Maybe it’s because Memorial Day is almost here, the time of year when (at least in the decades before year-round weekending) second-home owners used to arrive in force, saying they were going to “the country.” Whatever the reason, I cannot stop anticipating the deluge that comes with the season — not of people, but of luxury vehicles.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no quarrel with those who drive expensive cars. Some of my best friends are Mercedes owners. My issue is that, unfortunately, fancy vehicles draw my attention to the aging car my husband and I share. It certainly doesn’t warrant comparison with a late-model Range Rover, for example.

My first car was a Fiat, a small Italian automobile you don’t see around here much, whatever the season. My Fiat helped me pass my very first driving test, because when I stalled on the railroad tracks in Riverhead, the examiner said, “It’s not you. It’s the damn foreign car.”

Chris and I drive a 2006 Honda Civic hybrid and haven’t taken it on very many trips so the mileage is only 86,747. Consumer Reports lists the Civic among 10 cars most likely to reach old age at 200,000 miles. Still, my husband has been ogling new cars, especially those that have rear-end cameras. He even asked the Honda dealer, where we take our car for maintainance, how much it was worth. He was told its trade-in value was about $1,000. Kelley Blue Book says that a car of our make and year is worth about twice that, but maybe the dealer was taking into account our propensity for fender-benders.

Have I ever mentioned, here in print, that when they were young my children nicknamed me “Helen Wheels”? It was eventually shortened to just “Wheels,” which I actually answered to sometimes for a few years there.

I’m not so sure about a new car, myself, despite my husband’s wandering automotive eye. I would have to be comfortable driving it, which means it would have to be small, while nevertheless holding its own against all the big-bully S.U.V.s, which apparently are still outselling conventional passenger sedans and such.

Still, maybe I will start thinking about it. You come to appreciate the value of style when the car you drive has absolutely none. I don’t remember how it got into my head as a young married woman to imagine myself owning a convertible Jaguar, but it did. In my mind’s eye, it was yellow. I even inquired about the Jaguar reputation, once, and was told they were too high-maintenance for the likes of me. At that time, I drove one of those long, heavy, American-made station wagons that were so common in the 1960s and 1970s. Later, I drove a giant, rear-finned Cadillac, the uncoolest car of all time, mainly because it made me feel safe. The Cadillac was an odd beige-pink, the color of a pencil eraser. 

I asked a friend to tell me this week what the small and snappy sports car I saw him driving was. It was a classic BMW Z3 roadster. Now, a nifty little car like that would be the right scale for me, even if it would be ridiculous to think I would ever take advantage of its alleged top speed: over 120 miles an hour. But, then, there is the aforementioned propensity for fender-benders. And I believe a BMW convertible costs around $50,000. I have another friend who owns a Tesla, in which he tools around Springs. That one is pretty stylish, too. I think a Tesla costs even more.

Truth is, I am jealous of the car belonging to the editor of this paper, my son David. It is a 2014 Chevrolet Volt, an electric car bought at a local dealership, and he has given it high marks in the weekly column that sits below mine every week. 

Is electric the way to go? I’ll check it out and keep you posted.

“We can get sick now!” I said to Mary, as she enthused over the pain-free coverage we’ll receive as a result of enrolling in our AARP supplemental plans.

God, it’s been a long time coming. All those years when we feared we’d lose everything were we to become debilitated, those years when I would say, in my usually glib (but not altogether off-base) fashion that a night at Southampton Hospital (or in any hospital, to be fair) would run one $10,000. 

Consquently, we tried desperately to stay healthy, however stressful that was, and now that we’re soon to be nestled within the bosom of Medicare we can have all these unattended-to ills treated, and at virtually no charge. 

Mary can trace a bum knee to wrathful waging of wretched weed warfare, and I suspect I have stage four terminal alliteration, but while it’s a pre-existing condition, Medi­care covers the surgery, I hear, and the rather long subsequent period of rehabilitation. You’ll note that I said “hear.” Because of new hearing aids, provided by Emily Bunce of ENT and Allergy, of Southampton, I can pay attention for the first time in my life, and now there are no longer any excuses when someone maintains I’ve made them sound smarter or funnier than they really are. 

“I can even hear better than the dogs!” I said to Mary after she’d pulled into the driveway one night recently and I’d bounded up from the couch while O’en and Marley continued to just lie there, oblivious, as I used to be. Soon we were all at her. When she said, “Sit and lie down,” we immediately did.

As for the new aids, it took me five years to act. (I played Hamlet once and I’ve been majoring in avoidance ever since.) That was when Emily, during a lifeguard tournament at Main Beach, first suggested I drop by. I had become fatalistic — none of the aids I’d had over the years worked all that well. Too much feedback, they died in the dampness, my ears itched, and the music was never loud enough. (I was in my early 70s when the cops knocked at the door during Johnna and Wally’s wedding in Palm Springs and asked me to tone it down.)

Now I’m hearing things, all sorts of things — mostly musical, as when I pee, but frequently cacophonous. Nothing’s left to the imagination now. I wonder if Medicare will pay for an implant.

At any rate, if something is gaining on me, I’ll be able to hear it now and step aside.  

The funniest thing about Donald Trump is his taste — not just in gold-plated toilet-paper holders, but in food. He may be plunging the world into dangerous waters, with aggressive talk aimed at North Korea and threats to take the United States out of the Paris accords on climate change, but he also is setting a terrible example for bad health, particularly among low-income Americans, by what he eats.

President Trump is an avowed lover of junk food. He particularly likes the Quarter Pounder and Filet-O-Fish from McDonald’s, with fries. He is also apt to devour a bucket of fried chicken from KFC or Popeye’s and wash it down with Diet Coke. He absolutely loves a meatloaf sandwich with mayo. His favorite home-cooked meal is a big, thoroughly well-done, slab of meat. 

Several years ago, he marketed frozen Trump Steaks through the Sharper Image, priced at between $199 and $999 for a pack of four. It was a public-relations boon for the Sharper Image, even though no one was buying the beef. “The net of all that was we literally sold almost no steaks,” the C.E.O. of Sharper Image told a reporter last year. “If we sold $50,000 of steaks grand total, I’d be surprised.”

By contrast, Michelle Obama, with her Let’s Move! and Healthy Hunger-Free Kids school lunch program, promoted fitness and nutrition, especially among children. But the example Mr. Trump sets as Eater in Chief contradicts all the advice coming from medical and nutrition sources these days about how to live longer and healthier lives. Mr. Trump claims to know more than anyone else about almost everything, from women’s rights to wall-construction to the art of war, so why would he have to listen to what the doctors, scientists, and nutrition experts have to say about taco bowls? 

The former first lady knew that obesity is the cause of serious health problems. She planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. She was quoted joking about her husband’s disciplined food habits, alleging that his late-night snack was seven (not six or eight) almonds. Mr. Trump likes to snack on Doritos and Lay’s Potato Chips. Now, I like a nice potato chip as much as anyone, but they shouldn’t be a mainstay of an adult’s daily intake. Mr. Trump obviously gets a bit of exercise when he plays golf, but his way of keeping his weight down is to save calories by eating only the topping on a pizza and leaving the crust on the plate.

This is not a Democratic-versus-Republican issue. President Clinton obviously wasn’t the greatest role-model, either. He loved McDonald’s, too, and he loved his Southern barbecue — but after having had several coronary bypasses and two stents, he is now a committed vegan.

Mr. Trump apparently watches a lot of television, but I am sure he hasn’t paid attention to reports about the higher cost of food and the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in low-income neighborhoods. Of course, if he happened to hear any such thing, he would call it fake news. Let them eat beautiful chocolate cake?

What I am really getting down to is the unconscionable gap between rich and poor in something so elemental as the food we eat. The Trump administration’s proposed budget threatens programs that help poorer Americans, including children and the elderly, eat decently; these include nutrition assistance via the Older Americans Act, which helps 2.4 million older adults who might otherwise go hungry, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is run through the Department of Agriculture.

At Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, simple, hearty seafood dishes inspired by the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln were served. At Trump’s inauguration, steak with chocolate sauce and a chocolate soufflé accompanied by cherry-vanilla ice cream were the highlights. Do I need to say it? You are what you eat.

One of the things that sets East Hampton apart from so many other American communities is respect for its own history. Up here around our office, Main Street looks much the same as it did 100 years ago. Some of the houses here date much further back still, as much as a century before the Declaration of Independence. My own office window view is of the Mulford farmhouse on James Lane, built shortly after Capt. Josiah Hobart aquired the land in 1676. By that measure, the Star building at 153 Main Street is just a baby, built around 1900 for my great-grandfather as a pharmacy with an upstairs apartment. My office on the second floor overlooking the East Hampton Library was until not that long ago a bathroom. 

As far as getting in touch with the past goes, one could do far worse than this end of the street, though actually being here is no longer necessary. An online collection at the library provides access from anywhere to, among other things, editions of The Star from 1918 to 1968. The plan is to soon have the years since the paper’s establishment in 1885 available as well.

Searching the East Hampton Star archive in the Digital Long Island feature at easthamptonlibrary.org gives a picture of how much distance we have traveled metaphorically from a page-one call for substituting wood for coal to aid the World War I effort in Europe to a story about the soon-to-open Montauk Downs golf course clubhouse in 1968 — written by our current sports editor, Jack Graves, no less. 

Browsing the old Stars turns up some surprises and peculiar coincidences. A November 1919 edition reported that a 61-pound striped bass had been netted in the ocean near Mecox and referred to a 101-pounder that Capt. Nathaniel Dominy seined up off East Hampton some time earlier, which was said to be the largest of its species ever. In the modern era, the official record bass weighed 81 pounds. The Dominys were the subject of Helen S. Rattray’s “Connections” column last week and will be discussed next Thursday by Hugh King during an outing organized by the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society.

 That the past was of interest is clear from a 1923 Star I happened on in the library collection. A front-page account by Harry D. Sleight gave great detail about an armed sloop, the Hampton, built in East Hampton or Southampton for the purpose of trading with the slave plantations in Jamaica and elsewhere. A 1757 manifest lists pork, barrel staves, Indian corn, onions, horses, and sheep among its outbound cargo. And so it goes. I recommend the archive to anyone curious about East Hampton in earlier times, or those just looking to spend a bit of time forgetting today’s troubles. After the latest news from Washington about the president’s firing of the F.B.I. director, this seems even more necessary.

So I was down at Town Hall the other day, picking up my dump, ahem, recycling permit, and a clam, uh, shellfish license. As I waited for the next available assistant clerk, I noticed a Latino man taking care of some complicated business at the next assistant clerk’s station. A moment later, a tall man with a long beard wearing a white crocheted cap came in, seeking town taxi paperwork.

No one besides me looked up when the tall man’s cellphone loudly announced driving directions, saying he should make a U-turn. He pulled the thing from his trouser pocket and silenced it. It would be only speculation to guess where he was from. 

According to Google, his cap is called a Kufi, and is worn by Islamic men in many countries. The Latino man was perhaps from Central America, or Mexico, but unless I asked, I would not know for sure. The three of us at the counter made up our own United Nations of a sort, and reflected in a minor way East Hampton’s past, present, and future.

Of course, the sample at the town clerk’s office was much too small to be significant. The Census offers a glimpse of a far-more complex demographic reality, even though outdated and incomplete. Of the resident population in 2010, the last time a field sampling was conducted, 5,660 Hispanic or Latino people lived in East Hampton Town, of which just over 2,300 came from Ecuador alone. These figures are out of a total of about 21,450 people, meaning that Latinos and Hispanics made up more than 26 percent of the population at the time, with Ecuadoreans almost 11 percent of the total.

The population has changed since 2010, for sure, and it changes from season to season. The Census is conducted in April; even seven years ago, the summer makeup of the local population would have been different. Driving a child to school early on Monday, I noticed what looked like a group of Jamaican men on bicycles headed east on Amagansett Main Street in the foggy drizzle. The Census had nothing to say about them.

My son-in-law and I were treated to a squash lesson by the young Egyptian pro, Mohamed Nabil, at the Southampton Recreation Center recently. He was kind, kept feeding the ball back to us so that we could smash it crosscourt or down the rail, and it was a lot of fun, especially for one whom the game has long passed by. 

Squash, as Mohamed says, is “exhilarating” — that’s probably the best word for it. I liked it too when he said that in order to win you had to be calm on the outside and very angry on the inside. 

I suppose part of it is wanting to outdo your father — or stepfather, as in my case. It was he who taught me the game, in my early teens, when I was even more excitable than I am now. 

I was a terrible sport then, as now, and he was a Christian martyr to have put up with me. We played in the plastered courts at the Edgeworth Club, in the basement, beyond the duckpin bowling alleys, and the thwack, thwack, thwack sounds the hard, hot ball made as it came off the walls was . . . exhilarating. 

Later, he admitted to letting me win at times so that I wouldn’t go off in a huff. 

Much, much later in life I wrote him a letter thanking him, whose patience I must have tried many times, for always being there for me in trying times. He said it was the best letter anyone had ever written him. Though I had forgotten, he said, one thing. He had (pace A.R. Gurney) taught me how to play squash.

As I say, we played singles with the hard ball then (used only for doubles now), and, as must have been the case with most Americans before meters replaced feet, we — my college teammates and I — were dismissive of the squishy English ball that the rest of the world used. America was great then, remember?

Anyway, that squishy ball later became universally used, and the court was widened just a bit to make the game even more maddening for a prima donna such as I, who because squash has long passed him by limits his strutting now to tennis — an easier game if truth be told.

If you’re agile and you like getting your heart rate up and feeling marvelously exhausted after half an hour or so of all-out effort, during which you have repeatedly ripped the ball (which warms up after a while) down the rails, dinked it into the front corners, teased up lobs so that they die in the back, and ceaselessly stretched yourself full length in mad, exhilarating pursuit of your opponent’s shots, you should give it a try.

And here’s to you, Dad, for teaching me.

We visited Winterthur, the Henry Francis du Pont estate in Delaware, last weekend at the invitation of Charles F. Hummel, the curator and scholar whose 1968 book, “With Hammer in Hand” (reprinted in 1973), describes three generations of Dominy craftsmen in East Hampton and the objects they made — clocks, chairs, case pieces, looking glasses, tables — as well as the conservative rural culture here from the early 18th century to the mid-19th. The book presents a meticulous look at more than 1,000 tools, which the Dominys used in making and repairing clocks and furniture and in building houses and an occasional windmill.

The star-crossed story of the Dominys’ house and its attached clock and woodworking shops, which stood on North Main Street not far from what is now the East Hampton Grill, begins in 1941. The Dominys were at that time known primarily for their clocks, but had moved on from their old family business. The property was owned by a neighbor.

In December of that year, he offered to sell the house and workshops to the Village of East Hampton for $6,000. The public, with other preoccupations, failed to respond to an appeal for funds by the mayor, Judson Banister. The house was eventually demolished, but the clock and woodworking shops were saved by a second-home owner, who merged them to serve as a guesthouse on his Further Lane estate. The most recent owner of the property has now given the buildings to the village.

The preservation of the Dominy tools, however, took an almost miraculous turn in 1957, when a large collection was spotted in a Southampton antiques shop; as interest grew, other objects were uncovered. They were purchased for Mr. du Pont and eventually found homes at Winterthur, where both shops were reconstructed and the woodworking tools laid out as they might have been in centuries past.

Winterthur is a 1,000-acre preserve known for American decorative arts, with 175 period rooms in Mr. du Pont’s mansion. Instead of taking a look at the period rooms, we spent most of our time there with Mr. Hummel and then took a tour of the grounds, which in sunny weather showed off thousands upon thousands of flowers: cherries, viburnums, azaleas, bluebells. . . . 

And now, in addition to the village’s owning the shops and nascent plans for a Dominy museum, there is other good news. Mr. Hummel has continued his research and prepared an expanded, digital version of “With Hammer in Hand,” which is expected to be released any day now. It will help guide the new museum. We hope to hear a further update when he comes to present a talk at a Ladies Village Improvement Society fund-raising lunch that will be held in November.

The Dominy legacy is nationally significant because no other similar collection of rural American craftsmanship over such a long period exists. Not only were three generations of tools preserved but account books, letters, bills, notes, receipts, templates, and machinery, all of which tell a cultural and historic story. The details of how this all came about, Mr. Hummel says in “With Hammer in Hand,” is “as fascinating as the objects themselves.” 

I had been asked to make O’en’s dinner and had not — at least by the appointed time — and heard about it, concluding that it had not just been the dog’s dinner, but the last 32 years.

When takers are called on things by givers, all sorts of justifications dance in their heads. I react to criticism about the same way I do to an opponent’s volley at the net — I smash it right back. I can do “put-upon” quite well, though I am no innocent, as Mary well knows. It was only one thing she’d asked me to do, on her sole workday, and I had dropped the ball. (Actually, I’d been hitting quite a few of them earlier that afternoon at East Hampton Indoor, which contributed to my tardiness.)

Oddly, we’d been talking lately about couples who somehow carry on once love’s blaze has died down, living separately in the same house, and have agreed that neither of us could or would do it. Yet there we were, estranged for a day or two, in lovers’ limbo. 

Once we were able, we talked of a column I’d written long ago in which I compared love to a carburetor (you remember them?) inasmuch as adjustments every now and then had to be made. 

Ironic that I, who had been heedless, wrote recently that we should all pay attention. 

Fearing that her adjustment might be to wash me out of her hair and send me on my way — thus rendering me twice shed maritally — I set about spring-cleaning labors of Herculean proportions. 

Six or so trips to the dump later I was done; and although I was done, I was — judging by her look and how it felt then between us — not finished, I’m happy to say.

In June it will be 50 years since Israel and its Arab neighbors, Syria, Egypt, and Jordon, fought what is known as the Six Day War, a conflict in which Israel secured a military victory, though, to put it mildly, hardly a lasting one.

My husband and I were a young married couple, pleased as could be to live in a small house near Gardiner’s Bay with our three small children, a place that was calm and surrounded by environmental beauty. We were stay-at-homes, happily so. He was even reluctant to go to New York City, though he had had a good year there getting a master’s degree at the Columbia School of Journalism.

But then dear friends made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. They were planning to bring their commodious sailboat back to the States from Antigua, where it had spent the winter, and we were invited to tag along. My parents were alive and well and could take care of the kids, and we couldn’t say no, even though the youngest was not yet a year old. 

Fifty years ago: a joyful excursion into a part of the world that was new to us and bound to be exciting. The Wonny La Rue would pick us up on Great Inagua, an island at the southern end of the Bahamas that I, certainly, had never heard of. Even going there would be an adventure and a treat. Life was turning out the way it was supposed to.

Great Inagua, which is just north of Cuba and Haiti, is home to thousands upon thousands of flamingos that roost on its huge salt lake. Internet sites estimate the number of what Inaguans insist on calling “fillymingos” as between 60,000 and 80,000. The human residents of the island number only about 1,000. It is said that when huge flocks of flamingos fly up at one time the clouds turn pink. The Morton Salt Company also has a home on the island, its facility producing about a million pounds of salt a year. We were thrilled to see the flamingos and did not take in Morton Salt.

Inagua is a flat, dry, seemingly lackluster place. Waiting for the Wonny La Rue, we stayed in a house whose keeper was a woman called Nurse. Our room was separated from the hall by a wall that didn’t reach the ceiling. We saw no shops; a neighbor sold chickens, and another household goods.

Any sense of quiet was broken, however, by the intrusion of tragic reality. Papa Doc, the long-lived Haitian dictator, had absolute power at the time. It seemed that money-hungry mariners had promised to take a group of desperate Haitians to Nassau, only to drop them only 135 nautical miles away on Great Inagua, where there was nothing for them. (Does this sound familiar?) They were in the island’s primitive prison when we arrived, and we witnessed their being corralled aboard a Haitian government boat for whatever their fate was going to be. Not a very cheery start to an idyllic vacation.

And then Nurse told us war had broken out in the Middle East. She had heard it on the radio and was inclined to quote biblical verses to the effect that the end of the world was ordained. I ignored what she said the Good Book had to say, but felt absolutely awful that we had left our children at home at a time of war. 

By the time we got home, Israel had taken control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Fifty years ago, and the rest is unfortunate history.

When I was a kid I played with dolls. I was an only child and (maybe consequently) I had a lot of dolls. These were not mushy baby dolls; they were “fashion dolls.” This was the 1950s, folks, pre-Barbie. 

My favorite dolls were Madame Alexander dolls (they came in two sizes: 12-inch and 8-inch) and what were called Ginny dolls, which were only eight inches tall. That’s what I asked for at F.A.O. Schwarz at Christmas and birthdays, by size and hair color. I think I had about 10 by the time I outgrew them in sixth grade or so.

My mother could never understand why my dolls didn’t have names. She encouraged me to name them but I never did. I referred to the dolls as the 12-inch dolls and the 8-inch dolls when requesting a present of a new doll or clothing for the dolls I already had. Happily for me, my grandmother was a superior sewer, and she would come up with fabulous outfits for them (and me). Her creations featured lace, tiny buttons and dimity prints, old-fashioned puffed sleeves, and pantaloons. Occasionally something satin would show up, or sometimes a bit of fur. My grandmother went to the theater a lot, and she was very sophisticated.

My dolls were clotheshorses. Their job was to put on clothes. My job was to decide what they would put on. I was a fashion editor in training.

An activity that kept me busy for hours was to put all of my custom-made and store-bought dolls clothes in a pile on the floor. Then each 12-inch doll and each 8-inch doll could “pick” one dress. After each one picked a dress she would wear it and then each got to pick another until all the clothes were sorted evenly. I can’t remember what happened after that. Maybe I would have lunch. 

I never messed with their hair the way some kids did. I treated them like princesses. They were models and they got to be admired.

One of my friends, with whom I spent many rainy girly afternoons, would not play this doll clothes sorting game with me. I would let her pick a doll from my lineup and let her doll pick out clothes but she declared that her doll was poor and lived in a tenement and could only have one dress. I just could not understand this. It frustrated the hell out of me. Why wouldn’t her doll want to play dress-up?! Her doll would sit on an upside-down chair (read: tenement) and watch my doll. It was never fun to have it so inequitable, and eventually we would play checkers or draw. Having a doll who was poor was just not a concept I could grasp. Years later my mother mentioned that her parents were both social workers and I suppose that explained some of it. (Or maybe she just didn’t want to play that game.) I do not know what happened to her, but I grew up to be a clotheshorse. 

According to Google, “clotheshorse” is considered a derogatory term. I do not have a problem with the title. For me, it’s clothes-play, not so much the buying of an outfit as the assembling of a look. That’s the fun part. Shopping my own closet, I really play dress-up every day.

And when the seasons change I re-acquaint myself with clothes I haven’t seen for months by trying everything on. Warm weather to cold and back. Two times a year I go through that ritual. In between I do things with other people’s clothes: I volunteer at the Ladies Village Improvement Society thrift shop in East Hampton. 

One of the things we clothes-loving volunteers do is sort and categorize all the clothes that are donated week to week and season to season. Does this sound like all my doll clothes in a pile with the dolls picking? Yes indeedy. We are grown-ups and we have fun like little girls. 

We ask aloud: “What was she thinking? How could she give this up? Did she retire and not need office clothes anymore?” Hence the Armani suits and stiletto heels, the mink coat, or the Oscar de la Renta ball gown. We also wonder why people donate gym clothes straight from their gym bags, but that’s another matter entirely.

When we have finished sorting — summer, winter, designer, and specialty collections like bathing suits and leopard-printed things — the clothes that are season-appropriate hit the floor, priced to sell.

And then my real fun begins. I dress the thrift shop mannequins every Monday. While the shop is closed for weekly restocking you will find me with three mannequins, bald and naked (them, not me), and a rolling rack of curated outfits for my “girls.” I want them to look great when the doors open each Tuesday.

Some might think you just put clothes on the bodies, but I am here to tell you that it’s more complicated and intimate than that. The mannequins have faces and their faces have real character and their postures give them attitude. Like real people, some clothes actually look better on one than on another. I often change their outfits even after I have gotten them all dressed. I take into consideration that the athletic looking one should not be wearing something ruffly; I have tried and that stuff just looks wrong on her. I know that sounds silly, but in truth it’s merchandising. How can you make someone want to buy something if it looks crappy on the model?

There is a fourth model, and while I refer to her as one of “the girls” she is really just a torso (no face, arms, or legs). I don’t feel I need to cater to her attitude as far as outfits go. She does wear jewelry well, however, and often gets something with a deep V neckline.

The other dames I dress have removable arms and hands. To get them into clothing means that the floor gets littered with random hands and arms and wigs. 

Interestingly, the L.V.I.S. gets many donations of wigs. Some of the wigs are very beautiful and were no doubt very expensive. We can’t really sell them. Consequently I have a bin of wigs I sort through each week for the girls. One wig might look good with one outfit and wrong with another. One wig will suit one mannequin, while the same wig will make another look slutty. There is a wig I call Meg Ryan hair, which looks good on all three of the girls. There is a gray wig with bangs that I am partial to, but it does not look good with every outfit. Sometimes the girls are all blondes, sometimes brunettes. I love doing this.

To some of you readers this may sound like the dumbest waste of imagination, but for others of you this is a dream job. Admit it.

Each week I pick a fashion theme. For Easter the girls were in bright pastel colors. The week before everyone was wearing flowered dresses for spring. Sometimes they are in black-and-white stripes, and they have been known to all wear denim jackets. Once they all wore gingham shirts, but accessorized to give them entirely different looks. My aim is to educate and inspire, much like the editorial pages of a fashion magazine. Yes, you can wear this with that, and have you considered a yellow pashmina with that red shift?

Well, you could say (loudly) that I do get carried away choosing the right scarf or bag or earrings for each dame, but for me it is fun. I want the outfits to get sold: The aim is to have the girls look so good that people want to buy what they are wearing. Some outfits only last a day or two and are replaced quickly by the sales staff. Come in Tuesday mornings to see the girls in their fullest fashion glory.

The mannequins are really my own very big fashion dolls. Unlike my childhood dolls, these dames will soon have names! In May, there will be an opportunity for everyone in town to name each mannequin. After the hunt for names is over, the dames will be called by their names forever. (I know what I call one of them behind her back, but I am not sharing that yet.)

Here’s how it will work: There will be ballots at the cashier that people can fill in and place in a jar for the whole month. There will be space for four names in the order of how they are standing in display. The ballots can be filled again and again. Kids are encouraged to participate.

The ballots will be put into a container and behind closed doors each mannequin will magically pick her own name.

So unlike my childhood dolls who remained nameless, soon I will be dressing Clara or Monique or Jemima, Carmen, Prunella, or Daisy, Murgatroyd, Melania, Ivanka, Sophia, Emma, Gabriela, Isabella, Zoe, Clementine, or Betty. Stay tuned.

Durell Godfrey is a contributing photographer for The Star.