The spirit of invention lives on the east shore of Mecox Bay in a neo-Mission style hacienda with baby blue stucco walls and teal roof tiles.

In a borrowed garage at the Kelman compound, which sits nestled in the beach grass like a clutch of Easter eggs, Russell Wilson is adjusting the finer details of two inventions he has developed, each from a wisp of an idea to a functioning appliance.

Mr. Wilson, a builder who speaks with the soft drawl of a Colorado cowboy, said he is inspired by the owner of the estate, Dr. Charles Kelman, best known for developing the technology and instruments used in ultrasound surgery - on cataracts, for example.

Working In The Garage

Dr. Kelman, who likes golf, turned half of his oversized garage into a virtual golf course. There is a mural of an imagined fairway on the wall, an Astroturf tee where he practices his swing, and camera mounts to the rear that project a holographic image of the arcing ball onto a wall-sized screen.

Mr. Wilson, who helped build the estate for Dr. Kelman, uses the other half of the garage to tinker with his own inventions, a humidifier in the form of a decorative waterfall, named the "Humidifall," and his "home recycling center," which saves space in the kitchen by crushing plastic, metal, and glass containers.

Recycling Complexities

He said he sees possibilities for new inventions all around him but through his job is especially attuned to the sort of appliances that would make a house more comfortable. He is a partner in L.S.M. Development, a Riverhead-based builder of high-end houses and commercial buildings, and his partners and subcontractors have helped him obtain materials, design parts, and work out glitches.

The idea for the recycling machine came to him shortly after he moved to Water Mill from Colorado five years ago. He was quickly acquainted with the local rules for recycling and just as quickly saw why everyone complained that separating and storing the various, mandated types of recyclables takes up too much room.

Why Not A Waterfall?

He figured those plastic soda and milk jugs take up the most room and crushing them flat would save space. He started sketching, and is now marketing a machine the size of a kitchen cabinet - it can be custom-made in any style of cabinet, he said - that uses a V-shaped series of metal rods to flatten plastic and metal, and crush glass.

One drops a recyclable container in the top, presses a button and, whammo, the crushed container falls through a diverter into one of three compartments.

On Labor Day weekend, when Mr. Wilson went home to visit Colorado, he saw a waterfall in an office building. It brought to mind the two-story waterfall in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, and he thought, "Hey, why not do that in a house?"

The Humidifall

That whimsy became the Humidifall, small enough to fit in the corner of the living room. It can be made in a variety of cabinet styles, in cherry, maple, or mahogany wood, and can be further customized with marble, ceramic tile, or artwork to fit the decor.

For a romantic effect, it is backlit, and at the push of a button you can turn on the soothing sound of a babbling brook, he said.

And, to broaden the marketing possibilities, Mr. Wilson designed it to be used either with a refillable tank or a hook-up to a permanent water source. A sample is going on display this month at Suffolk Lighting in Southampton, where he bought the fixture for backlighting it.

Common Sense

A patent for the Humidifall is pending. The New York Testing Laboratories determined it can raise the humidity in an average-sized bedroom from 35 to 70 percent and maintain it there, a positive preliminary finding, said Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson's brother, Jim, has begun marketing the device through his office in St. Louis. The recycling center is patented for home use, and New York Testing is now troubleshooting that as well.

Mr. Wilson said the process for turning an idea into a machine involves a series of hit-or-miss decisions. But, given a choice between state-of-the-art mechanics and what he calls "farmboy technology," he prefers the latter, meaning simple common sense.

Solving Problems

For example, he discovered an early version of the recycling machine required too much torque to crush glass bottles. The machine already weighed about 200 pounds and was the size of a compact dishwasher, nearing impracticality for a home kitchen, so the option of "a huge gear box and a bigger motor" became a deal-breaker.

Instead, he solved the torque problem by screwing horseshoe studs into the tines of the rollers. That concentrated the torque in the center of the rollers yet didn't reduce their effectiveness on plastic and metal, he said.

"We haven't thrown in anything that can stop it yet," laughed Mr. Wilson. He swiftly grew serious at the suggestion, though, that some youngster may want to experiment with the family cat.

Taking It Further

Safety was a constant priority during the development process and an important part of the ongoing testing, he said. As a result, there is a safety switch in the lid; the rollers don't start to turn until it is shut, and they stop when it is lifted, he said.

Mr. Wilson has relied on East End cabinetmakers, machinists, and other specialists to help make the various components of his machines but is now in search of manufacturers who would take on the entire process, start to finish. And, even as he continues to fine-tune, he and his brother are finding commercial possibilities for both devices.

They displayed the prototypes three months ago, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Yankee Invention Exposition, in Connecticut.

Commercial Uses

Restaurant and bar owners who watched demonstrations of the recycling machine said they pay for garbage disposal by the pick-up and could save a lot of money if their garbage went into the Dumpster compacted, said Mr. Wilson.

"We also thought this could be mounted on a garbage truck, and the driver could make fewer trips to the transfer station each day if he could crush the containers as they went in," he said, adding he envisioned apartment buildings and condominium complexes would be interested in communal machines.

While invention may require imagination and the ability to turn a concept into a physical object, it need not cost a lot, he said. The prototype of the recycling machine cost about $900 to build and the Humidifall about $3,000 to develop, not counting patent fees.

You Just Need Nerve

"We all have ideas and a few years later see it on the market and think 'Oh, I should have done that when I had the chance.' You just have to have the nerve to go through with it," he said, adding that he has had some help.

Dr. Kelman has provided inspiration and moral support, he said, and his partners and subcontractors have advised him along the way.

"It's just like working on the farm. Everybody contributes," he said.

The story of Pudding Hill, a Revolutionary War tale, took place at what today is Jackson Peddy's house at 4 Ocean Avenue in East Hampton, where Woods Lane, Main Street, and Ocean Avenue converge. Pudding Hill Lane, between Ocean Avenue and Georgica Road, is a bit south of there.

There are several versions of the tale, but the most complete was written by an East Hampton High School student, Janet Nida, in 1931. It was published by The Star a year later, on Nov. 4, 1932.

According to this account, "a hardy pioneer family, Jeremiah Miller and his wife, Mary Sanford Miller" lived in a cottage on the site at the time, 1776. British officers stationed in the area took many of their meals in Sag Harbor and Southampton, but "frequently cantered over the road to Nathaniel Huntting's Inn at East Hampton, to make merry and seek relaxation from duty in cards and foaming drink."

One summer day, Redcoats were passing the hill when an aroma emanating from the Miller kitchen caught their attention.

"Before her hearth stove, the good housewife Miller busied herself in making a pudding, stuffed with plums to the King's taste. . . ."

Not King George, though. Mrs. Miller was a dyed-in-the-wool patriot who "would never permit the enemy food."

The British soldiers hurried up the hill, cheering in search of the pudding they smelled, and startled Mrs. Miller.

"Immediately she grasped the situation, and quickly seizing the boiling pot, she ran to the door, and threw it, pudding and pot, down the hill, offering a spilled feast to the disappointed Redcoats who, angrily blaspheming their ill luck, turned away. When the brave housewife's daring deed was heralded about the town, her home became known as Pudding Hill, and since that day has retained its unique name."

"The old iron pot in which the pudding was made now swings between two trees," according to the 1931 account, "filled with ivy and bright growing flowers. The path over which the pudding and pot rolled down the hill, paved with red brick used as ballast on sailing vessels during the Revolutionary War, still remains and leads to a picturesque gateway through a rambling honeysuckle hedge shaded over by silver willows."

The red brick path and gateway look much the same today, and a plaque stands at the end commemorating Pudding Hill. The plaque, however, names the pudding-thrower as an Osborn woman, and says she made "suet" pudding. A skit written by Robert J. Gibson, "How Pudding Hill Got Its Name," identifies the woman of the house as a Mrs. Jeremiah Osborne.

"Up and Down Main Street" gives two versions of the Pudding Hill legend, one recalled in a poem by Fannie (or Fanny) Elkins and a second taken from Thomas Edwards's reminiscences, compiled at the behest of East Hampton's first librarian.

Mr. Edwards quotes his "Grandmother Hedges" (Mrs. Mary G. Osborn Hedges) in asserting that the maker of the pudding fled when the Redcoats came up the hill. As for the pudding, it was "Injun," or cornmeal, he writes - unknown in England and probably scorned by the British soldiers. According to Grandmother Hedges, it was the soldiers who threw the pudding down the hill.

Jeannette Edwards Rattray wrote that she thought the pudding was "Montauk blackberry duff."

The Miss Elkins who penned "The Ballad of Pudding Hill" in the 1880s was a relative of George Elkins, a land broker who bought Pudding Hill shortly after 1870 (the original cottage had been replaced by then). In 1948, on the occasion of East Hampton's 300th anniversary, Louise Mulford set the long poem to music.

An excerpt:

"Oh no, you're not," she made reply,

Then seized the boiling pot -

Ran with it through another door

And threw it, blazing hot,

Pudding and all, adown the hills,

And lent it in the sand,

Amid the curses, loud and deep,

Of all the hungry band.

This thing was naught, perhaps, beside

What patriots daily do,

And yet the spirit that inspired

Was Freedom's spirit, too. The place and tale are widely known,

Fresh is the legend still;

And all East Hampton villagers

Are proud of Pudding Hill.

Correction

The first cottage to be built on Pudding Hill was still there shortly after 1870, when George Elkins bought the property. It was not torn down until after he sold it in1887.

Snapshots of East Hampton Town have been captured in cloth on a quilt celebrating the town's tricentquinquagenary.

Twenty-five pairs of skilled hands belonging to residents of each of the town's hamlets appliqued and stitched the quilt, transferring designs drawn by Gracella Cunkle of Springs onto one-foot squares.

The drawings are bold, stylized depictions of life on the South Fork. The scenes of nature, farming, fishing, recreational activities, and historic landmarks are bordered by East Hampton Town's colors: dark blue around the quilt edge with "sashing" (borders between each square) of gold.

The quilt, called "Celebration," is currently on display at the Bank of New York on East Hampton's Main Street. The plan is to move it around as the year progresses, so everyone in town can see it.

Deanna Tikkanen, a Springs representative to the 350th anniversary committee and a quilter herself, proposed the project as a fund-raiser for the commemorative celebration.

She contacted her friend Bunny Cox, who took up quilting almost 20 years ago and has since become the hub of a group of quilters who have collaborated on quilts used as raffle prizes by the East Hampton Town Dory Rescue Squad, Ducks Unlimited, and East End Hospice, among others.

Mrs. Cox learned to quilt from an "old-time quilter," Cathryn Miller of East Hampton, she told The Star, and quickly became consumed with the craft.

"I spoke to Bunny about it," Mrs. Tikannen said, "and the next thing you knew, we had this quilt." The ad-hoc committee that created it dubbed itself the Town of East Hampton Quilters.

Though the quilt itself, by all accounts, is an unqualified success, the anniversary committee's plans to raffle it off are, for the moment, at an impasse. Under New York State law, raffles, it seems, are prohibited.

"The main issue is that town government has to have an ordinance permitting these types of raffles," said Tom Twomey, an attorney and committee member who is working to sort out the problem.

Though some have suggested it might be nice for the quilt to remain the property of the town and be on permanent display in Town Hall, the committee is "determined to raffle it one way or the other," according to its chairman, Bruce Collins, who added that New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. is trying to help as well.

Assuming the problem is solved, the raffle will be held on Oct. 10, when East Hampton streets will be closed to traffic all day for the big anniversary celebration and parade.

Meanwhile, posters of the queen-size quilt are for sale at Guild Hall in East Hampton, costing $20; $25 if signed by Mrs. Cunkle. A key to the design, crediting the creator of each square, is included.

"I have a regular library of Gracella's artwork," said Mrs. Cox, explaining how she went about choosing images for the quilt that would represent the town's broad geographic and cultural range. Mrs. Cunkle was enlisted to create a few new designs deemed crucial for the anniversary quilt, including a Native American whose square is placed next to an appliqued row of clam, scallop, and oyster shells.

Each quilter brought her individual vision to bear in such details as the choice of fabrics and colors.

A melange of browns, in different textures and prints, creates a realistic-looking cliff below the Montauk Lighthouse in one square, while patterned pieces lend vibrant texture to plowed earth, blue sky, or swirling waves.

The buildings represented include the Parsons blacksmith shop in Springs and the East Hampton Town Marine Museum in Amagansett. The square made by Gillian Ames depicts the East Hampton Presbyterian Church, where her husband, the Rev. John Ames, serves as minister. In the center of the quilt, three plovers look poised to scurry away down the sand.

Anne O'Neill of Springs did the actual quilting, and Olga Collins embroidered each quilter's name on the back of the finished work.

The quilt will travel to Montauk in July for display in the Suffolk County National Bank there through August. From there, plans are to send it to the bank's Sag Harbor branch until October, when, if all goes well, a lucky ticketholder will take it home.

For the third time in as many months, the East Hampton Town Board is the target of an airport-related lawsuit.

This one, filed in State Supreme Court last Thursday by Pat Trunzo 3d on behalf of individuals and associations opposed to the runway reconstruction, seeks to prevent the town from moving forward with any runway work and demands that the 1994 updated airport layout plan be declared null and void.

The suit comes only weeks after Town Supervisor Cathy Lester appointed a "blue- ribbon" committee to look into the runway project and make recommendations on the future of the airport. Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration is holding a $2.7 million grant for the runway work, until March.

Abolish Committee?

"The impact of the lawsuit could well be that we lose this grant," Councilman Job Potter said yesterday, following a meeting of the committee.

While the suit echoes some of Ms. Lester's own criticisms of the runway project, it has Republicans on the Town Board up in arms.

Councilwoman Pat Mansir and Councilman Len Bernard have called for the abolition of the airport committee. Mr. Trunzo is himself a member, as is one of the petitioners in the lawsuit, David Gruber.

Another member, Kathy Faraone, is an employee of the Village Preservation Society, which is also a plaintiff in the suit.

Demand Resignations

The other plaintiffs are Edward Gorman, Pat Trunzo Jr., William Henderson, Charlot Taylor, Sanford Oxenhorn, Camilla Gleason, Vincent Thomas, Thomas Dillon, Stephen Grossman, Laura Anker-Grossman, the Dune Alpin Farm Property Owners Association, and the directors of the Georgica Estates Property Owners Association.

The president of the East Hampton Aviation Association, Thomas Lavinio, and Sherry Wolfe, the director of the East Hampton Business Alliance, both members of the airport committee, have asked that Ms. Faraone, Mr. Gruber, and Mr. Trunzo resign.

They say the three cannot possibly make objective decisions about the airport's future while involved in a suit which takes a partisan position.

Mr. Trunzo said Monday that neither he nor Mr. Gruber planned to resign from the panel. "I'm not being paid, so I have no financial interest in this lawsuit," he said, adding that his interest in the matter was a "personal and a citizenship one."

Ms. Faraone does secretarial work for the Preservation Society, but is not a member of it and has no connection to the lawsuit. She plans to remain on the committee unless Councilman Potter, its chairman, asks her to step down.

"I'm not there as a representative of the society," she told The Star Tuesday, adding that she had been "relieved of any responsibility to report back to them in any way."

When she agreed to serve on the committee, in fact, she said the society's chairman told her, " 'You're on your own there.' "

Airport Committee

"I really do have an honest interest in finding a middle road here . . . I'm not anti-airport in the least," said Ms. Faraone.

Others on the committee include pilots, the airport manager, Councilwoman Mansir, East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., and a representative of the Sag Harbor Mayor's office.

"Everybody on the task force has an interest," Mr. Trunzo said, "and, frankly, some of those are financial." The lawyer pointed in particular to Mr. Lavinio, who holds leases to hangar space at the airport.

Vested Interest?

The panel was meant to include people who have a position on the issue, Mr. Trunzo believes. "Myself, David Gruber, we're all committed to try and make the task force do its job . . . we will put forward the information we think is relevant."

Mr. Bernard and Ms. Mansir disagree.

"When we suggested that the airport fixed-base operators be part of the committee, Supervisor Lester said that no person with a financial or vested interest [should] be part of [it]," they wrote in a press release this week.

"Pat Trunzo [3d] certainly has a vested interest, and his father is one of the petitioners," Mr. Bernard said Tuesday.

Question "Impartiality"

Referring to Mr. Gruber and Mr. Trunzo, the release states that "these individuals' participation in this suit against the town raises serious questions about the impartiality of the 'blue ribbon' committee and what the underlying purpose for establishing the committee actually was."

Mr. Trunzo had been hinting at a lawsuit since September, when the Town Board Republicans first determined the runway project did not need further environmental review, and chose a contractor to do the work.

The contractor beat the environmental objectors to the punch. He sued the town and the Supervisor on Nov. 17, demanding that she be ordered to sign the September contract.

Unsigned Contract

Ms. Lester had refused to sign it on the grounds that the runway project had not received stringent enough environmental or public scrutiny as required by the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

A State Supreme Court justice eventually directed her to sign the contract, but she is appealing the decision.

If the Supervisor signs the contract before March, the Federal money will be there to pay for the work. But, with this latest lawsuit in the picture, it is hard to say which issue will be resolved first and whether the money will still be there then.

Combined Impact

The new lawsuit alleges, as did the Supervisor, that the environmental review on the runway reconstruction violates SEQRA.

It alleges that other work associated with the project, such as grading (which the F.A.A. would require along with the reconstruction), was deliberately separated from it, so that the combined environmental impact would not be studied while the runway project was on the table.

"It's like putting blinders on these people," Mr. Trunzo said Monday. He claims the grading alone would include 200 feet on either side of the runway and could disturb nearly 40 acres. "This has been concealed from the start," he maintained.

Challenge 1994 Update

The suit also repeats an allegation heard often at Town Hall and in The Star's letters pages, that the 1994 airport layout plan update, which set a course for the runway work and other projects yet to be done, was never lawfully adopted and should be declared invalid.

"This was not a textbook example of open, participatory democracy," Mr. Trunzo said of the process behind the runway project. "Policy debates - that's what government is about."

Supervisor Lester believes debate of that sort is what will make the airport committee work.

"I expected controversy on this commission," she said Tuesday. "I didn't expect people with varying degrees of opinion would sit down at a table and be friends."

Challenge Objective

Can the opposing groups come together and find a solution, given the internal conflicts that are likely to plague the airport committee meetings?

Mr. Bernard and Ms. Mansir say no.

"We believe that any conclusions or recommendations reached will be tainted and perceived as biased," they wrote. "We would support a committee that has as its true objective an evenhanded and fair evaluation of the long-terms plans for the airport, and not the rejection of the runway 10-28 resurfacing project . . . ."

Supervisor's Support

Abolishing the committee "would be a poor choice at this point," the Supervisor said. "That would set this project back even further."

She suggested it would also reflect poorly on the town to have the Federal Aviation Administration holding up its grant for the runway work and no one working to resolve the "outstanding issues."

She still feels that the only way the project should go forward is if the committee can find ways to mitigate its impacts and "come up with a solution that everybody can live with."

The history of East Hampton's Town's first recorded inhabitants, the Montauk Indians, is, fittingly, the subject of the first talks in the 350th Anniversary Lecture Series, which will begin on Saturday.

The speakers, Gaynell Stone and John A. Strong, are considered the nation's foremost experts on the subject of the Montauketts. Each has devoted a lifetime to the study of the tribe.

Dr. Stone's slide talk, starting at 10 a.m. in Guild Hall, will focus on the appreciable, though little-known legacy left by earlier Montauketts, including artifacts, sculpture, visual images, and archeological findings. "The Material History of the Montaukett" is the title of her lecture.

Dr. Stone, the editor of "The History and Archaeology of the Montauk," teaches at the State University at Stony Brook and at Suffolk Community College. The museum director of the Suffolk County Archaeological Association, she also lectures for the New York Council for the Humanities on the native peoples of coastal New York. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology,

The emphasis will shift from anthropology to history at 11:30 a.m. when John A. Strong, professor of history at Southampton College, speaks on "Wyandanch, Sachem of the Montauketts: An Alliance on the Middle Ground."

Dr. Strong will discuss Wyandanch's role as a "culture broker" between the English and the Indians, according to a release, and the relationship between the Sachem and Lion Gardiner, the first Gardiner's Island lord of the manor. Their friendship played an important part in the history of East Hampton Town.

Dr. Strong, who holds a Ph.D. in history, has written extensively on the Algonquian peoples of Long Island.

The lecture series will continue throughout the year with at least one talk each month, exploring such topics as East Hampton's maritime history, the evolution of town government, the town as an art colony, the first ministers, the Dominy family of craftsmen, Theodore Roosevelt in Montauk, East Hampton architecture, and a great many more.

All 25 lectures in the series have been underwritten. Dr. Stone's talk on Saturday is sponsored by Nick and Toni's, the East Hampton restaurant, and Dr. Strong's by the Bridgehampton National Bank.

Tickets for individual lectures are $5 and can be purchased at the Guild Hall box office. A season ticket for two can be purchased for $25. Sponsor tickets, at $50, are available by calling the anniversary committee's office in Village Hall. Sponsors will be listed in the lecture series journal.

In 1920 or thereabouts the Kershaw was grounded on the inner bar right in front of the Culver bathing house (Main Beach, East Hampton).

She came ashore at night - probably mistaking the Montauk Lighthouse. We have had many wrecks on the shores of the Hamptons but this is the one I remember the most.

The Kershaw was a fairly small freighter, probably 275 feet in length and shoal draft. She was upright and the waves were breaking across her stern.

As I learned later, she was loaded with bags of peanuts and a goodly cargo of tobacco. Mostly chewing tobacco.

The Georgica Life Saving Station had been notified and had a self-bailing pulling boat (rowboat) there, with a crew of six, I believe. It was about 8 a.m. when they first got there and quite a few beachcombers had already showed up.

The life-saving crew were mostly local young men with experience rowing in the surf. However, as I stood there watching with a bunch of other local folks looking on, she took a large wave over her bow and filled with water.

The boat was then impossible to row and the crew jumped out or floated out. The water was shoal enough to pull the lifeboat up out of the surf.

As I stood on the shore watching the self-bailing lifeboat hauled up on the beach, Capt. E.J. Edwards came down. We asked E.J. if he thought he could get a surfboat out to the stranded freighter.

After a couple of minutes of silent thought he said, "Well, I guess if I had my own dory and my own crew I could get out to her."

About two hours later down came E.J. with his 18 dory and his crew - mostly Hulse boys. Captain E.J. had on his hip boots, oilskins, and a so'wester.

They launched the boat to the edge of the surf. Captain E.J. got in the stern with his steering oar and the Hulse boys with their oars in the rowlocks. Soon a large wave came up and washed around the dory and away went Captain E.J. and the Hulse boys pulling away on the oars. In no time they were out to the wreck.

Several hours later E.J. and the Hulse boys returned through surf and landed on the beach. All in the day's work, it seemed.

E.J. brought back the news that the Kershaw would be hauled out the next day after unloading some of the cargo of peanuts and chewing tobacco.

The Kershaw was pulled off the reef and, I believe, taken to New York and drydocked for repairs.

Of course, for the next couple days the surf and shore was covered with peanut bags and large cases of tobacco. Needless to say, this was rapidly salvaged by the Edwards Brothers. I spent several days in Dr. David Edwards's garage with Dr. Edwards picking the tinfoil off the tobacco and drying it on the floor of the barn.

Of course none of us chewed tobacco but maybe Dr. Dave gave it to his patients. No, tobacco won't kill you if you eat it. Only when you inhale the smoke - and who smokes?

Some years later, Ronnie Marasca and I, several times, rowed E.J. out to his brother on a fishing steamer off the beach.

He told us, as we took our oars, "Just look at my face and what I say, and do what I say."

As a boy I always thought of E.J. as a druggist, or the man who turned off the water when you didn't pay your water bill. He was president of the Home Water Company.

The Edwards family has meant a lot to East Hampton through the years. Dr. Dave brought me and most of the kids in East Hampton into this world.

Edward Monroe Osborne still lives in East Hampton. He is in his early 90s.

Let's just cut through the verbiage and get to what matters - the Shagwong Restaurant in Montauk serves what is surely the best rack of lamb on the East End.

Cooked in a grain mustard crust with a Bordelaise sauce, the tender meat is carefully separated from the bone, leaving a span of eight tiny ribs to cut up and eat with your fingers.

It's worth every penny of $21, salad or appetizer included, and you'll find the hallucinatory trip across Napeague with headlights in your eyes has been worth it.

The menu mentions that Shagwong serves Zebrowski's Bridgehampton potatoes, and the mashed potatoes that accompanied the lamb were outstandingly good. Is praise owing to the chef for this, or does Hank Zebrowski creep out at midnight and sprinkle his spud plants with some secret soul-of-potato elixir?

The Shagwong is known as a bar (I am told there is an excellent, inexpensive bar menu) as well as a restaurant, but the two are well separated.

Even on Super Bowl Sunday, the bar impinged only insofar as some diners kept wandering off to cheer for the Broncos instead of concentrating on their reviewing duties.

As this is East Hampton Town's 350th anniversary year, it's worth mentioning that the restaurant's walls are decorated with a wonderful collection of old photographs - dirigibles, early Montauk pictures, giant fish catches, turn-of-the-century portraits. . . .

The evening got off to a good start with hummus and warm bread whose crust managed to have a bell-like crispness yet didn't shred your gums when you bit into it. The house red, a merlot/cabernet sauvignon mix, was good, and reasonable.

All entrees come with a salad or choice of a number of appetizers, or a choice can be made among a la carte appetizers such as clams and oysters on the half shell, steamed mussels, shrimp cocktail, or cornmeal-fried calamari.

Full Of Pep

The potato leek soup was very good; the New England clam chowder was rather disappointing, short on both clams and flavor.

Maybe the Montauk mollusks preferred to be in the clams casino, which were light, tasty, and full of pep.

High marks go to the salad of field greens with blue cheese and walnut vinaigrette - a lively, refreshing wake-up call to the palate.

Fussy Lambert

One of our regular diners is one of those fussy eaters who can drive a busy waiter to teeth-grinding. Lambert always wants his dressing on the side and his fish done just so, and always wants to substitute one thing for another.

On this occasion he wanted his walnut dressing without the blue cheese, and he wanted olive oil, with plenty of chopped garlic in it, instead of butter.

Lambert's requests were met promptly, and with a smile.

"So very helpful," he said, cauterizing his taste buds with raw garlic.

The Price Is Right

Entrees at the Shagwong range from $12 for a vegetable platter to $22 for a 20-ounce T-bone steak, but most are $20 or under.

There is a daily low-fat dish and a prix-fixe special, on this occasion Tandoori chicken with an appetizer and dessert for $14.95.

As you can tell, the prices are very reasonable.

The seafood provencale was a beautiful eyeful of a dish with monkfish, scallops, olives, and shrimp served over linguine and studded with baby mussels in their shells.

Skip The Shrimp

The fact that it wasn't quite as good as it looked was because the shrimp were tasteless.

Now, we know shrimp come out of the ocean (remember that disgusting song "Shrimp Boats Are A'Comin' "?), but do you think they are intermarrying them with polystyrene chips these days?

Because that's what they taste like.

The baked stuffed jumbo shrimp dish, on the other hand, was delicious.

Why? Because they were seasoned, stuffed, wrapped in bacon, and served with scampi sauce, that's why.

The chicken saltimbocca is a rich platter of dipped sauteed chicken breast served with prosciutto, capers, and mozzarella cheese over pasta. It's a meal for a hearty appetite and none the worse for that.

Festive Presentation

Two enormous pork chops came in a tasty crust of mustard and Parmesan but were, it has to be said, a little tough.

All the entrees were beautifully presented, with plates decorated with little squiggles of sauce and a scattered confetti of chopped herbs. It probably takes only a few seconds, but it does make such a difference - each plate is a little fiesta for the diner.

By the time dessert arrived, half our team had defected to the bar for the final exciting minutes of the game - which was okay with the rest of us because the chocolate mousse cake was phenomenal and the raspberry and almond torte was pretty darn good, too.

The Shagwong was a surprise, I'll admit it. From the good bread to the pretty presentation to the excellent desserts, not to mention that rack of lamb, it wasn't what we were expecting.

And it's excellent value to boot.

Chris McDonald went winter-surfing at East Hampton's Main Beach last week and was leaving the water when he looked down to see an unfamiliar piece of flotsam - a clay pipe.

The pipe looked old and sanded, but otherwise in good shape. Given East Hampton's long and documented history, Mr. McDonald suspected there was an explanation between covers somewhere, and turned to Jeannette Edwards Rattray's chronicle of eastern Long Island shipwrecks, "Ship Ashore!" There on page 113 was the probable answer.

On June 3, 1871, the ship Pacific, bound from Glasgow to New York, went ashore at East Hampton. "She went on the beach with all sails set, a beautiful sight, so old people used to recall," Mrs. Rattray wrote. No lives were lost, and the ship's cargo of tiling and clay pipes was taken off at high tide with the help of Nathaniel Dominy.

This occurred on a Sunday morning. "The one church in East Hampton at the time - Presbyterian - never had such a small congregation," Mrs. Rattray reports. "Everybody was at the beach, and everybody got a 'beach pipe.' "

Now Mr. McDonald has his.

The first emotion on seeing one of Bill King's sculptures - as spindle-shanked and lanky as the artist himself - is a rush of delight and a smile of recognition.

Delight at the work's energy and wry humor, and recognition of a small social gesture - a bend of the knee, a sharp-elbowed hands-in-the-pocket stance, a certain inclination of the head - that we have seen a thousand times before.

The second emotion is a momentary guilt. We look around furtively, to see if anyone is watching. This is sculpture, after all. It's a serious matter. Should we really be smiling?

Gentle Humor

In an art world that has an insatiable appetite for the dark side of experience, that lavishes exposure on artists willing to pick at the scabs of pain and perversity, it's a brave artist who persists through the decades in depicting the gentle humor of everyday existence.

Mr. King's imagination never seems to flag, nor does his obviously intense hands-on enjoyment of different materials.

At his house in Northwest Woods, tall aluminum figures stride among the trees, watched through the windows by a phalanx of self-satisfied businessmen, broad-bodied and aggressive in their vinyl suits and blackjack ties.

Bach With A Harpsichord

A painted wooden dog, "Bill Dog," has the sculptor's face and a broken branch clenched between its teeth. In "Caffeine," a strung-out, spiky figure made from cedar shingles has a headful of staticky wire hair.

In a bronze tableau of Bach leaning over a harpsichord, it is easy to see the wood and cloth which was burned away during the lost-wax process.

There are rusty-patinated figures in cast iron, a passionately embracing pair of musicians in balsa wood, a "Paganini" in blue nylon, ceramic boxers, and a painted wooden figure of a man sitting on a stool, his knee sticking out at an ungainly angle as he pulls on a sock with a hole in the toe.

No Engineer He

Mr. King didn't come from an artistic family. Born in Florida, he descends instead from a long line of "engineers and exploiters."

His father was so determined the tradition be carried on that, according to family legend, he would lean over the cradle of Mr. King's elder brother and intone, "You're going to become an engineer. You're going to become an engineer."

"And," said Mr. King, "he did."

But somewhere along the line, he said, his mother must have decided to point him in another direction. She pushed him out of the nest, telling him Florida was no place for a young man and to get out and not come back until he was 65.

Fateful Crash

He set out for California to study to be an architect, but fate intervened on a brief detour to New York City, in the shape of a small plane that crashed into the Empire State Building. It was a headline-making event that got almost as much press coverage as the crash of the Hindenburg.

Mr. King was staying right around the corner. "I heard this terrific noise and rushed out, and there was all this smoke and flames."

" 'What a place!' I thought. 'This is where I want to be.' "

It was 1945. He signed on at Cooper Union, still intending to study architecture. But his drawing teacher took the class to see an exhibit of the sculpture of Elie Nadelman, and that changed Mr. King's direction.

"With all the arrogance of youth, I said, 'I could do that.' "

He Really Could

Most youthful arrogance soon comes up against the roadblock of reality, but in Mr. King's case it turned out that he really could do that.

His sculpture teacher was impressed with his early efforts, Mr. King remembered.

" 'That's pretty good,' he said to me. 'I bet you could sell that for $50.' Sell it for $50! In 1945! It made my head spin. The idea of making a living doing something you liked was unheard of where I came from."

"I'd have liked to be a pilot, but my eyes weren't good enough and I wasn't brave enough to be a bronco-buster, so I'd thought I was doomed to a life of drudgery and disappointment."

First Sales

He did indeed sell the sculpture for $50, and then sold others. In his final year at Cooper Union, he won a citywide competition for a scholarship, and the RoKo Gallery showed the winners. When the show ended, he had sold two of the three pieces and the gallery owner asked if he had any more.

"That was a riot!" said Mr. King. "Had I got any more? I went straight out and started making more."

He had signed with a gallery and made his first sales. He was on his way, and from then on he never looked back.

"I'm one of the lucky ones," he said. "I've made a living at it, most of the time. It's very cyclical - good years and bad years. For instance, one year I made $180,000, the next year I made $18,000, and the one after that I only made $1,800 - those numbers stick in my mind."

Italian Idyll

Shortly before Mr. King graduated from Cooper Union he received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Italy.

Leaving art school, he said, "was traumatic. I was so scared, I got married."

His first wife was a fellow student, the artist Lois Dodd. The couple spent an idyllic year in Italy, riding around on a motorbike and living in a Rome apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps, a year that Mr. King considers to have been absolutely essential to his development as an artist.

"In America, there's still this leftover Puritanism - art should uplift. If it's a sheer sensuous experience everyone gets uneasy."

Explosive Love Life

His first solo show was in 1952, at the Alan Gallery in Manhattan. Since 1961, he has been with the Terry Dintenfass Gallery there. Other solo exhibits form an orderly punctuation through the decades.

But if Mr. King's career as an artist followed a steady track, his love life seems to have been scattered with emotional landmines. Every decade or so another one exploded, catapulting him on a new romantic trajectory.

His first marriage fell apart following an "amour fou" with an English art student, better known now as the cookbook writer Shirley King, whom he married in 1955.

They were divorced 10 years later after he fell in love with Annie Kobin, and that marriage in its turn ended by 1977, when Mr. King moved full time to the East End to live in Springs with the painter Cile Downs.

Eye-Opener

His present relationship, with another painter, Connie Fox, has broken the pattern - they have been together for about 18 years.

"One of my wives said, 'You love those statues more than you love me.' And I thought, 'It's true.' But," added the sculptor, "if you fall in love, it always stays in some way - it doesn't just go away."

"Graham Greene once said, 'At the center of every artist, there's a chip of ice.' I had some big sculptures on 79th Street and I heard one of them had blown over. I got this terrible, sick feeling in my stomach," Mr. King remembered. "Not long after, Annie came to my studio and told me my mother had died. There really was not much of a feeling, not compared to what I'd felt about the sculpture."

"That was an eye-opener - monstrous, in a way."

Personal Bugaboos

In comparing the relative strengths of emotional feelings and castigating himself for falling short, Mr. King seems to forget that he really is not a good example of an icy-hearted anything.

From time to time, the letters pages of this newspaper are graced (or cursed, according to the reader's political leanings), by Mr. King's pointed cartoons and outraged letters.

Among the targets of his wrath have been local Republicans, greedy developers (in the person of characters called Bucks Biggy and Bucks Piggy), Shoreham, the Pentagon, racism, Central American policy, the gun lobby, and other personal bugaboos.

A longtime member of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee, he pulls no punches when something gets him mad.

No Angels, No Devils

"I was always interested in politics," he said. "I've never liked the way people are bad to one another, and I've never understood why more people don't take it seriously and do something about it."

Recently, though, his political fire has died down, said Mr. King.

"It may be that I just need the energy to stay upright these days, but politics now seems so impersonal. You sense there are big wheels grinding away behind the scenes, but I don't know - I don't even want to know - how it all works."

"There isn't a place anymore for my sort of theatrical, confrontational street theater. Now Democrats are people in suits, and I realize they are no more angels than Republicans are devils."

Life And Politics

His ideas about life and politics are still there in his sculpture, however: in the essential humanity that lies just beneath the satire.

"I see my sculpture right in the line of tradition from prehistoric times, Roman, Renaissance, down through the ages. But a number of people see the message - see that sculptural decisions have been made, but also see the aura: 'Things are not okay, but that's all right.' "

Mr. King, wary of the inadequacy of words to describe art, put down his coffee mug with an unmistakable end-of-interview firmness.

"I'm pretty sure it's something like that."

A Life With A Fast Tempo

"You should spend a day in the life of Jay Schneiderman," the Montauk resident joked. "I switch gears so many times."

He is chairman of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, a part-time teacher at the Ross School, manager of the Beach Plum cooperative in Montauk, and helps out at the Breakers, a Montauk motel he owns with his sister and father.

He creates sculpture, works to establish a nature center at Third House in Montauk, takes flying lessons at East Hampton Town Airport, and helped to renovate the Old Montauk Highway house that he and his friendly dog, Mali, moved into several weeks ago.

His approach to a new challenge, he said, is an enthusiastic "Yeah, maybe."

Just Back From Cuba

But it is music, in particular drumming, that seems to set the rhythm of Mr. Schneiderman's dizzying though far from giddy life.

Just back from a visit to Cuba, where he went to study percussion, he left the island nation just before the Pope arrived, having tried but failed to get his two-week visa extended for another seven days.

Americans are technically embargoed from visiting Cuba - travel itself is not prohibited, but spending dollars there is illegal, Mr. Schneiderman explained - and he had to obtain permission from the Treasury Department to go there. The trip was "a mission of significant cultural, historical, [and] professional value," he convinced the Government.

Birthplace Of Rhumba

He stayed at the University of Matanzas, about two hours from Havana, to participate in a program dedicated to the study of rhumba.

Matanzas, said Mr. Schneiderman, is the acknowledged "birthplace of rhumba," a percussion-based rhythm that springs from African and Spanish-colonial roots. The music is considered quintessentially Cuban.

The blend of influences makes for "intense" drumming, Mr. Schneiderman said, illustrating on one of several drums encircling his living room. The interaction of the rhythms, he said, poses an "extremely complex" challenge for the musician.

The First American

With classes every morning and private lessons in the afternoon, plus performances with his fellow students, Mr. Schneiderman still found time to tour parts of a country not many other Americans have seen in decades. For some Matanzans, he said, "I was the first American they met."

He and other students stood out as non-Cubans, though few people guessed his nationality.

Italian? they'd ask. Spanish? German? English? Canadian?

"They're so used to Americans not being there."

Communist State

Still evident in one of the world's last Communist states, said Mr. Schneiderman, is a group consciousness, "a belief that there's such as thing as a moral incentive" to do things for everyone's good.

It is "an idealistic notion, perhaps, but a noble one," said the Montauker.

Cubans are under no illusion that everyone is equal, Mr. Schneiderman said, but believe a communist society can be more equitable than a capitalist one.

A doctor, for example, makes more than a construction worker (the average Cuban salary is $15 to $20 a month). "They realize there are natural inequities," he said, but "there's a rough balance."

Privatization

Some sectors of the economy are now being privatized, and the Cuba of tomorrow may be very different, Mr. Schneiderman said.

Seeing the country first-hand at this juncture was clearly exciting for him: "You feel like you're on the brink of change," he said.

Privatization has allowed some Cubans, including his host in Havana, an engineer by trade, to rent out a room or two or run a small restaurant in their houses.

Renting rooms brings in more money than engineering, the man confided.

End The Embargo

The biggest source of revenue in Cuba at the moment is tourism, Mr. Schneiderman noted, another result of privatization. European-backed hotels are going up along the beautiful beaches, where, he said, the weather and the people are equally warm.

His approach to a new challenge, he said, is an enthusiastic "Yeah, maybe."

"And there's no Americans," he whispered.

Mr. Schneiderman thinks the United States embargo should end. There is no question Cuba needs to be more democratic, he said - although "it seems to me they're doing the best they can for their people" - and ending the embargo would give Cubans greater access to American ideas and values.

It might be good economically for America, too, he said. Cubans "so badly want to buy our stuff, our products."

A Month In Mali

Cuba is not the first place Mr. Schneiderman has gone to study percussion. Some years ago, he recalled, when he was teaching a drum circle at the Hampton Day School, "This woman came in with this drum she got in Africa," a goblet-shaped djemb‚.

"From the moment I heard that drum, I had to go find that culture where it came from." By himself, he traveled to Mali, a French-speaking country in North Africa, to seek out the lead drummer of the African National Ballet, the contact recommended by the woman with the djemb‚..

"I basically said. 'I've traveled halfway around the world to study with you.' And he basically said, 'Sit down.' "

He took lessons, $6 a day for a month. "It had a profound impact on my drumming."

Jazzberry Ram

Mr. Schneiderman's forays into music began with piano lessons at an early age. His parents thought it important, though "practicing seemed like a chore."

By the time he was in fourth grade, the Hauppauge resident was a drummer, spending summers at music camps. At age 12, he was a member of his first rock-and-roll band, Ocean. He played with a number of bands as a high-schooler, and at Ithaca College with a group called Jazzberry Ram.

Until he was about 21, Mr. Schneiderman played the traditional drum set, but he was moving a lot and "it was too much to carry a drum set around." He was looking for something smaller, and becoming more interested in tone and rhythm.

"That really started the journey."

Europa And Waterfence

Now, Mr. Schneiderman plays with Europa, a flamenco- style band, and Waterfence, whose "New Agey" music takes influences from Cuba, Africa, the Middle East, Brazil, and Asia. He also joins a full-moon drum circle that has formed in East Hampton.

A group he started called Conundrums is no longer together because, he said, its members were heading in different directions. Conundrums was popular, and he hopes it will start up again "when the time feels right."

It brought "some of that spirit that you might encounter in Africa around the fire . . . into a club," said Mr. Schneiderman.

Meanwhile, he is writing an album of songs for a local singer and is working on producing it.

Environmentalism

Mr. Schneiderman holds a B.A. in chemistry, but he was an anti-nuclear activist in college and decided not to follow that career path. After two years' work with the New York Public Interest Research Group, circumstances brought him to the manager's job at his family's hotel.

"I knew nothing about running a hotel, but I came out here to do it," said Mr. Schneiderman, who spent his childhood summers in Montauk. In the process, he "discovered I could fix things."

When his parents sued the Sunbeach corporatino after it blocked access to the beach across from the Breakers, Mr. Schneiderman became an environmentalist. "Initiation by fire," he said.

His interest soon expanded from "my front yard, literally," to a wider stage.

Teaching Children

Mr. Schneiderman eventually went back to school winters, earning a master's in education at State University at Cortland. He was hired to teach at the Hampton Day School, and after a few years there taught at the Waterfront School in Sag Harbor in its last year.

His training is in teaching high school students, but he prefers to teach younger children. "They have a really healthy sense of wonder," he said.

With the Waterfront School closing and his sister's decision to run the Breakers, Mr. Schneiderman took up an offer to manage the Beach Plum. At the time, he remarked, he was "frustrated . . . by some of the private school politics."

The Ross School

His affiliation with the Ross School could fairly be described as accidental. Courtney Ross, the founder of the school, was giving a party and had hired Europa to entertain. She overheard a conversation he was having, Mr. Schneiderman said, and was interested in why he had stopped teaching.

Though he was "reluctant to go back into a similar setting," the Ross School seemed "intriguing," its approach to teaching "very innovative," said Mr. Schneiderman, who taught there full-time last year.

At Ross, he said, the classroom "is not just the four walls but our environment" - particularly well suited to science, which he taught in addition to math.

Drum Class

Full-time teaching was a commitment, which was fine with Mr. Schneiderman, "except I have all these other things that I'm doing."

For that reason he decided not to return this year, although when Ross asked him to teach a 10-week drum class to ninth-graders, he couldn't resist.

He is now in his second session with the students, and may return to teaching full-time soon. "I see kids as our future," said Mr. Schneiderman.

Third House Center

As president of the nonprofit Third House Nature Center, Mr. Schneiderman is doing his best to establish an environmental center at the historic site, although, he said, the idea has met with little more than "obstacles."

"It's almost crazy to not have a nature center out here, particularly in Montauk," he said. The center, tailored to school classes and other groups, would emphasize "experiential learning," he said.

But with no luck so far at Third House, the group is looking for alternatives to get the project off the ground, including the possibility of leasing a different Montauk site.

Z.B.A. Chairman

Mr. Schneiderman brings his environmental consciousness as well as his practical business experience, he said, to chairing the Zoning Board, a background that has won him bipartisan political support.

It is not always easy to balance a property owner's rights with the greater community's interests, he said, though he believes the Z.B.A. reviews each request carefully and seriously.

"I feel bad saying no. If you want to be everybody's friend, this is not your job."

Asked if the Zoning Board might be a stepping stone to political office, Mr. Schneiderman admitted it was a possibility, if he felt he had broad-based support and could accomplish something for the good of the town.