The catalogues stacked by the chimney with care

And the credit cards ragged

with far too much wear. . .

It's too late to force bulbs

or "Martha" your house

So give up, think sweet thoughts,

make desserts, reservations,

or fly down to Peru.

Christmas dinner is the next major feast we tackle, and it's a lot more variable than the Thanksgiving menu, which is more or less set in stone by most families.

In my household, we opt for the English traditional roast beef (the Dickensian goose having always disappointed everyone). In the South, the main attraction was often a country ham; in New England, the turkey again - if you're lucky, a wild one - or some venison.

A special lasagne is not unheard of at some Italian holiday tables and leg of lamb stars at Christmas dinner for many families of various ethnic backgrounds.

Left to my own devices, I'd probably go with buckwheat blini and caviar, smoked salmon, and champagne. But I am never allowed my own devices.

Dessert was traditionally fruitcake, mince pie, or English plum pudding at my mother's Christmas table. I loathed fruitcake and dropped that item as soon as humanly possible.

However, the mince pie is still a "must" around here, and last year I made my own version of plum pudding.

Those who eyed it dubiously at first wound up asking for seconds.

Anyway, the holly and the flames are good dinner-theater.

Plenty Of Time

Like fruitcake, old recipes admonish the cook to make plum puddings months ahead of time.

But it really isn't necessary, and the beauty part is that you can make this any time from now up until a couple of days before Christmas.

If you have a pressure-cooker, you won't have to simmer it in the oven for hours, but even so, you just go about your business while the pudding throbs along all by itself to a delicious, dense taste thrill.

A pressure-cooker contracts the steaming time from about six hours to 90 minutes.

Christmas Plum Pudding

1 cup dried currants

1/2 cup dried Sultanas (yellow raisins)

1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped

1/2 cup dried pears, chopped

1 cup unbleached flour

2 cups bread crumbs (from day-old bread)

2 sticks unsalted butter or 1/2 lb. fresh beef suet, finely chopped

Peel of one orange, grated

Juice of one orange

Peel of one lemon, grated

11/4 cups raw sugar or light brown sugar

1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg or mace

4 beaten eggs

1/2 cup dark rum

Mix, Cover, Steam

Mix all the ingredients in the order given and scrape into a buttered eight-cup mold or heavy, heatproof china bowl. The pudding will expand, so the dish shouldn't be filled higher than an inch below the top rim. Cover it, first with buttered parchment (or typing) paper, then with heavy aluminum foil tied tightly with string.

Set the pudding on a rack in a pot that has about an inch of space all round it and fill it half to three-quarters of the way up with boiling water. Cover the steaming vessel and place it in the lower third of the oven (pre-heated to 325 degrees F.). After half an hour, lower heat to 300 degrees. Steam the pudding for six hours. When done, store it with fresh, dry coverings in a cool, dry place (not the refrigerator) until a couple of hours before serving.

Re-immerse the pudding in its boiling-water bath and steam it for about an hour. Lift it out, unmold it onto a heavy platter, and place a holly sprig on top. Heat a quarter-cup bourbon in a ladle and when it flames, pour it over the pudding. Rush it to the table before the flames die out.

Hard Sauce

Serve it with hard sauce, either purchased or easily made in a food processor. This can be made a week ahead of time, refrigerated, then brought to room temperature and beaten lightly to serve. It melts on top of the hot plum pudding; very little is needed for each portion.

1/2 lb. unsalted butter

1 cup light brown sugar

Pinch of salt

Pinch of nutmeg

1/4 cup bourbon or cognac or brandy

Cream the butter and sugar with the salt and nutmeg in a food processor or electric mixer (this ancient sauce can, of course, be made with a bowl and a wooden spoon). When light and fluffy, add the liquor in a slow stream. Pile into a container, cover, and store until needed.

The Right Dish

This next dessert is light, fluffy, and simple to make. I added pears to the basic pudding, normally made with rum-soaked raisins, which I've never cared for. Use either fresh Bosc pears or dried pears (moist, not leathery ones).

My pudding dish is Bennington stoneware, round, and about 12 inches in diameter by 21/2 inches deep. However, an oblong 9-by-13 standard glass baking dish could be substituted if you don't mind the somewhat institutional look of it.

Any kind of heatproof baking bowl or dish will do, actually, though it should not be too deep or the edges of the pudding will dry out before the center is cooked enough. Don't substitute any kind of fancy bread, though, such as baguettes or sourdough, because they won't make a proper fluffy pudding.

Southern Bread Pudding With Pears

Serves 12.

1 large, medium-ripe Bosc pear, peeled, cored, and sliced or 3/4 cup dried pears, snipped into small pieces

1 loaf Pepperidge Farm "toasting" white bread, (to make about 8 cups torn into bite-size pieces, with crusts on)

5 cups whole milk

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 vanilla bean

6 extra-large eggs

1 cup white sugar

Butter

Spread the pear slices on a lightly oiled shallow pan or cookie sheet. Bake at 300 degrees for about an hour. Remove and cut in small pieces. Set aside.

Be Gentle

Tear up the bread. Heat the milk with the cinnamon stick. Split the bean and scrape the vanilla pulp into the milk and toss in the bean. Bring it to just under the simmer and hold it at that temperature for 15 minutes. Do not boil.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs together with the sugar in a large bowl. Remove the cinnamon stick and vanilla bean from the scalded milk and pour it into the center of the eggs and sugar, whisking gently (you don't want a froth) constantly.

Pour this over the torn bread, stir in the pears, and let it soak for 10 or 15 minutes. Turn this into a prepared baking dish, well coated with soft butter. Dot with a bit more butter.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Let The Ends Hang Out

Put the pudding into an underpan with at least an inch of space around the perimeter of the pudding so that you can lift it out. With a round, handleless dish, place a folded thin cloth under it before setting it into the underpan. Leave the ends hanging out for lifting handles.

Pour boiling water around the pudding and place it in the center of the oven. In 10 minutes, reduce the heat to 325 and bake about 35 to 40 minutes - until a table knife inserted in the center comes out fairly clean. Do not overbake.

The pudding will need to cool on a rack for half an hour before serving with Whiskey Sauce. Or, it can be refrigerated, then reheated in a water bath (as above) before serving.

Whiskey Sauce

This sauce is mounted rather like a beurre blanc but is far less tricky to make. Just make sure the bottom of the double-boiler never actually touches the barely simmering water beneath it, or scrambled eggs will happen. It reheats easily by whisking it over very hot water.

If you're the type who wears suspenders and a belt, make the sauce in a heavy china bowl set over a smaller pot of barely simmering water.

1 extra-large whole egg

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup sugar

1 stick room-temperature unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces

Pinch of nutmeg

1/4 cup bourbon

Lightly whisk the egg, yolk, and sugar together in the top part of a double boiler (or heavy china bowl). Set it over barely simmering water in the bottom part of the boiler and whisk gently, adding one piece of butter at a time until all is incorporated. Whisk in nutmeg and bourbon and pour into a slightly warmed sauceboat with a small silver ladle.

Only a little of this potent sauce is necessary to top each serving of pudding.

It all started with a couple of antique rifles, a few wall-mounted antlers, and a reclining nude.

John Jaques, then a 26-year-old bartender and former philosophy student, had just opened the Hansom House, a restaurant and bar, in a rundown but historic building on Southampton's Elm Street.

Thirty-two years later, most would agree Mr. Jaques has come far in his quest to create "the most absurd bar in the world."

Ancient Anomalies

The rifles and antlers still adorn the walls, but they have been joined by a human skeleton, a suit of armor, a devilish-looking wax figure, a smoke-spewing car, and an attic's worth of anomalies ranging from ancient ice skates to an abandoned museum display depicting "The New York State Salt Industry."

The Hansom House is so awash in oddities that it would be as easy to spend a whole evening examining its walls and corners as dancing to one of the reggae and blues bands that play every weekend.

That's fine with Mr. Jaques, who likes to think of the place as "a giant collage" and a work still in progress.

Backlit Mural

"It's really based on entertaining people," he said. "I'm not a musician or anything, so this is my way of entertaining. I figure, if you come in, at least you get a drink's worth of junk to look at."

That's a modest way to put it, considering that some of the attractions are works of art Mr. Jaques himself has labored over for years.

The nightclub's couch-lined main room is adorned with a 30-foot-long stained-glass mural that took the club owner some 13 years to complete. At night, the glass is backlit by a computer-driven set of lights, giving the whole room a warm, ethereal feel.

Outside-In

Like other projects Mr. Jaques has done in the club, the stained-glass window started as a small concept ("I got bored looking at the curtains") and grew into a major undertaking.

"It just went on and on and on," he said. "Thirteen years it took me to get rid of those curtains!"

"The window was more or less a way to present my view of what I saw outside," he explained.

"People think weird things are always going on in here, but when you look outside, things are a lot weirder than they are in here."

The Real Hansom

The Hansom House was not always adorned in strange objects and art, but it has always had a quirky quality.

When Mr. Jaques first opened, the bar and restaurant had a formal appeal, and drew a crowd of socialites. The young club owner would often bring patrons over in a horse-drawn carriage he had bought at a Southampton auction.

The carriage, which inspired the club's name, still adorns one of the rooms - although its driver is now a mannequin fitted with a ghoul's head.

As the club began to establish itself it underwent a number of transformations, mainly in the clientele.

Police Raids

If there was a heyday for the Hansom House, it came in the late '60s and early '70s. In that same era as well, the club established a certain reputation with Southampton Village Police, though Mr. Jaques still swears it was unwarranted.

The place was raided on several occasions, and Mr. Jaques himself has been arrested several times on charges that were eventually dismissed, he said.

The club owner admits his relationship with the village has been somewhat strained over the years, but he is able to laugh about it. He even ran for Village Mayor one year, unsuccessfully.

"You can't hang someone in the village, otherwise I guess I'd be in trouble," he joked.

Metamorphosis

It wasn't until a fire at the club in 1976 that the Hansom House began its metamorphosis into the odd environment it is today. Mr. Jaques, who was going through a divorce and other changes at the time, considered getting out of the business and selling the club.

He took off by himself on a motorcycle trip to Canada. "A one-week trip turned into a month," he said, "and I came back realizing the problems in my life weren't related [to the nightclub]. I set out to create the most absurd bar in the world."

(If you lost something in the transition, it's okay; it wasn't quite that simple.)

Filling The Spaces

Mr. Jaques said some of the inspiration to adorn came from simple boredom. "The winters were so dead out here - I mean really dead - that I just began looking at the walls and thinking of what I could do."

Filling in the spaces through the years became an art form. Each room had its own feel, and thus got its own treatment.

In one room, objects are sparse, but the walls are intricate. Mr. Jaques wallpapered one section with hundreds of liquor labels, one with old concert and movie posters, and one with nude pictures from '60s and '70s magazines.

Another room, boasting a cappuccino machine and a few booths, is overrun with countless layers of objects, hung from the ceiling and plastered to the wall. It's not entirely haphazard, though.

"I tried to create an illusion where everything looks bigger than it really is," Mr. Jaques explained. "You have to look through an infinite amount of junk."

Mr. Jaques also created the 10-foot-high working fountain in front of the club. He had set out to buy one, but found the price wasn't right.

"I had some quartz," he recalled without a hint of irony, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to "have some quartz" lying around.

Debatable Gazebo

"It started small, but it became this big project. The next thing you know, I'm in there scraping concrete out of the rocks with a toothbrush."

With the Hansom House's interior and immediate exterior pretty much established, Mr. Jaques's creative instincts have expanded to the rest of the grounds - on a project not related to the club.

His application to build a gazebo - "kind of a Victorian Taj Mahal" - in the backyard sparked a recent zoning battle with Southampton Village, which contends that the club may not be entitled to use the space in that connection.

Mr. Jaques disagrees, of course, but that is another story.

The Creation

Village building inspectors have also been scratching their heads over another of Mr. Jaques's projects.

This one, which was recently completed, is unrelated to Hansom House. It's a towering waterfall built into a steep hill on an adjacent property, complete with giant boulders, two receiving pools, and a pump returning water to the top.

"If you want to see how absurd I really am, take a look at this," he said, leading a visitor through the backyard gate and down a trail toward the creation.

Book Construction

Though Mr. Jaques sighs about various nightclub-related difficulties - the music, the hardships of running a kitchen, smaller crowds - he shows no signs of tiring. One of his latest conundrums is deciding what to do with a large replica of a rocket ship sitting behind the club.

He has also embarked on a book about his experiences. Like the club, it will be a conglomeration.

"It will be about all the places, and people, the junk, and the concepts" over the years, he said.

"I'm trying to construct it just like the place."

The turnout, like the weather, was poor for the tree lighting at the Maidstone Arms in East Hampton Village on Friday. That meant a terrible showing for the Kiwanis Club's Toys for Tots drive; "a great need" remains.

It's not too late to donate unwrapped new toys for girls and boys up to age 16. They can be dropped off at Pumpernickel's Deli, Cook Pony Farm, the Post Office, Dreesen's Market, the Coach Factory Store, and Village Hardware in East Hampton; Body Tech in Amagansett; Gaviola's Market and Suffolk County National Bank in Montauk, and Pet Hampton in Wainscott. East Hampton High School seniors will collect the gifts on Dec. 16 and wrap them the next day for distribution to needy youngsters.

Legislators send out periodic reports, ostensibly to inform us about the latest government news but really to keep their names and faces fresh in our minds until the next Election Day.

Two such reports were in local mailboxes recently, one from United States Representative Michael P. Forbes and the other from State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. Although each addressed tax cuts and government spending, and although both men are Republicans, the mailings offer a glimpse of the legislators' vastly different political styles.

Mr. Thiele's flyer shows a photo of a burning wad of $100 bills and announces the end of "business as usual in New York State." It describes a $4.75 billion tax cut package, a $1.5 billion budget surplus, and a $750 million increase in school aid. Constituents are then asked to send back a coupon for information on school tax relief or to tell Mr. Thiele what they think the pressing issue for 1998 will be.

Mr. Forbes sent out "An Urgent Request" for advice on how to "reform the tax code and put the I.R.S. in its place." Its good news-bad news message is in three closely spaced, dramatically worded and punctuated pages. The good news: "THE TAXPAYERS WON! Congress passed a $94 billion tax cut!" The bad news: "Americans are still paying more than half their income in taxes."

The "nightmare" of higher taxes for married couples than for singles and of the Internal Revenue Service's "targeting honest citizens with deplorable tactics" will end, it seems, if his constituents share their "horror stories" of I.R.S. abuse.

The understated, succinct message from Mr. Thiele, addressed to "Dear Friend," leaves readers optimistic about the economy and grateful to have such a hardworking, no-nonsense guy on their side.

Mr. Forbes, on the other hand, belts forth with oratory meant to incite his constituents to rally round the latest national Republican cause. If they answer his questionnaire, they are manipulated into having to check "Yes! Mike, I agree with you!" Can you think of anyone who would instead check "No. Our current level of taxes is about right and I do not support any changes at the I.R.S. or reforms of our current tax code"?

Alexander Pope once claimed that coffee "makes the politician wise." While that may be true, it seems time for Mr. Forbes to switch to decaf.

"From Away"

Lona Rubenstein

Arete Books, $14.95

With more writers per capita than just about any other place in the world, it's a wonder that East Hampton hasn't spawned more novels set in its backyard. Perhaps most writers who spend any time here realize that no novel can ever really compete with the richness of celebrity Zoning Board of Appeals battles in the local press.

They might also be wary of the colloquial factor, something even the best attempts at East End novels have failed to avoid entirely. Inevitably an author succumbs to the temptation of landmarks and local lore. The result is a book that reads like the collision of an East Hampton Historical Society grant application and "Valley of the Dolls."

There have been some notable triers over the years. The decade-old "Ocean Vu, Jog to the Beach" by the late Clem Woods was an earnest attempt at capturing the standoff between the East End and the summer "grouper" menace. James Brady took the plunge more recently with "Further Lane."

Not The First

Those two titles alone are enough to deflate the claim on the back of Lona Rubenstein's self-published "From Away" that, "For the first time, we have a novel that accurately portrays the real Hamptons social scene - the wannabes, the haves and have-nots, the pretenders, toilers, hustlers, winners and losers." It may be the first time for her, but that's as far as it goes.

A one-time East End real estate broker and, most recently, political consultant for the failed East Hampton Village Mayoral bid by Jerry Della Femina, Ms. Rubenstein is qualified to write a bit about each of the groups she tries to portray.

From her high-flying days as broker on the sale of Broadview, the now-burned Bell Estate centerpiece in Amagansett, to a change of fortune and difficulties with a son who inherited the family fondness for gambling, she has never been a bystander.

Girlish Philosopher

"From Away" begins with Joe and Sally Singer as the outsiders arriving in town with their three kids for the weekend. He drives a taxi. They get thrown out of the house not because they're from away, but because kids weren't allowed in the rental they borrowed. Sally vows to return and triumph . . . more over her personal demons than Bubbies, as far as I can tell.

Although she initially portrays the Singer family as though they may as well be Cambodian Hmong refugees seeing Minneapolis for the first time, in no time Joe's having an affair with another woman "from away." Next they're headed toward some moderately diverting family, tax-map, and gambling intrigue. Who's from away and who isn't begins to blur as the characters' awkward passions overtake them.

The only character who really develops is Sally, but the focus never widens enough to give us more than her girlish-philosopher viewpoint. You sympathize with her need to keep bailing out her errant son, but it's difficult to stay very interested in either of them. Her denial leads to her demise. You expect nothing less.

When it comes to the final walk-through, Ms. Rubenstein's experience doesn't turn out to be enough inspiration to help "From Away" live up to its jacket promise or top any Z.B.A. battles. Ms. Rubenstein writes capably, but instead of the broad turf her novel claims to cover it isn't much more than a lona a clef.

Readers familiar with the East End and what was clearly the inspiration for Sally's downfall will find much of this book, well, familiar. It even includes a thinly reworked story I wrote as a reporter for The Star - called the Easthamptoner here - chronicling the Chinese menu of litigation David Rubenstein's real estate dealings attracted during and after his association with his mother's firm.

Lots Left Out

What I learned covering that story - only a portion of which space or journalistic propriety allowed reporting - puts me in the company of readers who know that the novel leaves out some of the best stuff. Perhaps the author has wisely reserved some of her material for another effort?

Ironically, the upshot of "From Away" and its inspiration is that, whether it's a poker game or flipping a real estate contract, just about everybody is blind to everything but the prize. It doesn't matter so much if you're "from away" or a member of the Lost Tribe of Bonac.

Eric Kuhn, former news editor of The Star, works for Bozell Worldwide, a public relations firm in Chicago.

\

Greg Scott, the host of WPBX-FM's weekly blues program for the past 10 years, stumbled onto his part-time career as a disk jockey quite by accident.

An Ohio transplant who attended the Columbus College of Art and Design and followed his future wife to the East End in the mid-'80s, Mr. Scott went to work here as a delivery man for an auto parts store.

"What do you do when you're driving around? You listen to the radio. WPBX was easily the best thing on the air."

Bitten, Smitten

One day, as he drove past the college, he heard some compelling African drum music. "I just had to check it out," he said.

So he pulled in and talked his way in to see the DJ. He left thinking, "Can I do this?" and began to drop in regularly, bitten by the broadcasting bug.

With summer coming and the station desperate for volunteers, Mr. Scott, who had never been on the air in his life, got his chance, landing a spot as the host of a "progressive music" show on the then 150-watt station (since boosted to a respectable 25,000 watts).

WPBX was "a lot looser back then," he said. "It was definitely a college station."

"Endless Bummer"

So freewheeling was the operation that Mr. Scott was allowed to run with "The Endless Bummer," a live-radio comedy about "two surfer dudes and their quest for the perfect wave, the perfect burger, and the perfect girl."

He wrote the script, added sound-effects recordings from the station's library, and chose accompanying rock songs for the program, which ended each week with the heroes disappointed and confronted with "some new outrageous situation to keep the plot going."

But after six weeks, the demands of producing the show forced its chief cook and bottle-washer to throw in the towel.

"I just ran out of time."

Down The Decades

Soon, though, after "kicking around programming ideas" with the late Buffalo T. Jones, then the station's manager, Mr. Scott was put in charge of the jazz-and-classical dominated WPBX's first blues show.

Starting as a weekly two-hour broadcast, it was expanded to three hours last year and four hours last month.

"The blues are more popular than ever," Mr. Scott said. "We're just riding that wave."

He organizes his show as an anthology, starting with the "roots music" of Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Furry Lewis from the '20s and '30s and making his way through the decades to the electric blues of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Elmore James, and others before wrapping it up with new releases.

Something To Chance

The DJ favors the chronological approach, he said, because "I don't know if my listeners tune in for all four hours, or if they just listen to the section of the show they like. But I do know they don't want to hear a song from one era at 7 and have to wait until 9:30 to hear another one."

Although Mr. Scott, who is still a volunteer, said he spends at least as much time preparing each broadcast as he does conducting it, he prefers to leave something to chance.

"I haven't even considered what I'm going to play tonight," he confided recently just hours before a show was to air. Years of listening to the station's expanding library have left him confident that he will find the right songs for the first half of the program.

"I know what I'm trying to hit," he said.

Time Preparing

But keeping up with the newer material requires some work. Mr. Scott, who now works as a caretaker on a Southampton estate, spent most of his free time over the Thanksgiving weekend listening to a dozen or more compact disks sent in by record labels, searching out an up-tempo tune here or a slow burner there to stir into his mix.

"I listen for those two or three songs that I think are worth playing," he said.

He tries to leave time for listener requests - "If I can find it, I'll play it," he said - and to let the mood of the broadcast guide his selections. "You might find a groove that you want to follow," he said, "and if it's scripted, you can't do that."

Traditional Rock

The audience seems to notice. "Sometimes I'll get a call from someone who says, 'You really nailed it tonight,' " Mr. Scott said. "That is very satisfying."

Like many others who came of age in the '70s, Mr. Scott, 39, who grew up in Newark, Ohio, about 45 miles east of Columbus, found himself drawn to the derivative blues recordings of white rock artists like Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, The Allman Brothers, and Janice Joplin.

His first album was a heavily blues-influenced Johnny Winters live recording.

"The people I grew up listening to were the traditional rock guys who still had listened to a lot of blues," Mr. Scott said. "That was rock-and-roll."

Cratesful

A friend who had a vast and eclectic record collection, liberally sprinkled with blues sides, further sparked his interest.

"He had floor-to-ceiling peach crates full of records. If it was rare and in mint collection, he'd buy it."

Mr. Scott soon began to listen to Mississippi John Hurt, Koko Taylor, and John Lee Hooker, among a host of other blues artists, and eventually built a sizable collection of his own.

He has no favorite blues musician, he said, although he has been listening to a lot of R.L. Burnside, "whose guitar-playing has a hypnotic quality," and Mississippi Fred McDowell, "who plays in a kind of similar vein."

The Field Stones and Roomful of Blues, current blues bands, have also caught his ear.

Early on, Mr. Scott's program depended on his own records, but he soon saw to it that WPBX's own collection grew. With limited funding available, he took to writing letters soliciting donations from the many blues labels that have sprung up in the past decade, releasing work by both new artists and re-releasing vintage recordings.

Reluctant Prospect

"I really try to support the labels that give me material," said the DJ. "I'll play it and tell people where they can get it."

While some companies are quick to provide promotional copies, others are not. Once, as a follow-up to a letter, Mr. Scott phoned a label based in Louisiana and spoke to its publicity director.

"The guy started yelling at me about how much he hated public radio and college stations. After I got off the phone and realized he had been insulting me for five minutes, I decided to write a tactful letter telling him we really weren't interested in his catalogue."

A few days later, Mr. Scott came to the station intending to write the brush-off note. He found a package waiting for him. "There were 57 CDs, almost their entire catalogue," inside. "It must have been his apology."

Listeners also have been generous. One regular used to call almost weekly, asking to hear music by Bumble Bee Slim, a Georgia-born pianist whose recording career spanned the '30's and '40s.

Noncommercial

"I guess he got tired of me saying we didn't have any," Mr. Scott said. One day a complete collection of the artist's recordings, nine CDs in all, arrived in the mail from the listener, whose requests are no longer denied.

While he often aims for the obscure, picking rare tunes for his program, Mr. Scott will sometimes play music by mainstream artists including Tracy Chapman, Boz Scaggs, and Robert Cray.

"But if a song gets too much commercial airplay, I'd be embarrassed to keep playing it," he said. "I think that makes for more interesting radio programming."

Mr. Scott, a sculptor who has a master's degree from C.W. Post and worked as a teaching assistant at Southampton College before joining the station, sees no end to his program in sight, although he would like to find time "to focus more effort into my art."

"I'm probably not going to quit until my wife demands that I stop, and maybe not even then. Right now, it's still very fresh, it's still a lot of fun. When it starts getting boring, I'll know I'm no longer entertaining."

Some of eastern Long Island's most amazing history is the result of the simple fact that it sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean. The story of the Amistad mutiny is a case in point.

A group of captives, abducted from Sierra Leone and destined to be sold into slavery, overcame the crew of the schooner Amistad off the coast of Cuba. Hoping to return home, they steered east during the day. During the night, however, the two crew members spared turned the boat north. Way off course, the Amistad finally anchored off Fort Pond Bay in Montauk. The year was 1839.

The captives turned captors were arrested and charged with mutiny and murder. The trial that followed in Connecticut, and the successful defense of the mutineers by former President John Quincy Adams, strengthened the abolitionist movement.

Until now, East Enders have been proprietary about the story of the Amistad. It was in Montauk, after all, that Cinque and his fellow Africans first stepped on United States soil. It was local history.

Recently, however, it's been hard to open a magazine or newspaper without reading about it. Steven Spielberg's movie opened this week on schedule, after a Federal District Court Judge refused to enjoin its opening as requested by Barbara Chase-Riboud. Ms. Chase-Riboud, the author of one of several books about the Amistad, is suing Dreamworks SKG, of which Mr. Spielberg is a partner, claiming the script used material she had copyrighted.

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, the film will help spread the story of this dramatic episode in the struggle for freedom to millions of Americans. That's as it should be.

A mother's only son. A boy at the center of a web spinning lovely patterns ever outward, or almost ever outward. Silk shooting this way and that, entangling and commingling everyone who smiled at the sight of him. Now they smile in remembrance.

Carlos Hernandez, a 17-year-old senior who played first trumpet at East Hampton High School, died in a car accident on Friday. His family and friends, teachers and bosses, the people he knew at the high school and at the school in Montauk, where he had lived since moving with his family from Chile at the age of 9, those who speak Spanish, English, or both, those who knew him intimately, who are anxious about the children and adults who are grieving, or whose hearts feel broken just thinking about what his parents must feel - the community is in tears.

If there is any consolation in such blameless, apparently meaningless loss, perhaps it can be found in how the spokes radiate from the young man at the hub. He makes us one.

A Manhattan man who added a bathroom to the third floor of his Montauk house without a building permit and in defiance of a stop-work order has been told to rip it out - a job that will cost at least $20,000, he protested.

Three-story houses are prohibited by the East Hampton Town Code. Said Vedad's house, between Hamilton and Houston Drives, had a legally pre-existing third floor when he bought it in 1995, but a variance from the code would be needed in order to build on to it.

Mr. Vedad was brought into East Hampton Town Justice Court in September, fined $750, and ordered to apply for the variance.

Powder Room

At a recent Town Zoning Board of Appeals hearing, he maintained the addition was merely an extension of his third story, and said it was needed for an extra "powder room."

The second floor and its bathroom, he said, had been renovated so his elderly mother could live there.

Zoning Board members had little sympathy for the homeowner in reviewing his application for variances to legalize the 10-by-16-foot addition.

"It's clearly self-imposed" said the Z.B.A. chairman, Jay Schneiderman.

Hearing Testimony

Testimony at the Nov. 18 hearing alleged that the house had been listed for sale and for rent with Montauk brokers, although Mr. Vedad's lawyer, Robert Kouffman of East Hampton, said it was "never listed for rental or sale." His client "just wanted to test the market," said Mr. Kouffman.

Carol Morrison, who lives nearby, complained that the house was obtrusive in the neighborhood because of its height and because of extensive clearing of the property.

Mr. Kouffman argued that other houses in the area had three stories, but board members said most were two-story structures with basements and garages dug into the hilly grade. A basement without living space is not considered a story.

Mr. Vedad's house might have been considered a two-story house with basement, except that its certificate of occupancy notes "living space" in the basement. Additionally, much of the earth formerly surrounding the basement has been removed, exposing the level.

Board members ruled 4-to-0 at a Nov. 25 work session to deny the variance.

Mr. Schneiderman observed that Mr. Vedad could solve his problem by filling in the grade around the basement (first-floor) level, thus making the house conform to zoning, rather than ripping off the addition.

Peter Van Scoyoc, a Z.B.A. member, abstained from the vote, saying he had submitted a bid to do work on the house.

Nine Variances

Also at last week's work session, the Z.B.A. denied William Fowkes, a contractor, permission to build a house on a tiny, 5,000-square foot lot off Gardiner's Cove Road near Three Mile Harbor and the Three Mile Harbor Inn in East Hampton.

Board members ruled the 1,500-square-foot, two-story house proposed was too big for the constrained lot, whose wetland pockets drain into the harbor.

To build the house as proposed, Mr. Fowkes would need a total of nine variances, from height requirements, property-line and wetlands setbacks, and lot-coverage limits. The septic system would have been just 71 feet from the wetland edge, where 200 feet is the requirement.

Acquisition? Unlikely

Mr. Fowkes's application posed a fairly common problem for the Z.B.A. when faced with undersized lots: The town cannot completely deny a property owner the use of a legally existing lot unless the town is willing to acquire the property.

Board members inquired whether the town might consider purchasing the lot, but Brian Frank, a town planner, said it was unlikely that this lot would be a priority over other, more sensitive parcels.

Neighbors at Mr. Fowkes's earlier hearing had urged the board to deny the house, saying its septic system would contaminate their wells and that their own houses were well below the 1,500 square feet being proposed.

Septic: No Way, Nowhere

During their deliberations, board members at first appeared to be split. Both Charles Butler and Philip Gamble argued against allowing any development at all on the site.

"There's no way in the world this septic system can go in without jeopardizing the wells of his neighbors," asserted Mr. Gamble.

No matter where the septic system was placed on the lot, he said, it would lie too close to the wetlands and too close to at least one neighbor's well.

Septic: Somewhere

Mr. Schneiderman reminded the board that a total denial would mean condemning the property.

"We can determine if the septic is in the best location, but we can't say a septic system can't go on this property, because that would be condemning it."

After further discussion, the board ruled the house could be reduced in size, reducing some of the variances.

The board voted 4-1 to deny the house as proposed, with Mr. Schneiderman casting the only dissenting vote. He said the house could have been approved with a lesser height variance.

Too much of a good thing - namely, treasures found amid the trash at the "home exchange" recycling area at the East Hampton Town dump - is drawing hordes who stay all day, crowding the area and creating a safety hazard, according to town officials.

The home exchange area at the Springs-Fireplace Road recycling center was abruptly shut down on Friday after a resident who had dropped something off stopped by the office, shaken after a near-miss when a child darted behind his car.

"You go over there at any time of the day, and there are families sitting there. It was never intended for that," Neal Sheehan, the town's environmental facilities manager, said yesterday.

Although signs declare a 15-minute limit on stays, a number of people linger much longer, waiting for new items to arrive. Their cars take up the dozen or so parking spaces, causing traffic to back up when someone wants to unload something.

"It's gotten steadily worse," Mr. Sheehan said. "There is no easy solution, because obviously it's become a culture." Although those using the area, to dump or to collect, are supposed to have dump permits, some people, he said, walk in off the street, or get dropped off at the site and are picked up hours later.

Members of the East Hampton Home Exchange Recycling Committee, an ad hoc advocacy group of about 20 residents that was formed several years ago when town officials seemed poised to shut the exchange area down, want to see it reopened. They acknowledge, however, that there are some problems.

"Traffic has been a problem . . . children unattended, people sneaking in there. We are aware of this," said Nancy McCarthy, a committee member.

"The biggest concern - it's almost like a day care," said Jim Campbell, another committee member. "They're talking with their friends, and their children are playing with the new toys they've discovered there."

"We're going to have to change it a bit; it's not what it was meant to be," Supervisor Bill McGintee said Tuesday. Besides staying too long, he said, people looking for treasures are "mobbing people" dropping things off, which "makes people uncomfortable."

"There has to be a way of making sure that people follow the rules," Ms. McCarthy said, adding that committee members have "tried, sort of informally, to police the area ourselves." But "some people pay attention, some don't." Because many of the visitors to the area are Spanish-speakers, she continued, there can also be a language barrier.

Ms. McCarthy said that the committee's efforts several months ago to arrange a bilingual meeting at the recycling site were frustrated by landfill employees who removed posters advertising it. Mr. Sheehan said his employees had not been instructed to intervene.

Enforcing the posted rules is difficult, according to Mr. Sheehan, because they are not part of the town code. He recommended that the town board include them. If it were to do so, an ordinance enforcement officer could give those who ignore the limits a summons. Mr. McGintee suggested marking tires, as is done in the village to enforce parking regulations.

Mr. Sheehan said a shortage of manpower, particularly on weekends, prevents him from posting a landfill employee at the exchange area. In any case, he added, an employee would not have the authority of a uniformed officer with a badge.

"We just have to figure out a way to make it safe. I don't want to be the guy who says, 'Close it.' "

The home exchange area was squeezed for space when it was moved to the front of the recycling area, near Springs-Fireplace Road, after the entire site was reconfigured several years ago as part of a project to close the landfill. One solution, Mr. Sheehan said, could be to assign it a larger space toward the back of the site, where it could be more closely monitored.

Besides the crowds, he noted, another problem is that, in addition to reusable stuff, people often leave garbage that no one else would take and toxic refuse, such as pesticides or paint cans.

The remains of each day get scooped up and disposed of by dump employees at 4 p.m.

Allowing people to take home "reusable things . . . helps the town in terms of the number of items that have to be hauled away, so it's saving the town," Mr. Campbell said yesterday. "It's teaching about history, because sometimes there are old things. There are parts that people need. And in spite of this being a wealthy community, there are a lot of people who can use these things in their daily living, in this disposable society."

"There are lots of people in this town who have things in their house from the dump," Mr. Campbell said - from a plate to more significant items like furniture.

The committee hopes to meet with Mr. Sheehan and the town board to find a solution to the problems. Town board members are expected to address the issue at a work session on Tuesday.