinn, bought Grey Gardens in 1979 for a reported $220,000 and brought it back to its original glory. It recently sold for a reported $18 million. The house had originally been built as a summer place by Martha Bagg Philips, the daughter of John Sherman Bagg, who ran the Detroit Free Press. Susan Wexler of Behind the Hedge­rows was called in to oversee the estate sale in advance of the closing. “It took three weeks to put together” she said of the three-day sale, and by the end of Friday, there was barely anything left.

Drawn by the lore of the estate and the intrigue surrounding the Edies, people came from as far away as California, Texas, Chicago, Florida, Maine, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., hoping to purchase a piece of the legend or simply to peer inside the house. 

“There were people there from 4 o’clock in the morning,” Ms. Wexler said. “I had a night watchman because I was concerned people would camp out.”

“I had a couple of previews and I had to stop it because they wanted to buy everything,” Ms. Wexler said.

Though the Beales were long gone from Grey Gardens — Mrs. Beale died in 1977, her daughter in 2002 — items dating to their era remained in the house on East Hampton’s West End Road and were included in the sale. By 3 p.m. on Friday, everything dating to their time had been sold, Ms. Wexler said. “One of the guards caught somebody trying to pry up a piece of flagstone.”

“People were pulling bark off the tree in the front yard,” said Ms. Nesbitt, who was number 19 in line on Friday morning, and did, indeed secure the two parrot figurines for Mr. Torre. 

“There was a curio cabinet that had all these little ceramic and glass figures” dating to the Beales’ time, Ms. Wexler said. “These guys from California heard about it and they were second in line and they made a beeline for it.” They bought the cabinet and its entire contents.

By Sunday at 4 p.m., Ms. Wexler estimated that some 2,000 people had traipsed through Grey Gardens. “There was nothing left,” she said. “They just kept lining up.” 

She and her team had taken care to research the history of Grey Gardens and the provenance of the items within it, and had set informative placards throughout the house. “Most people were really nice,” she said. “They were so happy to see the house and learn about the lore and the history. . . . It was a real privilege to be able to do this.” 

“For people who were Grey Gardens fanatics and had never had an opportunity to see the house,” Ms. Nesbitt said, “this was it.” They bought up whatever they could get their hands on. She got herself a painted serving tray for $35. 

“I got a phone call from a lady who got home and unwrapped her packages and said, ‘I’m missing my can opener,’ ” Ms. Wexler said. “She bought it for 50 cents. It was not even original. She said, ‘I don’t care.’ ” It was mailed to the customer. 

“I don’t think I would have been comfortable with the onslaught of all those people in Mrs. Beale’s house,” Mr. Torre said Tuesday, but he is happy to have gotten a memento through his friend.

Ms. Wexler has handled other high-profile estate sales, among them one at the late Peter Matthiessen’s Sagaponack house, but this one was something special, she said.

“There’s never going to be another thing like it.” 

One man was seriously injured when a Long Island Rail Road train hit him, not far from the East Hampton Village train station on Saturday afternoon, according to East Hampton Village Police Detective Sgt. Greg Brown.

The 46-year-old man had a possible toe amputation, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital, the nearest level one trauma center. 

He was with another man, a 39-year-old, and they were walking on the tracks about a half mile east of the East Hampton station when they were struck at around 2:40 p.m., the M.T.A. said. Village Police Detective Brown said police do not believe that the second man was struck by the train, but he was transported to Southampton Hospital as a precaution, Detective Brown said.

According to one witness, two men were seen just before the incident walking through the Schenk Fuel parking lot, coming from Newtown Lane, and went onto the tracks. They were carrying brown paper bags with what appeared to be alcohol inside. 

The eastbound train came to a stop near the gas tanks, before the North Main Street trestle.

The incident involved the train that left the Jamaica, Queens, station at 12:10 p.m. and was due to arrive in Montauk just after 3 p.m. 

The East Hampton Fire Department and East Hampton Village Ambulance Association responded. The East Hampton Village police were handling the initial investigation, but the M.T.A. police were responding, as well. 

The train is being held at the scene, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman. A westbound train scheduled to leave Montauk at 3:30 p.m. was canceled. The M.T.A. was working to secure buses, but it was unclear if that had occurred yet. 

This article will be updated when more information is made available. 

He or she could be yours, if you get your bid in soon! A life-size giraffe sculpture that has been moldering in an East Hampton Village holding pen since it was discovered "grazing" at the edge of the Nature Trail a year and a half ago, will be sold to the highest bidder, the village board agreed Friday.

The giraffe had first appeared in various places in and around Napeague State Park starting in 2012, visible to a discerning giraffe spotter with binoculars or farsighted vision from Cranberry Hole Road. It eventually disappeared from that savannah-like habitat only to reappear in May 2016 chained to a tree near the Huntting Lane entrance to the Nature Trail in East Hampton Village. It is hard to imagine that the giraffe, at nearly 15 feet tall, could be moved about undetected, and yet no one ever admitted to having seen it arrive at the Nature Trail.

The curious story of its arrival and movements on the South Fork stands alongside such other local antics as the overnight greening of Town Pond and the fake submarine conning tower in the sump off Route 114.

Once the giraffe turned up in East Hampton Village, it was considered stolen property, and was relegated to the East Hampton Village Department of Public Works impound yard on Accabonac Road, where it is still unclaimed.

Now a lucky new owner could give it a happy home in time for the December holidays.

The village administrator will accept sealed bids for the giraffe at Village Hall until 2 p.m. on Dec. 12, at which point the winning bid will be announced. Those interested in obtaining the exotic creature, certainly not one native to these shores, have been asked to contact Rebecca Hansen for details and bidding requirements weekdays between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. at 631-324-4140, extension 11.

Whoever gets to take the creature home will be responsible for obtaining whatever town or village permits and variances are required to display it.

On June 21, 1913, the First and Second Cavalry Regiments of the New York National Guard departed for Montauk for what The Brooklyn Eagle called nine days of strenuous work. 

Their visit to the easternmost point in the state is all but unknown today, but the regiments’ stay there in the summer of 1913 was big news at the time. Now, after the Montauk Library purchased an album of photographs likely taken by one of the participants, this important history is coming to light.

When one thinks of the United States military and Montauk, Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and the Camp Hero cold war radar tower and World War II artillery emplacements come to mind. There are far more data points, however, including a Navy torpedo facility at Fort Pond Bay and dirigibles based there near the end of World War I. 

The 1913 National Guard and Army exercises, which included a contingent of artillery later in the summer, were designed to answer repeated criticism of the military at the time that it was unprepared for actual combat, having last seen action during the Spanish-American War, and that it often still drew on the Civil War as a model.

The failures were also the result of haphazard instruction and inadequate field training. Officers were insufficiently grounded in wartime theory and lacked experience managing a campaign. Medical officers were unable to read maps; few knew the principles of horsemanship. There were problems distributing food. 

Many of the deficiencies had been brought into focus the summer before during war games in Connecticut, when heat stroke and dehydration had taken down both men and horses. Ammunition was not where it was supposed to be. Some of the troops, having gone without food or water for 24 hours, collapsed on the battlefield, Maura Feeney, the Montauk Library’s local history librarian, said.

“The average infantry officer is unfamiliar with routine life in the field, and the fact is frequently cited that such officers have difficulty in obtaining rations for their commands,” Major Gen. John F. O’Ryan of the National Guard told The Brooklyn Eagle before the Montauk operation. 

Turning this around, General O’Ryan said, would take a systematic rethinking of how officers were trained. The exercises at Montauk placed seasoned veterans under the command of the green officers. Enlisted men who took part would go back to their companies more disciplined and trained, which, so the thinking went, would spread within the units. Officers would learn how a unit at what was called war strength was expected to perform.

Tests were to be run on new machine guns capable of firing at a rate of 400 rounds in a minute with a range of more than half a mile. According to The Brooklyn Eagle, based on how the guns performed, the military would decide whether to make them a standard part of cavalry equipment.

Each evening there would be a lecture in the mess tent and the day’s work gone over and criticized. The final night in camp was celebrated with a party and clambake on the ocean shore.

A reporter for The Brooklyn Eagle went to Montauk with the officers to watch as the camp with the latest sanitary improvements was laid out between Fort Pond and the ocean beach.

Drinking water was supplied from a well at the Montauk Inn. Orders were issued against the men going in the ocean. “A good many soldiers were drowned during the camp in 1898,” according the account in the The Eagle.

“During the coming week, drills and sham battles will be engaged in on the hills between the camp and the lighthouse, eight miles away, and the troops will also swim their horses across Fort Pond Bay.”

Much of the cavalry’s activities during the Montauk exercise are depicted in the photo album, which was purchased from a Connecticut bookseller. Images show horses being loaded onto railcars and being led off upon arrival. Others show the men in camp, grooming the horses, or on maneuvers. 

Ms. Feeney has been studying the album closely since it arrived at the Montauk Library. Among the officers in the Montauk exercise she identified was Col. Charles I. DeBevoise, a Yale graduate and former stockbroker who commanded the First New York Calvary. DeBevoise was sent to France early in World War I and commanded the 107th Infantry during the battle of the Hindenburg Line. He was promoted to brigadier general in October 1918, one of the few National Guard officers to reach the rank. He survived the war and received the Distinguished Service Medal.

Money for the album came from the library’s special fund and was approved by the board of trustees. “They were really excited about it,” Ms. Feeney said.

The cavalry’s days began with reveille at 5:30. The animals were to be fed first, then the men. Boots and saddles were to be on by 6:55 a.m. School for officers and the men would continue until dark. 

Despite the best intentions by the officers, everything did not go according to plan. Chief among the complaints by artillerymen returning to Brooklyn was a shortage of food. Rumors were that their exercise was provisioned for only 125 men. Some, the newspaper reported, resorted to foraging on the fat of the land.

“Here is the way it was the first week: Chicken and ice cream sometimes for supper, with delicious milk for coffee and all the butter we wanted to eat. And then at the end all we could get was canned stuff and with no butter and no milk,” one of the Brooklyn gun troop said. “Fancy yourself coming down from chicken and ice cream to such a layout as we had on the last day of the hike, the day we made the twelve miles from Amagansett to Montauk.”

“I tell you there were some gentle words said that night after our miserable apology for a dinner. We were all so mad that the canned salmon almost stuck in our throats.”

Officers quoted in The Eagle report dismissed the complaints as an expected thing. “No field tour would be complete without some kick as to food,” one said.

Nearly exactly four years later, on July 15, 1917, 24,000 members of the New York National Guard answered President Woodrow Wilson’s call for the Great War in Europe. Over 400,000 New Yorkers served in World War I, more than from any other state.

For the 1st Cavalry and other mounted units, the war was the end of the active-duty service, as new weapons, such as heavy artillery and tanks, and trench warfare rendered horses obsolete.