Leader Is Chosen

Sag Harbor

March 16, 1998

Dear Editor,

This letter comes from the Pharaoh family - direct descendants of Wyandanch, Uncle Stephen Talkhouse Pharaoh, great-grandparents King David Pharaoh and Queen Maria Pharaoh, Great-Aunt Princess Pocahontas Pharaoh - last person born on the Montauk reservation in 1878 - Uncle Chief Wyandank Pharaoh, grandparents Prince Ebenezer Pharaoh and wife, Harriet, parents, Prince Samuel D. Pharaoh and wife, Mary, and our beloved sister Queen Olive L. Pharaoh, who died in 1996.

It is the choice of the royal family to decide upon who shall be the leader of the Montaukett people. We the living heirs of the Pharaoh family have chosen and emphatically support Chief-Grand Sachem Robert P. Pharaoh, son of the late Queen Olive L. Pharaoh, in his continuing efforts to attain Federal recognition for the tribe.

Respectfully,

WILLIAM R. PHARAOH

Patriarch of the Pharaoh Family

CAROLYN M. PHARAOH

PEGGY PHARAOH BUTLER

The Royal Family of Montaukett Indians

A Challenge

Montauk

March 16, 1998

Dear Helen,

Those who saw the News 12 edition report on Robert Cooper's press conference are now fully aware of the farce being performed before the public. The motivations of this tiny group of people were quite apparent. Their statements clearly contradict previous denials and raise doubts about every aspect of their story. No Montaukett Indian would subject himself or our people to the ridicule that attended that event.

Your articles last week exposed the plan for a big casino. It also exposed Mr. Cooper's most destructive character. His press release showed a tremendous lack of judgment and was in the poorest of taste. It also showed a lack of basic understanding of Montaukett history. No Montaukett would have used that article from 1879 about Stephen Talkhouse's funeral to prove any point. The article is filled with racist stereotypes prevalent during that period and not reflective of our people.

The irrelevant, misleading, and downright wrong information contained in Mr. Cooper's release - tinged as it was by the use of odd racist undertones - is not something that any Montaukett I have ever known would have issued. A more disgraceful piece of trash has never been presented by anyone purporting to have the interests of the Montaukett Indians at heart.

The process for tribal recognition is one that requires individuals, especially those who form the council, to provide substantive documentation of one's heritage. I recently submitted my own information and, since rumors have been swirling around Mr. Cooper's own genealogy, I began to check his. What I found has led me to doubt whether Mr. Cooper can show a clear link to the Montauketts. I could not make the necessary connection of Mr. Cooper to Maria Fowler Pharaoh Johnson Banks or her son, Junius Leo Banks.

Perhaps there is a plausible explanation. But since the Bureau of Indian Affairs has certain standards that must be met, I challenge Mr. Cooper to produce birth records and marriage licenses showing that he is a true descendant and member of the Montaukett Tribe. Since he has taken potshots at others, Mr. Cooper should be more than willing to produce the required documentation.

In trying to prove that he is some sort of "chief" of the Montauketts, Mr. Cooper may have forgotten that one must first show, by documentation, that one is truly a Native American. For Mr. Cooper to raise all this fuss and bother, and to descend to the depths that he has descended to, if he knows, as I believe, that he cannot show any real connection to the Montauketts, would make Mr. Cooper pitiable, contemptible, or both.

Yours,

JIM DEVINE

Disinformation

East Hampton

March 13, 1998

Dear Editor,

Hillary Clinton's charge that the Monica Lewinsky matter is a right wing conspiracy is a very clever piece of disinformation.

The whole Lewinsky affair is actually a Democratic plot designed to close the gender gap by increasing the President's popularity among men.

The aim of the plot is to divert American men from Clinton's real flaw - his lack of manliness in dealing with the country's real challenges - chaotic health care, outrageous military expenditures, huge disparities of wealth, regressive taxes, scapegoating of seniors, corrupt campaign financing, and corporate welfare. To achieve this, the conspirators have tricked right-wingers into emphasizing the President's only male virtue, a lusty taste for sexual exploration with a consenting adult partner.

The right-wingers were sucked in. The plot, aided by Bob Dole's face-lift, is working. Check the polls. More and more men are supporting the President.

Sincerely,

RICHARD ROSENTHAL

Vision And Guts

Montauk

March 8, 1998

Dear Helen:

Like many people, I greatly admire much of what Mayor Giuliani is doing to revitalize New York City. Of particular note are his numerous courageous and successful efforts to improve living conditions for residents in the Big Apple by going after so-called "quality of life" violations of all kinds. Sadly, a growing number of similar issues here in East Hampton worsen each year and are going entirely unaddressed. Consider just three:

1. Ten years ago, the number of floodlights that violated the Town Code's 25-year-old prohibition against unshielded outdoor lighting visible across property lines from roads could be counted on two hands. Today there are hundreds of offenders and our dark rural night sky is well on its way to being lost forever.

Application of the light law would be relatively easy if the town's code enforcement people occasionally worked at night! An even easier thing the town could do would be to include a letter in the next annual property tax mailing, reminding all homeowners and businesspeople of the existence of the law and the need to comply with same. This would probably end two-thirds of the violations within months through voluntary compliance.

Individual follow-ups by code enforcement could then focus on remaining problems. However, numerous suggestions made over the last five years for such an informational mailing have elicited no response from town officials.

2. When the Town Zoning Code was revised in 1984, the Town Board took notice of conditions UpIsland and even at several locations along County Road 39 in Southampton and included the following language: "Any motor vehicle habitually parked so that markings, signboards, merchandise, images, etc., positioned thereon or located therein as business advertising may be viewed from an adjacent street or highway shall be deemed to constitute a 'sign' [for which a permit is required]."

At the time, nothing like this actually existed in East Hampton. Now, however, a number of such situations are painfully evident along our main roads. Two cases which arose just within the past year alongside the Montauk Highway (one in Amagansett and one in Montauk) are particularly tacky. However, requests to town officials that enforcement of the 1984 vehicle sign law be started have thus far brought no action. Can Jericho Turnpike be far behind?

3. We are in yet another building boom in our town. A visit to almost any neighborhood will show numerous houses under construction or in renovation. But there is a new twist this time.

It seems that on many of these projects, the contractors are now working seven days, right through the weekends. No doubt good for their bottom line. Not so good for everyone else. The sounds of heavy trucks, earth movers, cement mixers, hammers, power saws, and portable generators now punctuate the weekends in many East Hampton neighborhoods where year-round residents, second-home owners, and seasonal visitors - all of whom themselves work hard all week and have made substantial financial investments in their homes - are simply trying to relax and enjoy the beautiful place where they live.

As I write this letter on a Sunday morning, an UpIsland demolition crew is gutting a residence down the block - adding emphasis every minute or two by throwing lumber out of the windows into a nearly empty steel dumpster.

Forgive me for being old-fashioned, but I think these men should be home with their families. What they shouldn't be doing is stealing from the occupants of five or six nearby homes in this community a quiet Sunday otherwise to be enjoyed with family and friends.

It would be a simple matter to amend the East Hampton noise law (Town Code Chapter 106) to prohibit all audible construction noise on weekends (leaving painters, paperers, plumbers, spacklers, and electricians completely unaffected, incidentally). This would provide a modicum of relief to the residents of what is supposed to be, after all, a rural resort community!

A potential side benefit would be at least some reduction in the number of slow-moving trucks clogging the Montauk Highway on the weekends. Such a simple step - combined with the others I've mentioned - would help us hang onto at least a little bit of what has made our town such a special place to live, and seems to me the least the town fathers and mothers can do for the taxpayers.

What remains to be seen is if anyone around here has anything approaching Rudolph Giuliani's vision and guts.

Sincerely,

RUSSELL STEIN

"Pirates, Whales, Wrecks, and Salvage" sounds like the title of a swashbuckling adventure novel, but in fact it is the topic of the next lecture in the 350th Anniversary series. Noel Gish's talk, subtitled "East Hampton's Maritime History," will take place at Guild Hall on Friday, March 27.

The speaker, who heads the Historic Advisory Board of the Town of Smithtown, teaches history at Hauppauge High School. Mr. Gish is a trustee of the Smithtown Historical Society and of the Suffolk County Historical Society, and the author of "Smithtown, 1660-1929: Looking Back Through the Lens."

His lecture, which has been underwritten by the Edward F. Cook Agency, will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Richard F. White Jr.'s Montauk roots date back to 1928, when his grandfather opened White's Drug Store. The family has been civic activists ever since, and Dick White is no exception: in addition to both elected and appointed posts in East Hampton Town government, there is hardly a volunteer job he hasn't held.

A former East Hampton Town Councilman, town budget director, Montauk School Board member, Montauk Fire Department Commissioner, and member of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, Mr. White has a little more time now, since retiring as the proprietor of White's Liquor Store in Montauk, to pursue a lifelong passion - local history.

"My love of history was lit by a fellow by the name of Dick Gilmartin," he said in a recent interview. "As I was growing up, we had a loosely organized club called the Explorers Club. He would drive us all over the East End of Long Island, to different sites, and tell us what happened there. He made history come alive; he gave us this 'elixir.'

"From a very early age, I was given this inspiration, and it's directly related to him."

As chairman of the Montauk Historical Society's lighthouse committee, Mr. White was instrumental in the creation of the Montauk Lighthouse Museum more than a decade ago. Now, he said, it welcomes more than 100,000 visitors a year.

With the Lighthouse Museum having attained "world-class" status, said Mr. White, he and others are brainstorming a museum that will document Montauk's military history, to be located at Camp Hero. That project is "in the embryonic stage," he said, awaiting completion of New York State's master plan for the site.

Meanwhile, Mr. White, who serves as Montauk's representative to East Hampton Town's 350th anniversary committee, is helping to plan the centennial of the Montauk encampment of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, which, as fate would have it, dovetails neatly with the town's tricentquinquagenary celebration.

The Suffolk County Parks Department is collaborating on the first of several memorials to the Spanish-American War veterans, to be held Memorial Day weekend. On Labor Day weekend, Montauk will play host to a two-day extravaganza featuring a re-enactment of Camp Wikoff, where thousands of Rough Riders and other veterans of the war were sent to recover from yellow fever and other tropical illnesses, contracted during the fighting in Cuba. The weekend will also feature a vintage-1898 county fair and a Wild West show.

The group has lined up James Foote, a professional Roosevelt impersonator, to speak before a Sept. 18 parade through Montauk, another event Mr. White is helping to arrange.

Mr. White is retired in name only. In addition to his work for the anniversary committee and the Rough Riders centennial, he is the treasurer of the Montauk Fire Department and a trustee of the County Parks Department. Last year he was the grand marshal of Montauk's St. Patrick's Day parade.

"I used to surfcast," he said. "Since I sold the store, I haven't wet a line."

In the year of our Lord, 1635, the tenth of July, came I, Lion Gardiner and Mary my wife from Woerden a towne in Holland, where my wife was born . . . to London and from thence to New England and dwelt at Saybrooke forte four years . . . of which I was commander: and there was borne to me a son named David, 1636 . . . the first born in that place, . . . Then I went to an island of mine owne which I had bought and purchased of the Indians, called by them Manchonake by us the Isle of Wight, and there was born another daughter named Elizabeth . . . in 1641, she being the first child of English parents that was born there.

- Lion Gardiner,

lines in a family Bible.

Miankoma Lane runs from Amagansett Main Street to Bluff Road along land owned for centuries by the Baker family, one of the first four English families to settle the hamlet. "Miankoma" is generally agreed to mean "assembly place," but whether the word is of Montaukett or Delaware Indian origin is uncertain; both have been credited. It does not appear in William Wallace Tooker's book of Long Island Indian place names.

During the winter of 1903-04, Miankoma Hall was built, though its namesake road was not "established" until 1916. Frank M. Griffing built the hall as a meeting place for the Ladies Society of Busy Workers, which was three years old at the time.

Summer fairs were held for the "Hall Fund," the first one making a profit of $200. The ladies bought the land for $500, a debt paid off within a year. The building itself was paid for with a $1,700 mortgage, which was retired in February 1912.

Card parties, socials, dances, suppers, and dramatic performances were held in the spacious interior of Miankoma Hall. At one time, it was rented to an enterprising resident for use as a roller-skating rink, according to Carleton Kelsey's "Amagansett: A Pictorial History," though that did not last long. Mr. Kelsey, longtime historian of East Hampton Town, adds that "the first motion pictures (movies) shown here were possibly at Miankoma Hall."

The Busy Workers sold the building in 1931, at the height of the Depression, to A.A. Haines Council 66, Junior Order United American Mechanics. The proceeds paid for several thousand feet of concrete sidewalk along Main Street, all the way to Atlantic Avenue. (A sidewalk plaque commemorating the Ladies Society of Busy Workers may be found near the Amagansett School, which was built five years later.)

United American Mechanics either sold or donated Miankoma Hall at some point to the American Legion; the date of transfer could not be confirmed. The Legion sold the building in 1945 to Tsuya Matsuki, who used it for many years as a summer residence and music studio. In a 1989 study of historic buildings conducted for the town, the preservationist Robert J. Hefner reported that the structure "retains the over-scaled semi-elliptical fanlight in the front gable, but the porch across the front facade has been closed in."

Ms. Matsuki died in 1990, after selling the house to the late actor David Doyle and his wife, Anita.

Lion Gardiner asked Wyandanch to kill all the Pequots

and "send me their heads."

Long Island's first English settler never heard the words "New York."

Excerpted from Roger Wunderlich's lecture at Guild Hall Saturday.

. . . . As a townsman of East Hampton, Lion Gardiner helped to shape a new and American social design, which enabled ordinary folk to own property and enjoy the freedoms restricted to the privileged gentry across the sea. However, though he was our founding father he was not our patron saint. While his statesmanship cemented peaceful relations between the settlers and the Indians, he also presided over the peaceable but permanent transfer of Long Island real estate from its Native American owners to himself and his fellow settlers. As the symbol of two phenomena - the formation of the model Puritan township and the nonviolent displacement of Indians - Lion Gardiner personified the dual and sometimes ambivalent mission of the colonists of Long Island.

Necessity compelled Gardiner and his compatriots to cope with the basic conditions of life in completely new surroundings. This involved the providing, from a standing start, of food, shelter, and artifacts, and a safe and harmonious social order attuned to the New World, not the Old. Above all, as they dealt with these elementary needs, the uninvited settlers grappled with the question of their legal right to the land that was now their only home. It was glaringly apparent that every acre was the possession of the indigenous Native Americans.

. . . Although death by disease played the largest part, the issue of how the Indians lost their land still goads our historical conscience, and we seek acceptable motives for the policies of the colonists. The blunt reality is that the tide of English immigration, swelled by the prospect of land for the taking, proved far too strong for deterrence by legal niceties. Lion Gardiner, the intrepid pioneer and archetype of English homesteaders, was also a businessman obsessed with acquiring real estate from its present, ancestral owners.

Many of his contemporaries held that the Indians were primitive simpletons, whose collective holding of tribal grounds made real estate dealing impossible. According to the conventional wisdom, the aborigines were too uncivilized to conceive of buying and selling land they naively believed belonged to all who lived on it.

Lion Gardiner, to his credit, exhibited none of this pervasive prejudice. He accepted Indians as friends and not inferiors: his cordial relations with Yovawan and Wyandanch, the successive sachems with whom he dealt, exempted eastern Long Island from the interracial bloodshed that afflicted Connecticut and Massachusetts. In the process, however, Gardiner amassed a fortune in land by "buying" it for trinkets, and expediting sales by promoting the Native American seller, especially Wyandanch, to the fictitious but handy rubber-stamp rank of "Sachem of all Long Island."

. . . Lion Gardiner's lineage has not been traced, but according to Curtiss C. Gardiner, who wrote the history of his famous ancestor on the 250th anniversary of Lion's arrival on his island, "He was probably a gentleman without title, of the middle rank, between the nobility and the yeomanry, yet he might have been a yeoman."

Granted that 17th-century spelling was on a do-it-yourself basis, Lion generally signed himself as "Gardener," a name which Curtiss C. Gardiner pointed out "may be derived from an occupation, the keeper of a garden," and subsequently "may have been changed . . . to Gardiner, that the occupation and the name of a person might be the more readily distinguishable." His unusual first name "was Lion, as he invariably wrote it so": there is no reason to speculate that his baptismal name was Lionel. His army grade was sergeant . . .

Nothing is known of Gardiner's life before 1635, the starting point of his memoir, "Leift. Lion Gardener his Relation of the Pequot Warres . . . . "

Saybrook was a disaster. "According to promise," wrote Lion, "we expected that there would have come from England 300 able men, 50 to till the ground, and 50 to build houses. But our great expectation at the River's mouth, came only two men, Mr. Fenwick, and his man." A recent historian of the Winthrops found that after five discouraging months, John Winthrop Jr., Gardiner's superior, "quit Saybrook . . . before the end of his term as governor, and left Lion Gardiner in charge of the thinly manned outpost, to spend a miserable winter [1636-37] behind the palisades, beleaguered by Pequots."

Somehow, Lion managed to shepherd his small flock of settlers through the hardships of that bitter season, when he "had but twenty-four in all, men, women, and boys and girls, and not food for two months, unless we saved our cornfield, which could not possibly be if they came to war, for it is two miles from our home."

The war he dreaded was with the Pequots, the intractable local Indians with whom traders had been skirmishing, and whose extermination was held necessary by many New England settlers . . .

. . .The Pequots' defeat led to Gardiner's meeting with Wyandanch, the Montauk leader, who visited Saybrook three days after the battle . . . According to Gardiner, the purpose of Wyandanch's call was to "know if we were angry with all Indians," or only with Pequots. In his typically forthright manner, Lion answered, "No, but only with such as had killed Englishmen." When Wyandanch asked if the English would trade with "they that lived on Long Island," Gardiner gave him a conditional yes: "If you will kill all the Pequits that come to you, and send me their heads, then . . . you shall have trade with us." Wyandanch said he would bring this news to "his brother . . . and if we may have peace and trade with you, we will give you tribute, as we did the Pequits. . ."

. . .The price of peace on Long Island was harsh, but the pact between Gardiner and Wyandanch, and the lasting friendship that followed, relieved eastern Long Island of the English-Indian carnage that persisted for 40 years in New England, from the Pequot War in Connecticut through King Philip's War in Massachusetts.

Soon after Winthrop left Saybrook, Lion wrote to him that those who remained would be loyal and work hard for the colony, but "it seemed wee have neither masters nor owners." If not provided for, he continued, "then I must be forced to shift as the Lord may direct."

To shift as the Lord may direct was something Lion did incredibly well. At the end of his Saybrook contract, in 1639, he crossed the Sound with his family and some farmer-soldiers from the fort to become the first of an unbroken line of lords of the manor of Gardiner's Island, seven and a half miles long and three miles across at the widest point, a few miles offshore from East Hampton. Lion called it the Isle of Wight because of its contour; the Indian name, "Manchonake," meant a place where many had died, perhaps from some great sickness that swept the East End of Long Island before the coming of the English.

. . . In contrast to many of his peers, Gardiner did not clutter his mind with superstition, as proven by his reaction to an accusation of witchcraft. The defendant, Goody Garlick, was charged with causing the death in childbirth of none other than Lion's young daughter, Elizabeth Howell, in 1657. Perhaps because Goody and Joshua Garlick, her husband, worked for him for many years, or perhaps because he had too much common sense to believe in "black cats and harlequin devils . . . Lion seems to have exerted himself in behalf of this unfortunate woman," wrote Alexander Gardiner. Lion's influence aborted a trial at Hartford and saved Goody "from an awful fate."

. . .East End English settlers and Native Americans never met on the field of battle, but the Montauks and Narragansetts did. In a 1654 raid the Narragansett/Niantic warlord Ninigret is said to have pillaged the camp of Wyandanch on the night of his daughter's wedding, killed the groom, and kidnapped the bride. On behalf of the grief-stricken father, Thomas James [East Hampton's first minister] begged John Winthrop Jr. to help to speed delivery of the wampum raised for ransom, "which he [Wyandanch] hears was intercepted by Thomas Stanton [a colonist]."

"At last," wrote Curtiss C. Gardiner, "through the exertions of [Lion] Gardiner . . . (the young woman) was redeemed and restored to her afflicted parents."

To express his gratitude, Wyandanch, with his wife and son, made a free gift to Lion Gardiner . . . of land that "lyeth on Long Island . . . between Huntington and Setauket . . . [and] more than half way through the island southerly." Dated East Hampton, 14 July 1659, the deed acknowledged Lion's "kindness . . . counsell and advice in our prosperity. . . . "

If Lion used his friendship with Indians to his advantage, his trust in them was genuine. When Wyandanch was ordered to testify before the magistrates of Southampton, and his people feared for their sachem's safety, Lion, who happened to be at the Montauk camp, presented himself as a hostage. "I will stay here till you all know it is well with your Sachem," he declared, in his strong, terse, style, "if they bind him, bind me, and if they kill him, kill me."

. . .In 1660, the governor of Barbados, who was a friend of John Winthrop Jr.'s, expressed interest in buying Gardiner's Island. Oh no, wrote Lion to Winthrop, "I, having children and children's children, am not minded to sell it at present." . . . "Butt I have another place," went on Lion, "more convenient for the gentleman that would buy, liinge upon Long Iland, between Huntington and Setokett."

When this sale fell through, Lion and his son David conveyed to Richard Smith (then known as Smythe) the land that would be the principal part of the future town of Smithtown.

. . . Lion Gardiner died in 1663, at the age of 64, one year before the English conquest of New Netherland from the Dutch: the creator of its first settlement never heard the words "New York." Although he had to dilute his fortune in order to redeem the debts run up by David, his extravagant son, he left a considerable estate. In his will he apologized to his wife, his sole beneficiary, for not leaving more . . .

In 1665, one year after the English ousted the Dutch from New Netherland, Mary Gardiner died and, contrary to Lion's wishes, left Gardiner's Island to their son. Richard Nicolls, the Governor of the newly formed New York Province, gave David Gardiner a grant for the Isle of Wight at an annual quit rent of five pounds. Five years later, the rent was commuted to one lamb yearly, upon demand, by Governor Francis Lovelace. In 1686, David received a new patent from Governor Thomas Dongan, who erected the Isle of Wight "a lordship and manor to be henceforth called the lordship and manor of Gardiner's Island.". . . Their ownership remained uncontested, but the Gardiners' unlimited powers were curtailed in 1788, when the State Legislature annexed the island to the Town of East Hampton.

The life of Lion Gardiner, Long Island's first English settler and founding father, illumines our understanding of Long Island as America. To begin with, his experience contradicts the assumption that Long Island was cloned from New England. Gardiner and fellow settlers were not New Englanders who came to Long Island, but English emigrants who sojourned in New England before choosing to make the Island their permanent home.

He embodied the old and new system of ownership: he was the lord of his own manor who also served as a townsman of the Puritan commonwealth of East Hampton. There, in the words of the historian Peter Ross, "he filled the office of magistrate and in all respects was regarded as the representative citizen of that section of the island."

. . . Largely due to his diplomacy, the interracial wars of the mainland did not erupt on eastern Long Island. In the process, Gardiner acquired a handsome fortune in Long Island land by inducing his Indian friends to sell him large tracts at small prices, confirmed by English deeds.

Three hundred and fifty-nine years have passed since Lion Gardiner, freedom fighter and pioneer, set foot on eastern Long Island. He and his hardy wife, Mary, who left her comfortable home in Holland to cross the ocean with her husband and suffer the rigors of frontier life, are symbols of the transition from the Old World to the New by the first generation of emigrants. They were Americans long before the word was coined.

Roger Wunderlich is a professor of history at the State University at Stony Brook and the editor of the Long Island Historical Journal. After 50 years in business, he returned to school to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in history.

Shippy's Pumpernickels East

Windmill Lane

Southampton

283-0007

Open for lunch and dinner every day.

There comes a time, and an icy March night with face-lashing rain may be it, when frisee salad just doesn't cut it. When fiddlehead ferns and plates decorated with swirls of persimmon coulis seem like a cruel joke.

Looking guiltily over your shoulder to see if the food police are listening, you decide that what you want is a plate of steaming sauerbraten and potato dumplings. Muffler-wrapped and furtive, you set out, as we did last week, for Shippy's Pumpernickels East in Southampton, home of the good old-fashioned chowfest.

Lambert, our delicate-palated dinner companion, was not invited. His face darkens if the parmesan on his Caesar salad is not freshly shaved, and the sight of Shippy's iceberg lettuce snowed under with blue-cheese dressing would have given him the vapors.

Not For Sticks

As would the size and heartiness of the entrees. This is not a joint for the stick-thin health nut, this is for big, healthy appetites and those who don't mind waking up five pounds heavier the next morning.

Of course, I'm exaggerating, because Shippy's always has a daily menu of local seafood, but on the whole people do go there for the meat dishes and the German specialties.

The atmosphere and decor go along with the food - friendly and unpretentious, with green-leather booths, Tiffany-style lamps, and a long, polished bar counter.

When you go in, there's no sign telling you to wait around like lemons until someone notices you, you just go in and sit where you fancy.

Daily Specials

All the entrees come with a choice of soup or salad, and Shippy's pea soup is really exceptionally good. For those who want something a little more adventurous, there are chopped liver, smoked oysters, a tongue and onion salad, baked clams, marinated herring, shrimp cocktail, and more, at prices ranging from $5.50 to $9.25.

There is always an inexpensive daily special between $13 and $15. On this occasion it was roast lamb; on another visit, it was beef goulash.

The roast lamb was those thin round slices from an unrecognizable part of the lamb's anatomy and not slices cut from a fresh-cooked joint, but it was okay, with good gravy and delicious mashed potatoes.

The huge portion of goulash was also workmanlike and robust, the word goulash being the nearest it got to anything fancy.

Brobdingnagian Perfection

But now we move on to the more serious stuff, starting with a Brob-dingnagian portion of breaded pork chops.

Shippy's cooks them to perfection - the dark and crunchy outside damming up the juices of the tender interior meat - but I defy anyone to eat both at one sitting. So take one home with you - I can attest that it makes a divine meal, and cure, for 4 a.m. insomnia.

The sauerbraten, served with a creamy potato dumpling and zesty red cabbage, was meltingly tender. As was the dauntingly large helping of calf's liver with fried onions and bacon.

You can choose among three traditional German sausages - bratwurst, knockwurst, or weisswurst (pork, beef, or veal) - which are served with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. We tried the knockwurst. It was very knockwursty.

Hunger Helps

All the dishes are old-fashioned, grassroots, good, heavy food and it certainly helps to be hungry. The wiener schnitzel - tender, tasty, with no stinting on the frying oil - lapped over the edges of its plate like a Black Forest comforter; the chopped sirloin a la Pumpernickel turned out to be a megahamburger about the size and shape of Ayers Rock.

Diners may then move on to a selection of old favorites such as apple strudel, chocolate fudge cake, cheesecake, carrot cake, etc. But we were kaput.

You leave Shippy's in a friendly, sated glow, with this refrain humming in your head: "There goes the diet up the creek - it's frisee salad for a week."

"After you bin havin' steak every night, beans, beans taste fine" goes a song on a very old L.P. I have, given me by Shel Silverstein. He was a folk singer then; now, of course, he is known to the world as the author of "Light in the Attic," the longest-running children's book on the Top 10 list in history.

And though Shel's slightly salacious lyrics did not really refer to beans, it's my fond hope that a few unsophisticated children took them literally. Mine did. Or maybe bean love was simply engendered by the family's Southern roots, or genetics, or the fact that I cook them so often.

I adore just about every kind of dried bean on the planet (though I never could abide those store-bought, sugary, "New England Baked Beans" that come in a brown jar).

While beans used to be relegated to the tables of the poor, with the change in dietary habits and the greater knowledge of nutrition, beans can now take their deliciously rightful place on the toniest tables.

Black beans, once the province of Mexican and South American restaurants, seem to pop up everywhere now - in salsas and salads as well as more traditional dishes, in the kitchens of celebrated chefs.

And bean purees are displacing potatoes and rice and other carbs in urbane settings heretofore inhospitable to the homely charms of dried legumes.

They really do not take forever to cook, even if you've forgotten to soak them overnight, especially if they're from the current year's harvest. The quick-soak method works just fine.

And even old beans succumb quickly to the pressure-cooker, an invaluable tool for getting tasty, home-cooked dinners on the table quickly.

Cassoulet, one of the most magnificent creations of the French culinary art, is creeping back onto menus even though it may be the most complicated bean dish ever invented. It is becoming slightly less difficult to locate the pale green flageolets the French turn into a scrumptious accompaniment, often served with lamb.

Cheap Vitamins

Just the other night I served them with roast leg of venison. The flageolets somewhat upstaged the entree, with many requests for seconds.

These small, pale-green, dried beans are shaped like miniature marrow (Great Northern) beans.

However, they cost about three times as much (still cheap for so much protein, iron, potassium, calcium, vitamins, and soluble fiber in deliciously edible form), possibly because they're French and found almost exclusively in specialty food stores like Dean and DeLuca or the Gourmet Garage in Manhattan and the Red Horse in East Hampton.

Flageolets With Garlic And Thyme

Serves 8.

1 lb. dried flageolets, soaked at least 4 hours

Tepid water

1 medium onion stuck with 2 cloves

1 Tbsp. butter

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 medium onion, minced

2/3 cup half-and-half

Salt to taste

Freshly ground white pepper to taste

2 Tbsp. fresh thyme and parsley leaves, mixed

Bouquet garni (tie these in a cheesecloth packet):

1 large bay leaf

1 med. carrot, halved

1 large stalk celery with top, halved

4 sprigs fresh thyme

4 sprigs parsley

4 whole white peppercorns

Cover And Re-Cover

Wash and discard any shriveled or discolored beans, cover with cool water, and soak. Drain the beans and re-cover, by a couple of inches, with tepid water.

Make the bouquet garni and tuck it down into the middle of the beans. Bring them to the simmer, cover loosely, and cook at low heat for about 45 minutes, or until tender but not mushy. Older beans take longer to cook.

When they are tender to the tooth, remove the bouquet garni. Toss a few ice cubes in the pot and place in a cool place if you don't wish to use them immediately. Otherwise, drain, saving the liquid (the leftovers, if any, make wonderful soup).

Soup From Leftovers

Melt the butter over low heat and saute the garlic and onion gently until transparent. Add the half-and-half, heat, and stir this into the beans, along with salt and pepper to taste, taking care not to break the beans.

The entire dish can be made ahead to this point, covered, and refrigerated until an hour before serving time. Heat to the boiling point and scatter with the remaining herbs.

Note: To make soup of any leftovers, puree them in a processor and add enough of the reserved bean liquid to achieve a heavy-cream consistency. Stir in a little cream or milk, heat to just under the boil, and serve.

Black Bean Cakes With Sour Cream

These bean cakes, perhaps patterned on the Cuban bollos, are turning up more and more often on damask-clothed tables. They are interesting enough to serve as a first course, a cocktail appetizer if made very small, or as one usually sees them, on the plate with beef or chicken.

Freshly cooked beans are best, but you could make do with canned ones, well drained and rinsed of the goo they come in.

Makes 6 large cakes or 12 small.

21/2 cups cooked black beans, drained

3 Tbsp. finely chopped scallions

1 small fresh jalapeno, roasted

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. ground cardomom

1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs

1 egg, beaten

2 tsp. red wine vinegar

salt and freshly milled pepper to taste

vegetable oil for frying

1/4 cup fine yellow cornmeal

1 cup sour cream

1 or 2 Tbsp. freshly minced cilantro

Use Rubber Gloves

Process the beans until coarsely pureed. Chop in the scallions, pulsing once or twice, then turn the mixture into a bowl. Roast the jalapeno, turning it on the end of a long fork over a gas flame, until it blisters enough to scrape off the skin. Use rubber gloves to handle it.

Scrape out the seeds, then chop finely. Add it to the pureed beans and stir in all remaining ingredients as far down in the recipe as the vegetable oil.

Shape the bean mixture into six (or 12) evenly-sized cakes. Heat about a quarter-inch of the oil in a large, heavy skillet, to hot but not smoking. Spread cornmeal out on a large piece of waxed paper and turn each cake to coat both sides lightly.

Slide each cake in gently - a slotted flexible spatula is helpful for this - and do not crowd them. Fry about two minutes on each side and drain on paper towel. Serve hot on hot plates and distribute a spoonful of sour cream on each, topped with a generous dusting of cilantro.

Calypso Beans With Sausage

Calypso, Jacob's Cattle, or several other of the lovely mottled-white-bean varieties may be used for this one-dish meal, which is great for a buffet. It can be prepared a day ahead - it's the better for it, in fact - and reheated in its casserole dish. Grilled kielbasa is tucked into the beans just before the final bake.

Serves six to eight.

1 lb. dried calypso, Jacob's Cattle, or similar beans,

soaked and drained

Tepid water to cover

1 large stalk celery with tops, broken in half

1 medium carrot, cut in half

Bouquet garni:

4 sprigs parsley

3 sprigs thyme

1/2 tsp. fennel seeds

2 cloves garlic, smashed

4 or 5 white peppercorns, smashed

2 small or 1 large chicken bouillon cube

Salt to taste

3 ripe plum tomatoes, quartered

1 lb. kielbasa, lightly grilled and cut in 2-inch lengths

1 Tbsp. minced fresh parsley

Give The Bag A Smash

Wash, rinse, and soak the beans in the usual way. Drain, and cover with tepid water by two inches. Add the celery and carrot along with the bouquet garni ingredients tied in a cheesecloth bag. Give the bag a smash with the side of a cleaver before adding to the beans.

Bring to a boil and simmer with lid askew for about 30 minutes. Skim if necessary. When the beans are tender, gently stir in the bouillon cubes. When dissolved, let the beans rest off-heat for half an hour, then taste. Add salt if necessary, keeping in mind that kielbasa is also salty.

Discard the carrot, celery, and bouquet. Drain the beans, reserving some of the pot liquor. Put them into an oven-to-table crock or deep gratin dish; tuck the pieces of sausage halfway in, along with the pieces of tomato. Add a large ladle of the bean liquor.

The dish can be completely made ahead up to this point.

Bake in a preheated 350 F. oven on the center shelf for about 30 minutes, sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley, and serve.

"It's two miracles," said Gloria Jones of Sagaponack, of what will be the almost simultaneous release of movies based on "The Thin Red Line" by her late husband, James Jones, and "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries," from a book written by her daughter, Kaylie Jones.

Her book was optioned in 1994, said Kaylie Jones, while her father's had been optioned as long ago as 1988, so their arrival on the screen at about the same time, in the fall of this year, was a complete accident.

"A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries" is an Ismail Merchant/James Ivory production starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Hershey.

Americans In Paris

Drawing on autobiographical details of her childhood in Paris, Ms. Jones's book tells the story of the expatriate life of an American couple and of growing up in that milieu.

HarperCollins will reprint the book to coincide with the movie's release in September.

The movie covers a span of 10 years, from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s, and two sets of children had to be found.

"The little ones weren't actors," said the author, "but they were bilingual. It was hard to find an older pair who were not only bilingual, but who looked like the first pair."

It is also a film about orphans, she said, and about "not fitting in." Both parents are orphans themselves and they adopt a 5-year-old French boy. He adapts and Americanizes himself, only to have his father die at the end of the movie.

Two-thirds of the film was shot on the Ile de St. Louis in Paris and the remaining third in Wilmington, Conn. Together with her husband, Kevin Heisler, and their 5-week-old baby, Ms. Jones traveled to Wilmington to watch the shooting.

"It looks very much like the Hamptons 15 or 20 years ago," she said. "It was filmed at a beautiful house on a waterway with views of the sunset. Very like Mecox or Sagaponack."

"Thin Red Line"

She was also invited to spend four days on the set of "The Thin Red Line" in Hollywood. John Travolta was in one of the scenes they watched being filmed, playing a cameo role as a general.

"The Thin Red Line," set in the South Pacific in World War II, is about an Army rifle company trying to take a hill on Guadalcanal from the Japanese. Produced by Phoenix Pictures and Fox 2000 Pictures, it is scheduled for release at Christmas.

The movie, which is directed by the eminent Terrence Malick, who made "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven," has an all-star cast - George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Bill Pullman, and Mr. Travolta - but two relative unknowns play the leads, Adrien Brody as Fife and Jim Caviezel as Witt.

"It makes it so much more realistic," said Ms. Jones. "This way, you don't know which ones are going to make it to the end of the movie."

She also felt that Mr. Malick ("He's magnificent, so talented.") insured that the roles would be truer to the characters in the book if the audience were not distracted by a famous face.

"It's amazing how everything al ways seems to happen at once," re marked Ms. Jones, to the background accompaniment of baby noises.

A man with a soft Southern accent and an impish laugh, Marshall De Bruhl does not have the imperious froideur one might expect from a military historian and compiler of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and thesauri.

As he settled a visitor in the exotic little greenhouse attached to his house overlooking Three Mile Harbor, a frog waterspout gurgled into a small indoor pool. A fire crackled cheerily in the living room beyond.

Mr. De Bruhl, the author of "Sword of San Jacinto: A Life of Sam Houston" (Random House, 1993), now completing a book due out next year on the firebombing of Dresden in 1945, speculated about his passion for reference books, biographies, and histories.

Too Truthful For Fiction

Born in Asheville, N.C., made famous by Thomas Wolfe as Altamont in "Look Homeward Angel," he was encouraged to write by his high school English teacher, Wolfe's first cousin Mary Louise Wolfe, whose copies of her cousin Tom's books are still in his possession.

"She probably hoped I would write novels, but after reading everything I could get my hands about the world, I think I became too educated to write fiction," said Mr. De Bruhl.

"I was too truthful to invent things the way my dad and my eight older brothers and sisters did. They'd come out with these colorful Southernisms - heaven knows where they got them - 'He's older than water.' 'She has enough money to burn a wet mule.' "

He laughed heartily. "They could turn a phrase and spin a yarn, but they couldn't write descriptions like I can."

After attending public schools in Asheville, Mr. De Bruhl went on to Duke University, graduating with a B.A. in psychology in 1958.

"It's an interesting field, but I knew I didn't actually want to be a psychologist when I realized there was not one person in the department I'd like to see socially."

As an alternative to the draft, then in effect, he enlisted in Naval Officers Candidate School in Newport, R.I., and was commissioned an ensign in 1959.

The next four years, served mainly in Morocco, were invaluable, he said.

"They expanded my horizons, and having responsibility for people's lives and well-being helped me enormously later on in my work."

He Knew The Difference

After being discharged in 1962, Mr. De Bruhl moved to Manhattan and began a career in book publishing as a copy editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Two years later, he spotted an ad in The New York Times: "If you know the difference between 'comprise' and 'constitute,' call this number."

He knew. He called, and landed a job at Crowell-Collier-Macmillan.

A 1967 move to Charles Scribner's Sons led to a directorship in the reference book division and a senior vice-presidency of the company.

Becoming something of a walking reference library himself, Mr. De Bruhl edited encyclopedias of philosophy, the social sciences, scientific biography, American biography, American history, American writers, British writers, ancient writers, Asian history, the Middle Ages, and the history of ideas - definitely the sort who would win the Volvo, the Cancun vacation, and all the available cash on "Jeopardy."

Not reflected in the list is his passion for opera. Among the authors he worked with at Scribner's were James Levine, artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, and the great, controversial German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. "Stern and difficult, but fun to be with," Mr. De Bruhl said of Ms. Schwarzkopf, one of many performers who were forced to join the Nazi Party in order to pursue careers in Germany. Now living in Switzerland, she is still a good friend.

A Fortune Cookie

In 1986 Mr. De Bruhl moved to Doubleday as executive editor and editorial director of Anchor Books, responsible for publishing both hardcover originals and paperback reprints of works by John Barth, Donald Hall, and Ada Louise Huxtable, among many others.

Publishing was gradually robbed of its genteel traditions and relative job security as foreign investors began acquiring American houses in the go-go '80s. Entire staffs would suddenly be fired en masse, mostly by marauding German conglomerates.

While Mr. De Bruhl was not exactly whistling Dixie during those shaky times, he remembers his elation upon opening a fortune cookie after an uproarious dinner in a Chinese restaurant with the lively Ms. Huxtable. "You will receive a promotion soon," the message read.

When she called at work the next day to thank him for the evening and congratulate him on his auspicious cookie, he had to tell her he'd just been fired.

A New Life

Thus, in 1989, Mr. De Bruhl began a new life as a free-lance writer, editor, and editorial consultant.

"I'd always wanted to write a biography of Sam Houston, an authentic American hero," he said. "His victory at the Battle of San Jacinto not only freed Texas from Mexico but added all or part of 14 new states to the United States, basically our West today."

What really drew him to his subject, however, was Houston's abhorrence of slavery. As a Senator, he voted against extending slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, thus losing his Senate seat. Then later, as Governor of Texas, he declined to take the Oath of the Confederacy, a move that cost him the Governor's chair as well.

"He took the high road," said Mr. De Bruhl. "I don't even know if there is a high road any more."

Raid On Dresden

Similar ethical considerations inspired him to write about Dresden, Mr. De Bruhl said.

After viewing bombed-out Coventry as a tourist in 1965 he decided to visit Dresden, the site of a devastating Allied raid in 1945 that stunned the world. The event became so controversial that Winston Churchill glossed over it in one sentence in his otherwise exacting memoirs.

The only existing account of the bombardment had been written by David Irving, an admired British military historian now in bad repute for a book critics say denies the Holocaust and for a biography of Goebbels that has been canceled by his American publisher.

All Night, All Day

Mr. De Bruhl seized the opportunity to set the record straight, or at the very least, to set it down.

The raid took place on Ash Wednesday, also St. Valentine's Day Eve that year - Feb. 13. It started at 10:30 p.m., wave after wave of British bombers pounding Dresden all night.

At dawn American B-17s, B-24s, and B-25s took over, pulverizing the city by day. In all, 1,200 planes participated in the most devastating air raid to date, creating a firestorm estimated by some as equal in intensity and in civilian deaths to the bombing of Hiroshima.

"When the brass called for an air strike it generally meant women and children would be killed, and the terminology of choice was quite chilling," said Mr. De Bruhl.

"Dehouse"

"Take the expression, 'collateral damage,' indicating the destruction of schools, orphanages, and the like. Or the neologism 'dehouse,' meaning to render homeless and used in sentences like, 'It's better to downsize than dehouse a civilian population.' "

"And there really was no accuracy," he went on. "A bombing mission was considered successful if it came within 3,000 feet of the target, which means that if you were aiming at the New York Public Library and you hit Bloomingdale's, you'd done a great job."

Mr. De Bruhl, who lectures and teaches at universities in the South and also has a house in Asheville, actually got to fly a B-17 himself last summer, at a fund-raiser for an airplane museum.

A Tar Baby

"A crew of six of us wore bomber jackets and took turns flying the plane. There actually were papier-mach‚, bombs aboard in bomb racks, and I flew over the house where I was born. I could have bombed my own home!" he said with a laugh.

Although his editor, Bob Loomis, who lives in Sag Harbor, is impatiently waiting for the Dresden book, Mr. De Bruhl will be leaving shortly for London to do more interviews with former R.A.F. pilots.

"That book's gotten to be just like a tar baby," the Tarheel said. "I stick to the darn thing - I can't seem to put it down."