Having already established historic districts on Main Street and Bluff Road in Amagansett, in Springs, and around the Association houses in Montauk, officials have turned their attention to the protection of historic buildings more widely scattered throughout East Hampton Town.

Buildings associated with farming in East Hampton and cattle grazing in Montauk, with the town's resort economy and its maritime and military pasts, and with Carl Fisher's attempted development of a "Montauk Beach" resort in the 1920s, have been listed in a draft report by Robert Hefner, a historic-preservation consultant to the town.

The report mentions 166 properties in all, including a number of private houses that date from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Mr. Hefner, who presented the report to the town board on Tuesday, compiled the list from previous surveys. He plans to inspect them to assess their present condition and to determine if they are still historically significant. Those that are could be included in a town "inventory of cultural resources" and protected in several ways, Mr. Hefner told the board.

The properties should be added to the Community Preservation Fund list, he said, so that money from the fund, which is earmarked for preservation of open space, farmland, and historic resources, could be used to buy them outright or to obtain protective easements.

The fund has already been used to buy and preserve a portion of the old Duck Creek Farm, six acres on Three Mile Harbor Road in Springs that contains the 1790s John Edwards house, to obtain farmland and historic easements on the Schellinger Farm property in Amagansett, and to buy a protective easement on the privately owned former Conklin house on Accabonac Road in East Hampton.

Mr. Hefner suggested several levels of "legislative protection" the board could adopt for historic properties.

One would be a "cultural resources overlay district." If a building permit was issued in this district, the town would be notified in time to record any historic features that would be eliminated or to suggest an alternative to demolition.

Another option would be designating sites as historic landmarks, which would limit how they could be changed and require a review of the work to be done.

Mr. Hefner noted that the owners of property in a historic district benefit financially, in that the character of their neighborhood is protected. On the other hand, owners of individual landmarks would be asked to protect their houses "for the benefit of the town as a whole," accepting restrictions without necessarily enjoying the benefits of seeing their neighbors' property being restricted as well. So they should be compensated in some way, he said.

The board will consider the idea of paying property owners for easements that preserve important interior features, providing grants for certified rehabilitation work or for returning a building to its historic form, and simply buying historic houses to use in the town's affordable housing program.

While the houses of the "wealthy landowners" in the hamlets' Main Streets have received attention and are often in the established historic districts, "just as important to the history of East Hampton and to the overall historic landscape are the scattered small houses of fishermen, subsistence farmers, and farm laborers," Mr. Hefner wrote in his memo to the board.

"East Hampton is one of the few places where so many of these little historic houses survive. These are an unstudied group of historic houses that represent a large class of East Hampton's early residents who receive little attention in our histories."

The small buildings have historically served as affordable housing, and many are still occupied by "local families with deep roots here," Mr. Hefner wrote.

However, there is a growing tendency for those families to sell their property and move elsewhere, leaving the small houses to second-home owners who tear them down or enlarge or remodel them, destroying their historic integrity.

To avoid that, Mr. Hefner suggested establishing a "small house program."

Owners of single-family residences that have been deemed historic landmarks might grant a historic easement to the town protecting the interior and frame and limiting expansion to 2,000 square feet.

In exchange, they would be given the right to build a second small house of up to 1,500 square feet on their property. The second house could, through rental or town purchase, become part of the affordable housing stock.

Town Supervisor Bill McGintee said Tuesday that protecting individual historic sites is something the board should move on "with some haste." He noted that pieces of Hampton history - the military bunkers in Montauk, for instance - were assets that could even draw some tourists.

The board agreed to develop legislation for discussion at a public hearing.

Although residents of proposed coastal erosion tax districts continue to air their concerns, the Southampton Town Board plans to vote for adoption at its Oct. 25 meeting. The board ended public hearings on the matter on Tuesday.

Supervisor Patrick A. Heaney devised three tax districts to address erosion emergencies and provide funds to plan larger scale beach rebuilding efforts at the residents' discretion. He said state law restricts the town from improving private property on its own.

The beachfront is private property that, because of a town trustee easement that dates to Colonial times, the public can use, Mr. Heaney said. Creating a tax district is the only way that the town can provide a public fund for improvements on property it does not own.

The proposed Southampton East district encompasses the coastal properties of the recently incorporated village of Sagaponack. Southampton West includes the coastal properties of Bridgehampton and Water Mill, along with some bayfront properties that could also be harmed by an oceanfront breach. The Tiana district begins west of the Shinnecock Canal.

Each of the two districts east of the canal would be initially levied $250,000, to establish a reserve fund. The money assessed in subsequent years would depend on how much was spent in the prior year. If no money was spent, no assessment would be necessary. If more was spent, an additional assessment would be needed.

The assessment would be deductible from income taxes. Districts would also be allowed to issue bonds for large replenishment projects that could be paid out over several years instead of one lump sum.

The Towns of Brookhaven and Islip have 11 such districts combined on Fire Island. The town board has been advised by both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Charles Schumer that the formation of these districts will help the town get state and federal grants and resources for its beaches and should also expedite the permitting process. A representative from Mr. Schumer's office sat in on the public hearing on Tuesday.

Sally Breen, a part-time resident of Water Mill who was one of the proponents of the incorporation of a coastal village originally called Dunehampton, presented a letter from her husband, Daniel Breen, along with the results of a survey of coastal property owners and a new version of the law that they would support.

The Breens sent out a survey card on Oct. 3 to 317 households and had received 73 responses as of Tuesday. The results so far indicate that these property owners would support the creation of a coastal tax district but not the one described by the town.

Chief among their concerns were the right to rebuild and ensuring that the money collected would not go to town-owned beaches. The ability to appoint their own "commissioner" of the district was also a popular concern.

The town board maintained that due to some misconceptions the law was actually closer to what property owners were describing than they realized. The town cannot use the dedicated funds raised for the district for their own beach properties. They also pledged to maintain the town-owned beaches up to a safe standard with the town's general funds, which is allowed.

This would include repairs at Flying Point Beach where a resident described a six-to-eight-foot-high cut near the bathhouse that could potentially flood the whole area. Councilwoman Linda Kabot said she would look into it.

The town also adopted the suggestion floated in an informational public hearing in August that a citizens advisory committee be set up for each of the districts to make suggestions for projects and take a role in determining what is to be done in an emergency.

Councilman Steven Kenny, who was the sponsor of the 2003 coastal erosion hazard law, also announced his intention to clarify that law's language to make it clear that homeowners can rebuild their houses after a storm destroys them.

Mr. Kenny said as long as the required amount of beach remains, he always intended that homeowners have the right to rebuild. Lawyers, however, found the language of the town's law ambiguous. He said changing some "mays" to "shalls" in the law should be enough to clarify these rights. The homeowners in attendance were pleased to hear his plan.

Many of those affected had already met with town officials for an informational session with representatives from the Fire Island districts present. Although some still thought the beach was a public benefit and were resistant to the idea of a special assessment, others were happy to have the opportunity to do something to protect their houses.

People who live in Water Mill on the Mecox Bay who were included in the Southampton West District have no interest in being a part of it, according to Mr. Breen and others who spoke at the meeting.

Gary Ireland, a lawyer whose family owns a house in Sagaponack, proposed that the tax be renamed the "Levy Beach Tax" after County Executive Steve Levy, whom he is suing to cut back the groins at Georgica Beach and to replenish sand to the beaches west of them. Mr. Ireland's mother, Cynthia Hamlin Ireland, has had to move her house back two times to save it from the water. He brought the lawsuit, which the town joined last year, under his mother's name.

In 1993, a beach house owned by Mr. Ireland's uncle, Brian Hamlin, was washed out in Sagaponack. Mr. Ireland shared pictures of the ruined building with the town board to underscore what can happen when erosion is not addressed.

Councilman Dennis Suskind told the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee on Tuesday that the town board would not shove the legislation down anyone's throat. If there is enough resistance in a given district, he thought the town board would vote to withdraw the legislation for that district.

Mr. Breen addressed that possibility in his letter. "While you have indicated a predisposition to simply withdraw your proposal if we complicate it too much . . . the polls indicate that the community is willing to suffer a disproportionate tax burden to improve the public's beaches if the town is willing to work with the community. The property owners appreciate your efforts to provide a fund to protect their homes in the case of an emergency."

Amagansett residents may have seen Arthur Kaliski's invention before. In the summer of 2002, he strapped a keg-size vertical-axis windmill to the ski rack of his Honda Accord and rode shotgun around the hamlet with a voltmeter in his lap. The device spun on the roof and he took readings as he coursed the streets like an environmentally friendly pizza delivery man.

Three years later, this June, Mr. Kaliski was awarded a patent for his windmill, Milwind, which stands 71/2 feet tall now but remains light and transportable at 135 pounds. He wanted to come up with a simple, low-maintenance way to capture clean, renewable energy - for urban or rural settings generally, for impoverished areas overseas particularly.

"The largest use for small windmills is in third world countries," Mr. Kaliski said recently in the backyard of his house on a hill in the Amagansett woods. His windmill "could replace kerosene for lighting there," or, he said, run water purification systems that use ultraviolet light.

In this country, "it could aerate ponds or power a gate or an electric fence in a remote area. Or it could act like the photovoltaics you see on emergency phones, or on a streetlight or small utility. . . . In northern latitudes, there's not as much sun, but there's constant wind."

Milwind has a belt-driven 10-amp generator that, in its present setup, can produce 120 watts to charge a 12 or 24-volt battery. (Batteries are important, of course, for an uninterrupted supply of electricity if the wind isn't blowing.) The system can be scaled upward for increased power output.

"This is the result of three years of work - design, development, and patenting - but I originally had the idea 20 years ago." And then his partner, Millicent Danks, "saw an ad for a vertical windmill in Vermont and said, 'You better get going.' "

By vertical, Mr. Kaliski means the machine spins like a top, not a propeller facing into the wind. He called vertical windmills superior because "propeller types always need a clean airflow. They have to be high up and can't make use of turbulent air. But a vertical windmill can be sited on buildings or in places where the airflow is not constant in one direction."

In this case, the wind is caught by four cups, essentially hollow cylinders cut lengthwise - two above and two below. "The cups are a composite: a Kevlar honeycomb core and oak veneer skins, epoxied together." This keeps the windmill light and rotating easily in a breeze. "I worked with a local machinist, Peter Saskas, on the aluminum parts inside."

"The claim that earned the patent is Milwind's ability to rotate into a closed shape," in part to protect itself from bad weather. This is achieved through what he called a clutch: a small hand lever that can be lowered to brake the windmill's spin. It produces a ratcheting sound as the cups slowly close upon themselves like a flower at night. Milwind at rest stands like the world's sleekest hot water heater.

"I tried for an artistic design," Mr. Kaliski said. "People say it's beautiful. We took it to Gerard Drive to test it and some guys in a dump truck stopped to admire it. A woman walking by asked, 'Will it be here permanently?' . . . Because of the way it looks, open or closed, architects could have a field day with it."

Mr. Kaliski studied chemistry in college and sold chemicals in the Midwest for a time, but he came to put some of that technical knowledge to use in a creative way, doing restoration work on fine art. A resident here since 1997, he is a former chairman of the Sierra Club's Long Island Group, "and I was also active in getting the South Fork Groundwater Task Force going."

His interests in science, art, and environmentalism came together in Milwind, with commerce something of an afterthought. "If it makes money, fine, but I'm not trying to establish a retail market. I don't want to get into manufacturing, or a situation where by the time I'm done with it, somebody else owns it. . . . I'm trying to get licensees interested in developing it."

"The idea was to get it out there. My thing is to excite somebody who will take it up and take it to where it should go."

Tomorrow through Sunday, Mr. Kaliski will exhibit his prototype at Bioneers by the Bay at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, part of a yearly environmental and alternative-energy conference at sites across the country.

As resource depletion combines with rising energy costs, "Milwind has come at an opportune time," he said. "The motive was to do some good. . . . I've always been involved in putting my two cents in in protecting the environment we live in. You become engaged because you have no other choice. You have to do it."

Landscapers, construction workers, and other contractors who do business in East Hampton Village may soon be subject to new rules about where they can park while they are working.

Complaints about large trucks parked in the street or damaging the grassy road shoulders owned by the village had the village board talking last Thursday with the building inspector, superintendent of public works, and police chief about regulations that might keep those trucks on the properties they are servicing.

"We've all about had it with the degradation of village property," Tom Lawrence, the building inspector, said at last Thursday's village board meeting.

Among the solutions the board discussed were better enforcement of no-parking rules, where they are designated, and advising contractors to park in the driveways of the houses they are working at or to use safety cones if they must park on the street. A village permit for service companies doing work in the village was also debated.

"There are a lot of places that are not going to have room on the property" for the trucks, Barbara Borsack, a village board member, said.

"There are a fair amount of properties where more than two vehicles showing up would max out the parking," Mr. Lawrence said. One problem, as he sees it, is that landscapers "are not running around in vehicles that are appropriately sized to the properties they service."

The trucks left on the road while workers tend to a property can create a "serious problem," said David H. Brown, another board member, "especially if we've got to get an ambulance through." If a driveway is not big enough to accommodate all the trucks servicing a property, the village could tell contractors and landscapers that they can unload only, then require them to park elsewhere, Mr. Brown suggested.

"Where are they going to take their vehicles if they can't park them in the driveway or on the street?" Ms. Borsack asked.

"They have to be on the property or off the roadway, and that's what my guys enforce," said East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen.

Often the trucks park on the grassy shoulder of the road to avoid parking in the street, but such heavy vehicles tear up the ground and destroy the grass. "Irrigation is a big culprit also," Scott Fithian, the superintendent of public works, said. When the ground is overly wet, truck tires can do more damage.

"We can tell them you can't park it in the right of way or the roadway," Chief Larsen suggested. If the village were to issue a permit to contractors and service people working in the village, even if it were free, it would give the village the opportunity to explain its rules and expectations, he said.

"I wonder how difficult we're going to make it for people to have work done on their property," Ms. Borsack said. She asked whether the village could make the contractors responsible for maintaining and/or reseeding damaged village right of ways.

"Some places there just is no answer," she said. "It would be nice if someone had a solution."

"Get goats," said Edwin L. Sherrill Jr., another board member.

If the village comes up with a reasonable solution, Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, said, he is sure contractors will comply.

Also at last Thursday's meeting, the board discussed estimated costs to construct a bathroom and provide lifeguards and supplies at Two Mile Hollow Beach.

A consent order the village signed with the Suffolk County Health Department mandates that the village provide lifeguard protection and bathroom facilities and obtain a bathing beach permit for Two Mile Hollow by next May.

Based on the cost of lifeguard protection, supplies, and maintenance at Georgica Beach, Mr. Cantwell said it could cost the village about $50,000 to operate a bathing beach at Two Mile Hollow.

He guessed that construction, site work, and fees for the bathrooms could run about $400,000. Capitalizing the expense over 15 years, the village would pay about $26,700 annually.

"It's not just a question of putting up a single bathroom," Mr. Cantwell said Friday when asked about the price tag. "We're not sure where on the site it's going to be located."

The village will have to pay to extend public water and electrical service to the bathrooms and to build a septic system for it. The bathroom facility, which has not been designed yet, will be handicapped-accessible and have two men's and two women's toilets and storage for the lifeguards' equipment.

A design could be finalized by December, but in the meantime, the village needs to have a ballpark figure so that those expenses can be factored in to the cost of non-resident beach parking permits for 2006.

Ms. Borsack recalled a village board meeting in August at which the board told Two Mile Hollow regulars that taxpayers would share the burden of the expanded beach facilities with nonresidents who buy stickers. "I'm trying to figure out how to keep the sticker price the same, or not raise it as much," she said.

This year, the village issued 2,500 permits, at $225 each, and earned $562,500. If it increases the permit price by $25 and sells 100 more permits in 2006, it could earn an additional $87,500 next year, which would fully cover the cost of operating an additional bathing beach.

The board agreed to those numbers, but has yet to pass a resolution on the matter.

In other news, full-time East Hampton Village employees with college-aged children will soon be getting a bit of a break on college expenses. A private donor has pledged to give the village $25,000 a year for the next three years to help it establish a scholarship program for the children of village employees.

Employees' children under 24 years old who are attending college full time for an associate's or bachelor's degree will qualify for a scholarship of $500 per academic year toward tuition or books. Students will have to apply for the grant, but until the money runs out, no qualified student will be denied.

Based on the current number of village employees and their eligible children, Mr. Cantwell said, he believes the program could be sustained for at least 10 years. The first grants will probably be handed out in January.

The board will meet again on Friday, Oct. 21, at 11 a.m. at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street.

Extending public water to Springs and balancing the need for affordable housing with the need to preserve some of the open land left in the town's most densely developed hamlet were the overriding themes at the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee's meet-the-candidates night on Tuesday.

Candidates for town justice, town clerk, town assessor, town highway superintendent, and town trustee introduced themselves to Springs voters, but those running for town supervisor and town board were the focus of the forum.

Roger Walker, the Republican candidate for town supervisor, and his running mates, Larry Penny and Bill Gardiner, would like to see Suffolk County Water Authority mains extended north into Springs.

Their Democratic opponents, Supervisor Bill McGintee, Councilwoman Pat Mansir, and Brad Loewen, chairman of the town planning board, want to first be sure that bringing more water to the hamlet will not have a negative impact on the harbors and bays and plan to commission an environmental impact statement to study the proposal.

In some areas of Springs, Mr. Walker said, "the water is not all that good." He also supports bringing public water to the hamlet for fire protection purposes, because it is so densely developed.

The Republicans say the town board has been too slow to act on the matter. "How much do you need an environmental impact statement to run water through a pipe?" Mr. Gardiner asked on Tuesday night.

Drafts of the town comprehensive plan prepared by Lee E. Koppelman and the company Horne Rose during Jay Schneiderman's administrations suggested that zoning changes recommended in Springs be put in place before public water was brought there.

"You don't move quickly on issues that can have such a profound impact on this community," Mr. McGintee said. He reminded people that the water authority is a business and that, when it proposed extending mains to Springs, it "said we won't bring you water unless half the people sign up."

When the water authority extended its main to Montauk, it said it would pump no more than 20 million gallons a year there; now, however, "they're way over 100 million gallons," Mr. McGintee said. "I'm concerned about the inroduction of water into an area where the water table is at four feet," he said of Montauk.

"I have always been a proponent of water to Springs and I still am," Ms. Mansir said. She told voters that the town is preparing requests for proposals now to find a company that can undertake the environmental study.

"If we have one of those horrible Hurricane Bobs or Hurricane Glorias, not everybody has a generator hooked up to their well," Mr. Penny said. As the town's natural resources director, Mr. Penny helped draft a water resources management plan for the town's comprehensive plan. He also said that he deals with homeowners who have concerns about their well water.

"Think about all the people taking medicines that are coming back into your private well," Mr. Penny said, recalling a case where one homeowner found her water had traces of an anti-epilepsy drug that probably came from a neighbor's septic system. He is also concerned about nitrates in well water.

"If you live on a big lot, you're probably pretty well protected," Mr. Penny said, "but if you live on a small lot, you should probably have your water tested." The problem in Springs, he said, is that there are so many small lots.

Mr. Loewen recalled that when he was a child, Springs was far less developed than it is today. "We've watched Springs grow and it's become the most densely populated hamlet in the entire town, and along with that come problems."

Heather Anderson, a member of the Springs Historical Society, asked what the supervisor and town board candidates would do to see that vacant land would be preserved. "What will the board members do to ease the problems of Springs with all the little lots?"

Mr. McGintee said he is committed to preserving the large undeveloped lots that remain in Springs. Among other things, he said, he has begun talks with the Girl Scouts about a long-term plan for Camp Blue Bay, which is the largest undeveloped tract in Springs.

The town board has also asked the Community Preservation Fund committee to make an inventory of vacant small lots and contiguous small lots for neighborhood parks. The areas around Accabonac Harbor and Three Mile Harbor have benefited from the recent townwide upzonings, he said. "But there are also small lots that still need to be available to young families."

Mr. Walker said he would sit down with the citizens committee in Springs and work with it to decide what should be preserved.

"I think we have to keep in mind that public water is only one step toward increased density," Mr. Loewen said.

"The Community Preservation Fund could come down here in Springs and could do a lot to protect open lots," Mr. Gardiner said. Although he has been highly critical of some Community Preservation Fund purchases over the past year and a half, he said he strongly supports it and he strongly supports the purchase of open space. "What we need to do is put the C.P.F. back on track."

Among other things, he criticized the town for spending $1.8 million to buy a 6.9-acre reserved area in the Buckskill Farm subdivision. As part of the subdivision process, the area would have been protected from development anyway, he said, but in the end, the owner not only got four building lots and was exempted from upzoning, but he also got almost as much money for the reserved area as he paid for the entire property in 2003. "The town board took C.P.F. money and threw it away," Mr. Gardiner said.

Mr. McGintee pointed out that the original proposal was for eight houses on the property. After negotiations with the town, the owner agreed to reduce the subdivision to four lots and increase the size of the reserved area, which the town, in turn, agreed to buy once the subdivision was approved.

Mr. Gardiner has also criticized the town's decision to buy Dayton Island in Three Mile Harbor for $3.8 million which could have only one house built on it and of its proposal to buy a five-acre sculpture park off Town Lane in East Hampton and keep it as a display area for one artist's work.

It seemed as if it rained 40 days and 40 nights last week, 18.13 inches in eight days - the most in a century during a single storm on the South Fork. If bucket brigades, round-the-clock basement pumping, and housebound people and pets qualify as ark construction, then hundreds were in the works by Saturday.

Despite winds that gusted to 50 miles per hour, it was not the ferocity, but the long-winded nature of a stalled weather pattern that caused flooding from New Jersey to New England, and filled cellars, roads, and ponds here.

The rain that fell steadily from Oct. 7 to early Saturday morning greatly accelerated erosion on both the ocean and bay sides of the South Fork. Steady winds of 25 miles per hour and higher drove surf and tide east to west along ocean and bay beaches.

From Montauk to Sagaponack, much of what is left of the ocean dunes was saturated by the rain, making it even easier for wind-driven surf and full-moon tides to consume them. To the east at Montauk's Ditch Plain Beach, the primary dunes were hit hard.

They are the only features blocking the ocean from making a downhill run through a low-lying community to Lake Montauk. According to the East Hampton Town Department of Natural Resources, as much as 24 feet of dune were lost in at least two places where surf pounded, at the same time as water from a flooded wetland attacked the dunes from the landward side.

Once again, the ocean drew close to Montauk's beachfront motels when fierce east winds, waves, and especially high tides carved sand away to within a few feet of the buildings' foundations.

Flooding was the worst in memory. In Sag Harbor severe flooding took place in the area of upper Glover Street at Redwood and the sump behind Rogers, Latham, Division, and Henry Streets. The village's sewer system nearly overflowed, a problem that was exacerbated when a few Main Street merchants pumped out their basements directly into the sewer system, according to authorities. In all, 293,000 gallons had to be pumped from the treatment plant into tanker trucks to keep effluent from entering the harbor itself.

A large section of the soil cover that drapes the East Hampton landfill on Springs Fireplace Road became saturated and sloughed off.

Residents of the communities surrounding Georgica Pond reported the highest pond levels in memory, a fact verified by East Hampton Town Trustees who ordered the pond opened on Tuesday afternoon. That was much too late in the opinion of Kevin Mulvey, a resident of Chauncy Close. "Gross negligence," is how he characterized the trustees' slow response to the unprecedented rain. Mr. Mulvey said he had to stay awake night and day to keep his basement pumps working.

If the wind had come from the southeast instead of the northeast, erosion on the ocean side probably would have been worse, although a southeast wind might well have opened the narrow sand dam that separates Georgica Pond from the sea. Even before Tuesday's letting, sand from a flat near the pond's mouth was reserved on behalf of beachfront homeowners in Wainscott and Sagaponack who are in danger of losing their homes. Up to 6,000 cubic yards of sand will be excavated and trucked west within days.

Larry Penny, East Hampton's director of natural resources, said that his department, like its counterpart in Southampton, was flooded with applications for emergency permits to control erosion. "And this is only the beginning," Mr. Penny said.

Mr. Penny said he was going to recommend that motel owners and others fearful for their property consider using the same, large canvas bags filled with sand that were used to repair the New Orleans levees that broke following Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Penny said that with winter storms not far off, the bags would probably be acceptable to the State Department of Environmental Conservation as an emergency stopgap measure.

During a meeting of the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday, Supervisor Bill McGintee announced that the town would try to expedite the D.E.C.'s permit process for those needing to rebuild dunes. Damage must be documented by the Natural Resources Department.

A high dune just west of Beach Lane in Wainscott was badly scoured, leaving a staircase dangling in the air. In nearby Sagaponack, the ocean drove its way right up to the Town Line and Gibson Beach Road ends. Billy Mack of the First Coastal Corporation, coastal engineers, said that about 40 feet of dune were lost. Dune Road in Bridgehampton was overtopped.

"We're working on about a dozen calls for emergency sand. We have enough, but it's too risky to put it in some sections because the beach is too narrow. It would just get washed away. We have to time it," Mr. Mack said.

Gary Ireland is a lawyer who has sued the Army Corps of Engineers and the county to have three rock groins in East Hampton shortened, or removed, and the stretch of beach between them and Sagaponack rebuilt. It is an accepted fact that beaches located downdrift from hard structures such as groins and jetties are subject to scouring.

"I've been telling people to call their senators. Mathew Cohen is Senator Charles Schumer's aid, and Rasi Cooper, Senator Hillary Clinton's assistant. Tell them we appreciate the [Army Corps of Engineers'] studies, but we need a project. We know the cause of the erosion. It's the groins in East Hampton. The towns are going to be inundated with applications for bulkheads, rocks. Until the beaches are nourished, you can't blame people. They have to see a solid beach in front of them," Mr. Ireland said.

At the same time that sand was taken away by waves and tide, it was also collecting in the Accabonac Harbor inlet, making it nearly impassable. On the inlet's south side, erosion cut Louse Point back to the beach parking lot. On the north of the inlet, waves overtopped Gerard Drive, and the new culvert under the drive was clogged with sand and stone.

On the bay side of Montauk, the Soundview community west of the harbor inlet took its usual beating. Farther west, 150 feet of bulkheading collapsed on the Clearwater Beach side of the Hog Creek channel.

Michael Wyllie of the National Weather Service laboratory in Upton explained the cause of all the wind and rain. He said that beginning on Oct. 7, a subtropical system took up residence close to Bermuda. A rare "inverted trough" grew from there into the northeast. The trough was kept in place by a high pressure system located off the coast of New England.

As a result, a series of low pressure systems moved southeast to northwest along the boundary of the trough, creating the tropical rains. "One of the lows was strong enough to create winds between 30 and 50 miles per hour," Mr. Wyllie said.

Richard Hendrickson, who keeps local statistics for the weather service, said the rain started on Oct. 7 and continued every day until Saturday morning. The heaviest downpour occurred on Friday, 5.69 inches. The next day, it rained 4.32 inches before the storms finally passed.

The total was 18.13 inches, according to Mr. Hendrickson's gauge in Bridgehampton. It was a record for a single storm according to the weather service's records from 1900 to 1917, and from 1930 to the present day. If more fell during the 13-year gap in the records, we will never know.

The last of the four founders of the Child Development Center of the Hamptons Preschool, Kelly Quartuccio, resigned from the school on Monday, just two weeks after a fellow founder, Dr. Stephen Sicilian, was fired by the school's new administrators.

A third founder, Dr. Florence Kelson, has died since the school was started in 1996. The fourth and final founder, Dawn Zimmerman Hummel, moved to California over the summer but has continued to play a role in making decisions at the school.

About three dozen staff members and parents of children enrolled at the preschool, which is in Wainscott, were left unhappy with the answers to their questions about the firing of Dr. Sicilian, who they call Dr. Steve, and about the school's future, following a meeting with the school's administration on Tuesday evening.

The three-hour meeting was led by Donna Colonna, the school's new executive director, and Louis Cavaliere, the new assistant executive director. Both came to the school from Services for the Underserved, a nonprofit organization that merged with the school in July and has run it since then. Janice Goldman, the preschool principal who has been at the school for five years, also attended.

Dr. Sicilian was fired on Oct. 3 and left the school on Friday. He had served as chief financial officer and chief operational officer, as well as a clinical psychologist, carrying a case/load of about 10 students in therapy sessions.

"The reality of this is I can't change the decision that the board made," Ms. Goldman told the parents and staff members. "I can't undo the issues that have been done, but I can commit to starting to address these things in a very direct way. I wish that we could go back and start the year again."

Ms. Colonna said that Dr. Sicilian's positions as chief financial officer and chief operational officer were taken over by Services for the Underserved when it began administering C.D.C.H. this summer.

Ms. Hummel, who spoke yesterday from her car on a freeway in San Diego, said that the board had determined that making Dr. Sicilian a full-time clinician at the school "was not an option."

At Tuesday's meeting, Ms. Colonna and Mr. Cavaliere alluded to other conflicts between Dr. Sicilian and the school's board of directors, but Ms. Colonna said she could not disclose them due to mutual confidentiality agreements.

"There were evaluations and transitions that took place over the summer that went into the decision," Mr. Cavaliere said.

No members of the board of directors attended the meeting.

"The fact that they aren't here speaks volumes," said Gail Ficorilli, a parent. The group wanted to meet with the board before its next meeting, on Nov. 7. Ms. Zimmerman Hummel said that the board would meet with parents and staff to address their questions and to "do what's best for the kids in the East End community."

Dr. Sicilian's firing, just one month into the school year, surprised parents and staff, who wondered who would provide counseling to the 10 students who had met with Dr. Sicilian, many of whom have special needs. Ms. Colonna said that a social worker, Iris Pons-Gala, will take over Dr. Sicilian's clinical caseload, and that Ms. Pons-Gala is now a full-time, rather than part-time, employee.

"He wasn't just Dr. Steve, he was a father to a lot of us, and the kids as well," said Trabia Miller, a staff member and parent at the school.

Ms. Quartuccio, a lead teacher, handed in her resignation this week. "We've had Steve in charge for 10 years and it was working fine," she said. In tears, she sat at the back of the room during the meeting, being comforted by fellow staff members who also broke into tears.

"Kelly made the decision that she did, and I am hopeful that other staff members do not make that decision," Ms. Goldman said. "We need to get past this and move forward."

Several staff members said that they, too, might resign, and voiced their lack of confidence in C.D.C.H.'s reorganization.

"They're putting Band-Aids on a bigger problem," said Jeanette Krempler, a senior educational administrative assistant at the preschool.

"You can't rip out a rug from under these people and then say it's their responsibility to put the pieces back together," said Ms. Ficorilli.

The staff's dissatisfaction has caused a dilemma for several parents, who said they were upset at Dr. Sicilian's departure but depend upon the special services the school provides to children with special needs.

"We moved out here so our children could attend this school," said Fred Melamed, the father of two autistic children, who pleaded with staff members to remain at the preschool. "The survival of this school is vitally important to us."

A gathering in Northwest Woods on Saturday will celebrate the 20th anniversary of East Hampton Town's purchase and preservation of 515 acres of the Grace Estate.

The property, with white pine and other woodlands, ponds, wetlands, and trails, is a portion of an originally 623-acre tract bordering on Gardiner's Bay and Northwest Harbor.

It is likely that the area was a center of Native American encampments, based on artifacts found there dating from the Woodland Periods of from 500 to 1,000 years ago. In Colonial times, it was a port where, as early as 1662, East Hampton residents established a trading post and settlement where whaling flourished.

The land was bought for $6.3 million in 1985 after a referendum, the largest and most expensive public land purchase ever undertaken here at the time. The Nature Conservancy contributed $500,000 to the cost.

"The town was definitely at a crossroads," said Randall Parsons, who, in his former post as an East Hampton Town councilman, was instrumental in negotiating the purchase. "There were subdivision applications in on Barcelona Neck [across Northwest Harbor], the Grace Estate, and Hither Hills in Montauk. It was the first time that people really rose up and said, 'This is not what we want.' "

The purchase was made after a prolonged public debate. Opponents argued against borrowing so much money, saying that if the Grace Estate were developed, town zoning laws would sufficiently limit development at far less expense.

The Grace Estate had been owned since 1910 by William R. Grace, founder of the W.R. Grace international chemical and industrial corporation, and his family. Ben Heller, an art dealer who lived in New York City and East Hampton, and his partners in North Bay Associates bought the property in 1981 for about $4 million.

They submitted a subdivision plan for 262 lots on the Grace Estate. At around the same time, Mr. Heller also submitted a 140-lot subdivision plan for the 341-acre Barcelona Neck on the west side of the harbor.

With applications before the town planning board for more than 500 luxury condominium apartments and houses, as well as such amenities as a golf course, tennis courts, and riding stables, the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association was concerned about then-productive scallop beds in Northwest Harbor.

The baymen's association, joined by the newly formed Northwest Alliance and the Committee to Save the Grace Estate, pressed for the property's preservation. And the East Hampton Town Trustees challenged Mr. Heller's claim to trustee roads, long-used tracks through the woods to the water, on the two large properties.

In 1983 a Democratic ticket, including Mr. Parsons, Tony Bullock, and former Town Supervisor Judith Hope, was voted into office on a pro-preservation platform, gaining a town board majority.

The board commissioned a study by Suffolk County on the effect on shellfish if the Grace Estate was developed with the two-acre lots for which it was zoned. The study concluded that it could well hurt the population.

During an update of the comprehensive plan, the town board enacted a moratorium on large subdivisions in 1984, then upzoned both the Grace Estate and Barcelona Neck for house lots of at least five acres. Mr. Heller sued the town on several grounds, challenging the rezoning and trying to gain approval of his subdivision plans.

Purchase negotiations began in earnest in late 1983 and took over a year. The initial asking price for the acreage was $18 million, way beyond the value set for it by appraisers for the town. Officials considered condemning it, but then dropped that idea.

Eventually, there was an agreement hammered out allowing North Bay Associates to create 30 lots on 100 acres in the northwest portion of the tract. An adjacent 85-acre preserve would be given to the town to satisfy zoning requirements, and the remaining 431 acres purchased publicly.

The late Tom Lester, a bayman, and his wife, Cathy Lester, who later became town supervisor, led the Northwest Alliance push for the purchase, along with Larry Cantwell, who was treasurer of the Committee to Save the Grace Estate and is now the East Hampton village clerk.

Opponents, led by John Courtney, then a Republican member of the town planning board and now the attorney for the East Hampton Town Trustees, mounted a petition drive and forced a referendum on the plan.

Voters approved the purchase, 2,488 to 1,600, in June of 1985. Barcelona Neck was purchased by New York State in 1989.

During a recent roundtable discussion of business owners and town officials, Frank Dalene suggested that the town look at its landholdings, including the Grace Estate, for areas where new hamlet centers, with commerce and housing, could be created.

"The town should establish a priority of retaining our next generation," Mr. Dalene, a member of the board of the Long Island Builders Institute East End Chapter and president of Telemark Builders in Bridgehampton, said yesterday. To do so, he said, there must be land which young people can purchase to build homes and equity.

On a large tract such as the Grace Estate, he said, "the town can properly plan a hamlet center using 'smart growth' principles, and develop it to satisfy the environmentalists." While drinking water and overall environmental protection remain priorities, Mr. Dalene said, new technologies, such as advanced wastewater treatment systems, can make development of sensitive areas safe.

"I'm not promoting paving the Grace Estate," he said, noting that it is just one area that could be considered. "I'm presenting a concept. I'm asking the town to reassess its priorities."

However, he noted, he has received numerous positive responses to the idea. "A lot of people in the Northwest complain about having to drive to town to get groceries," he said.

The celebration on Saturday will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the Van Scoy Cemetery site near the schoolhouse plaque on Northwest Road, two-tenths of a mile west of Alewife Brook Road. A ceremony commemorating the ecological and historical importance of the Grace Estate and the efforts undertaken to preserve it, along with a presentation of ideas for protection and management of the entire Northwest region, will be followed by guided hikes.

If it rains, Richard Lupoletti of Oyster Shores Road in East Hampton can be contacted to see if there is a change of plans.

Stick To Issues

East Hampton

November 3, 1997

To The Editor:

I call on all political parties to refrain from name-calling and slanderous innuendoes in future campaigns.

It is okay to find fault and criticize an opponent's job performance when seeking to replace them in office. We need to make our political parties stick to issues relative to maintaining East Hampton Town. We are very fortunate to be able to express ourselves as citizens at Town Board meetings, etc. I encourage more citizens to attend these meetings.

We are a community of neighbors, shopkeepers, etc., that are always working together for our town. Let's keep it this way.

JULIA KAYSER

Problem Is Parents

Southampton

October 27, 1997

To The Editor,

An innocent child is dead! The life of a young girl is ruined! I do not know exactly what happened with the nanny story on TV, but I do know that no one has said anything about how difficult it is to be a nanny and about how badly babysitters are often treated.

I have babysat off and on over the years, with mostly delightful experiences. I have also stayed with children for as long as a week, even with the parents overseas. I, the babysitter, was treated wonderfully. I have had the appreciation I deserve.

Nannies are often deliberately lured from overseas, precisely so that they can be exploited. They "live in" with good situations, of course, but there are plenty of nightmare experiences.

Everywhere, the complaints are about the nannies and the child care agencies and the day care centers. The parents chose parenthood. The problem is the parents! Many couples today want everything. Many mothers do not have to work. Children are often treated like "projects" and like commodities. And, all too often, nannies are virtual slaves. I have worked for some billionaires. They are not superior people, but they can be expected to afford servants!

I know a lot about child care and do not like to have the caretakers' needs neglected in the discussions!

MINA BARSTOW

Letter Home From Boynton Beach

October 23, 1997

Dear Editor,

In the '20s and '30s, and until the social revolution of the '60s, the lack of discipline among children in school was not a serious problem, which made teaching a more enjoyable profession. Most children learned their Thou Shalt Nots very well before going to school. After they entered school, they did not present a problem to the teachers, as they had been taught at home to behave well wherever they went, and not to be an embarrassment to their parents.

Of course, there were incidents when a problem arose, but most teachers handled it very well. If a teacher was unable to do so, the problem student, usually a boy, was marched to the principal's office, where appropriate corrective action was taken. Most students would rather not interrupt a class, because they knew that if it were serious enough to warrant disciplinary action in class, the punishment received at home would be much more severe.

There were several teachers in my school days who would take no nonsense or class interruptions from any student. I do not recall my first and second-grade teachers, Katherine Wade and Effie Osgood, respectively, ever spanking or shaking a student for causing any disturbance in class. In the third grade, however, I remember one incident, and after that, no more classroom disturbances occurred until we were in fifth grade, but that was nipped in the bud in rather an unusual way.

A new student, Jimmy Dixon from St. James, Long Island, entered our third-grade class sometime after the school year commenced. He was a hell-raiser, more in innocent fun than malicious mischief, and enjoyed pulling a prank, which made members of the class laugh, but which was viewed by our teacher as being not very humorous. After he had been in class for a while, he thought he'd test Miss DeCastro. Isabel DeCastro, a Sag Harbor girl, had seen many students pass through her third grade, and Jimmy Dixon was no different from the other bratty kids she had handled. He pulled his prank, but when she finished with him, he was a very meek and embarrassed young boy, and never again did he upset our classroom routine with one of his pranks.

Mrs. Harry Parsons was our fourth-grade teacher, and I do not recall anyone causing any classroom disturbances. That school year passed rather smoothly, with Miss Alice Pugh, a music teacher, teaching us a football fight song, in preparation for the Far Rockaway game which the Maroon and Gray won 13-12.

Mrs. George Jones was our fifth-grade teacher, who came from upstate New York, and had three children of her own, Ben, Betty, and William. At that time, each student was required to buy a geography textbook. Our particular book was titled "Our State and Continent." Geography was a subject which Mrs. Jones taught quite well, especially the section relating to the upstate area. One morning, while she was teaching it, one of the boys persisted in whispering to the student in front of him, and it annoyed Mrs. Jones. She told him to be quiet and to pay attention, because he was interrupting the class. He kept quiet for a few moments, and then resumed whispering. As he became engrossed in the subject about which he was whispering, he failed to notice Mrs. Jones drift toward the rear of the classroom, and then proceed up the aisle to approach him from the rear. When she came to his desk, she lifted "Our State and Continent" and it came crashing down on the whisperer's head driving him down in his seat. From that moment on, he was careful not to whisper while she was teaching.

When the second semester commenced in the sixth grade, after midterm, home economics and manual training were added to the curriculum. Gladys Fink taught home economics, and Mario Fontana taught manual training. Both were good teachers but left East Hampton, Miss Fink to get married, and Mr. Fontana for a better position in one of the Nassau County schools.

Mr. Fontana was known as Babe to his fellow schoolteachers, but was known to some of the boys as the Shadow. Alfonso Cesna, a classmate of mine, named him after the popular fictional character of the time. As Mr. Fontana walked, he seemed to glide, and when dressed for the outdoors, he wore a trench coat and a dark brown fedora with the brim turned down in front and back. He drove a 1929 Model A Ford roadster, and whenever it rained, he would sit behind the steering wheel with his coat collar pulled up behind his neck, and the fedora pulled down. He looked somewhat ominous, giving him the appearance of being a man of mystery, hence the nickname, the Shadow.

He was a no-nonsense teacher and often revealed himself as a man with a short fuse. Despite those characteristics, he was well-liked by his students. One morning, Bill Crapser, a shop student, entered the classroom feeling life was like a bowl of cherries, and when he saw Mr. Fontana standing next to a workbench, he went up to him and squared off, as if to spar. The next moment, Bill was on the floor, for he never saw the right hand that Fontana threw. Just as it happened, Mr. Brooks, the principal, entered the shop room and witnessed Bill being struck. He told both of them to go to his office, where he would call Mr. Crapser, Bill's father.

Levi Crapser, an automobile salesman, was employed by the Hedges Ford Motor Agency, located across from the Methodist Church. It did not take long for Mr. Crapser to arrive at Mr. Brooks's office. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Fontana explained what had happened, and after hearing them out, he turned to his son, and asked if what he had just been told was true. Bill replied that it was. Mr. Crapser told both men that should it happen again, Mr. Fontana was to do as he did, and Mr. Brooks was not to call him, as he was a very busy man.

Years later, when Bill told me of the incident, he added, "Pop gave me no sympathy, whatsoever."

Usually, that was how it was when a kid got into a bit of trouble at school. Parents' punishment was much more severe than what a kid received at school. Most parents, in those days, did not mind teachers using force on their children, and as a result, the use of force by teachers was rather infrequent. One must remember that when a child came home from school, usually a mother was there to greet him. Most of a kid's waking hours were spent under the watchful eye of a responsible adult.

When Sprig Gardner came to East Hampton, he had Babe Fontana make him a fair sized paddle, which he used on kids who stepped out of line. Female teachers would send a problem student to Sprig for disciplinary action, but after the word got around, the paddle remained on the shelf for most of the time.

Football linemen who Sprig thought lacked aggressiveness in line play, received several whacks from that paddle during practice. Sprig would yell, "Charge," and just as he yelled, he whacked the exposed backside of a lineman, encouraging him to charge with a little more enthusiasm.

Chester Gottschall, the high school math teacher, came to East Hampton in 1928, the same year as Mr. Brooks, and coached football during Robert MacLaury's years as the high school coach. Mr. MacLaury was primarily a baseball coach, and in 1929, his baseball team won the league championship. It was one of the better baseball teams in East Hampton High School history.

Mr. Gottschall was another teacher with a rather short fuse. Often, he would bang the blackboard with his ringed fingers when he became a bit upset and impatient with a student who had difficulty arriving at the correct answer to an algebraic problem. When he banged the blackboard, chalk dust flew in miniature clouds, intimidating the student. A few of his students thought it was his way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Some of the more timid students were elated the day they heard he was leaving the East Hampton School system to become a principal in upstate New York.

Each teacher had his or her own method of maintaining classroom discipline, and most were very successful teachers. Once a student knew he had to obey, pay attention, and not interrupt a class, the teacher had very few problems for the remainder of the school year. Many teachers spent their entire careers in the East Hampton school system, and enjoyed every moment of it.

In sixth grade, our teacher was Helen Bond, a Southold girl, and another no-nonsense teacher. Her method of punishment was to take a ruler and slap the open palm that, sometimes, brought tears to the student's eyes. She was an above average teacher, and well liked by her class. She taught the Palmer Method of penmanship very well, and one of the reasons, I believe, was that she was gifted with excellent penmanship. The young kids of today hold a pen or pencil much differently from the way we were taught, but as time goes on, methods change, and nothing seems to stay the same.

Over all, we had very good teachers, most of whom never had to resort to force to maintain classroom discipline. It was not until we reached eighth grade that we had a male classroom teacher. During the lower grades, our teachers watched over us like mother hens. Some were married and had children of their own, and after the Great Depression blanketed the land, we lost some of our married female teachers, because of a controversial decision made by the local School Board.

In those days kindergarten through seventh grade were taught by female teachers, some of whom were married. As the 1931-32 school year ended, married teachers whose contracts had expired were not offered new ones, because the School Board had been pressured by some influential local residents not to rehire married female teachers. The reasoning was that there would be two wage earners in a teacher's household and in some of the others, none. In an attempt to override that decision, J. Edward Gay, a School Board member, introduced a resolution to offer contracts to the discharged teachers. He was unsuccessful, because the six-man board voted 3-3. Two teachers, Mrs. George Jones and Effie Osgood, who married Peter Zachas, were hired by the Town Board to be town welfare investigators.

During the '30s East Hampton High School had no guidance counselors. Our eighth-grade teacher, George Mercer Guery, at midterm, suggested the high school curriculum each of us should pursue. Quite a few of us ended our eighth-grade subjects at midterm and commenced our freshman curriculum months before we entered our freshman year. Mr. Guery was the only guidance counselor that we ever saw. As it was during difficult economic times, very few parents had the funds to send their children to college.

We resided in the boondocks, and there were no state normal schools in Suffolk County, as there were in some of the upstate counties. Our representatives did not have the necessary horsepower to have the state build a school in our section of New York State. It is too bad, for there were a number of smart students who were college material, but had neither the funds, nor the proper guidance to further their education.

It simply would be impossible for young people of today to understand the depth of despair and hopelessness that confronted a huge number of American families during those dark days. It took a world war and over 50 million dead to end the Great Depression. Pray God, we won't have to experience another era like that one.

Graduation brought to an end all those memorable and carefree days of school. In 1938, those days ended for my classmates and me, as we left Edwards Theater on a rainy Sunday afternoon in late June.

Over the past months I have written about an East Hampton as I remember it. The town that was, those many years ago, no longer exists, because the old-timers who made it such a pleasant town in which to live are no longer with us. Its fields and woodlands that we once roamed have been developed, true, but it is people who are the heart and soul of a community. I remember many of those old folks as being kind, and friendly, and willing to share their meager possessions with a less fortunate neighbor. A neighbor to them was not only the family next door, but anyone who needed a helping hand. One would meet them most anywhere, along the street, at the movies, on the playground, in church, and on a clam flat. Always, they had a cheerfulness about them, and a concern about one's "mutha and fahtha."

It was my good fortune that I met and grew to know so many of those fine and wonderful people. Of all the people who I have known, I believe Aunt Winnie Lester, of the Round Swamp Lesters, personified the loving and caring nature of all those compassionate people. Regardless of the number of people sitting in her home, when another dropped in, Aunt Winnie would say, "Take a chair." In her heart and in the hearts of all those kind people, there was room for one more.

Except for a few relatives, and they have been becoming fewer, there are but six people, now living, who I remember being friendly with, when we lived in Springs. They are Melvin Bennett and his sisters, Marion and Eleanor, Helen Payne Hults, her sister, Ivanette, and Clara Purinton Palma, who resides in Southampton.

I sincerely hope that my letters from Boynton Beach have helped the old-timers recall fond memories of their pasts. Also, that new residents of the Town of East Hampton might have a better understanding of the way of life as I remember it.

Take care, God bless, and happy 350th anniversary to all you Bonackers, old and new.

Sincerely,

NORTON (BUCKET) DANIELS

So ends, for now, Mr. Daniels's series of letters home from Boynton Beach, Fla. The writer, who has been sharing his reminiscences of the East Hampton of his youth with Star readers for the past year, has decided to "take a rest" from his toils. He has promised, however, to write again if so inspired. Ed.

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

Please include your full name, address and daytime telephone number for purposes of verification.

If you see a Swiss Miss walking down the street in East Hampton, don't worry that she is lost. She probably works at Ricky's on Main Street. Joseph Baez, the store's manager, encourages his salespeople to "dress up" for Halloween. "Since we can't hand out fliers, it's a great way of promoting the store and our costume selection," he said.

For Mr. Baez, the "trick or treat" holiday has been in full swing since the end of September. The first Ricky's opened in Manhattan in 1962; the store has since became a favorite of city dwellers looking to score the perfect Halloween outfit. The lines to get into any one of their 19 urban locations right before Oct. 31 are legendary. The East Hampton branch is entering its second season with about 70 costumes in stock, and the word appears to have spread faster than you can say jack-o'-lantern.

"Halloween is the best time for the company," said Mr. Baez. "The workers make it work." Ricky's carries a selection of dress-up gear for the young, including movie and popular cartoon characters. "Batman Now" and "Star Wars" characters are predicted to be hot sellers, as are the Fantastic Four.

And for older customers, costumes run the gamut from G ratings to XXX. "Sexy costumes are popular with adults," said Mr. Baez. So popular, in fact, that an entire wall is devoted to a variety of dominatrix-nurse outfits in shiny pleather, French maid costumes, and fishnet thigh-highs. The store will be open until midnight on Friday and Saturday until Halloween to accommodate shoppers.

There is no mistaking that Halloween is nigh at the Party Shoppe in the Reutershan parking lot in East Hampton. "We are closed the day after Labor Day because we labored all summer," said Theo Landi, the shop's owner. But when the store reopens next day, it is resplendent in orange and black, skulls and bats, goo, and spooky sounds from floor to ceiling. "Everyone loves Halloween," said Ms. Landi.

Besides an array of whimsical children's costumes, she pointed out three - Darth Vader, Batman as a Ninja, and Batman as plain old Batman - that are expected to curry favor with boys. "Young girls want to be divas," she said. And for those whose "children" are on all fours, the store carries a selection of costumes for infants as well as a few for cats and dogs.

The Party Shoppe excels in decorations for the home. "We specialize in sonics," said Ms. Landi. An army of screaming and shaking things dangle overheard, ready for action - witches, ghouls, and ghosts. Specialty Mylar balloons in fanciful shapes along with an assortment of Halloween-inspired paper plates and cups are also available. "This year, we have bones for table sprinkles!" Ms. Landi said. The perfect complement, it would appear, for edible chocolate body parts, like fingers and toes.

The Party Shoppe carries a selection of costumes in plus sizes as well. The standard costume for a woman is size 12. "We have a whole selection of costumes in sizes from 14 to 24 for women, and for men, we have XL and XXL." Customers can try on their outfits and Ms. Landi and her staff will help them perfect their look. Another benefit is cost. "You don't have to pay Main Street prices," she said.

Has she seen any trends in her 16 years in business? "Well, the rats have gotten bigger," Ms. Landi observed with a smile.

Dress-up is a year-round business for Out of the Closet in Bridgehampton. Like most retailers, the vintage clothier and collectibles shop sees spikes in sales. "Summer is always very busy for us," said Ruth Chernaik, who owns the store with Lucille Martin. "Theme parties were big this year, particularly 1950s and 1970s." For the past two years the store has occupied a former Main Street residence. Before that, it was in Sag Harbor for 10 years.

Another busy time for the store is holidays. "People started getting ready for Halloween last month," said Ms. Chernaik. The store has two or three vintage costume items that were made specifically for Halloween. The majority of merchandise is authentic to a time period. The store stocks clothing from the Victorian age to the 1980s. "We prefer to concentrate on the styles of different eras, versus designers." However, there is a selection of Chanel, Pucci, and Courreges, to name a few boldface names.

"Dresses and 1970s stuff are popular this year," said Ms. Cherniak. "And there's also been a lot of guys buying dresses." The shop offers thousands of items to choose from along with alterations, made by Delgado Sisters. They are "reasonable, quick, and very good - a nice combination in a seamstress."

In addition, the store rents clothing for All Hallows Eve and other occasions. The rental fee is 40 percent of the retail price and not all items in the store are for rent. Delicate pieces, including some jewelry, hats, and clothing, are only available for purchase.

While it is true that designers such as Betsey Johnson and stylists from Ralph Lauren peruse the shop for inspiration, its eclectic mix can ignite anyone's imagination.

At a crossroads about what to be for Halloween? The outlook now might not be so scary.