September brings with it clear skies, open roads, a sense of calm, and peak hurricane season. This year’s official forecast is for a moderately active Atlantic during the period, but records going back to 1851 show that for Long Island, as well as the rest of the coastal United States, from Texas to Maine, now is the time to keep a weather eye out, so to speak.

All in all, history tells a mixed tale for Long Island. Of the 96 major hurricanes that struck during the 159 years between 1851 and 2010, which the National Hurricane Center studied, just 5 hit here directly. However, when adjusted for inflation and other factors, the hurricane center found that some of the costliest ones did pass over. These included the unnamed 1938 Hurricane, which ranked sixth on the most-expensive list, and Carol in 1954, at number 19.

Number one was a 1926 storm that struck South Florida and Alabama and did an estimated $164 billion in damage in 2010 dollars. Number two was Katrina in 2005, with an adjusted cost of $113 billion. Sandy, which brought Long Island to a standstill for at least a week in 2012 but was only a tropical storm with a whole lot of surge associated with it, ran up a relatively modest $65 billion tab.

One of the points the hurricane center made in its report (which a friend pointed out the other day) was that because of never-ending building and expansion of existing structures along the shore, even minor hurricanes will rack up huge bills. The authors pointed out that all three of the 2008 hurricanes that made landfall ended up on the top-30 list for cost despite none of them ranking as major events bymeteorological standards.

“Large property losses are inevitable in the absence of a significant change of attitude, policy, or laws governing building practices [codes and location] near the ocean,” the report says. And that’s setting aside the increased risk presented by sea level rise. The South Fork may get a pass this year, and maybe next year, but we can expect one one of these days. Don’t say the National Hurricane Center didn’t tell you so.

I’ve heard it be said that the secret of life is the passage of time. What you do with that time is where the secrets are kept and it’s up to us to find them. For those of us who live here year round, our time will soon be ours again.

And what better time to celebrate that than autumn; the word alone fills me with joy. I don’t like to call it fall because fall or falling indicates something bad. Autumn is that sweet time of the year when our place of home becomes quieter, cooler, and cozier. “A good thing,” to quote Martha.

It’s time for us to regroup, clean up our own houses, our town, and start making plans for next year, which I think should include a big gate near Town Pond in East Hampton that will be staffed by us old fuddy-duds to keep the riffraff out. Oh my God, I don’t sound like my mother; I sound like my father!

It’s been a rough summer for those of us who live out here in Montauk. If the people who visited us this summer are anyindication of what our world is turning into, we’re in trouble — big trouble! Twenty-somethings acted like 4-year-old children on alcohol. Now picture that: drunken 4-year-olds. It might seem funny to some, but it’s not; it’s downright ugly.

Some, the younger people in our community, loved the action. You know, more hookups, easy access. “I don’t know why people are complaining so much. I love it,” said a 23-year-old I know, which is my point exactly. Consider the source.

They were running wild in the street, urinating on our lawns, pulling flowers from pots that had been carefully tended, and had no qualms about tossing garbage out their car windows, and peeing in our pond. The effects on the pond of diluted beer are not yet known, but we’ll soon know and that will help make the case for the gate.

When we open the gate in spring, we will have to be very careful whom we allow to enter our glass house. Those with no shirts and shoes will be kept out, as will those with coolers. Camping equipment should be suspect. I learned that several weeks ago when three young men parked on the grass near my driveway and exited their vehicle with backpacks, something that looked like a tent but could have been covering shotguns, and other bulky items.

They may have just been planning a night under the stars near the Montauk Lighthouse, which is a mile through the woods from our home, but strangers don’t and can’t park on my block. It’s too small with only three houses on each side and just enough open space for us and our neighbors to park our own vehicles. So when three guys have the audacity to park there and get out with equipment that is similar to what has been used by terrorists to house bombs, it raises a red flag.

It was a Sunday evening and my husband and I had just sat down in the living room after eating dinner. He saw them first and turned all vigilante on me. When he flung open our front door to chase them, I yelled for him to mind his business. He started spouting words about it being private property and all that, as if this was something I didn’t know already. But he did sit back down. I usually wear the pants in this family, and rightly so, as I’m more level-headed and not prone to a wine-soaked dinner.

But after he went to bed I started thinking: Maybe they were up to no good. My dilemma then became whether or not to call the authorities. After imagining my beloved Lighthouse blown to pieces, I made the necessary call. I had to. I saw something and if I hadn’t said something it would have haunted me for the rest of my life.

Nothing ever came of it, but it gave me one more reason to be glad summer’s over. The kids have returned to school and the Montauk Chamber is already planning a Tumbleweed Tuesday party, so we can dance in the streets. The time is now for us to share our secrets.

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

What were they thinking when they sped by me on the Napeague stretch one Sunday morning this spring? What were they thinking when they honked but did not stop?

Were they wondering for a split second what those people (many decidedly over 30) walking along the road with black bags, gloves, and pickup sticks were actually doing?

Were they thinking, “Those poor folks must be working off community service after getting D.W.I.s”? Were they thinking, “Those silly geezers; I hope they check for ticks”? Were they thinking, “Suckers! Nothing better to do than pick up other people’s trash”? Were they thinking, “Those poor seniors must need the money” or were they wondering if we were a chain gang and were all prisoners? Did they even see us?

Did they slow down to pass us in a safe way? Did they look at the coffee cup they were thoughtlessly going to throw out the window and have a change of heart? Did one of them consider stopping smoking instead of pitching that burning butt out the window? Were they thinking (thought bubble) “I have something really important to do” like yoga or tennis or 800 calories of pancakes to dive into?

Were the folks speeding east thinking of anything or did they tune out the stretch as they hurried to trash downtown Montauk, celebrate a birthday by releasing balloons into the air, or let their dog poop on the beach before it closed to dogs for the day?

And the folks heading west (because we picker-uppers worked both sides of the road), you were worse than the folks heading for the mayhem of Montauk. You had made your mess, spread your seeds, spat your spit, and bought your beers for the trip back west. But oops, a little woozy on the stretch, and maybe a cop, so many, many, many of you decided to throw the cans into the woods so they wouldn’t nail you for an open carry. Now, the cop will know that you are impaired by your driving, open beer or not, empty or not (and in my opinion, anyone stopped on the stretch for a D.W.I. should get an automatic littering ticket too, but that’s just me).

So they sped by us on that Sunday morning, nursing hangovers or heading to church or Ralph Lauren, the car wash, or their second or third jobs to make ends meet. If they noticed us on the side of the road, or they even saw the black bags, did they maybe wonder if last week’s pizza box or Styrofoam takeout container was in one of those bags or still in the woods? If maybe their spent lighter, dead batteries, or the contents of their ashtray got picked up and taken away in those bags? The tissues, the strips of plastic, the cans and the cans and the cans. Maybe next time they consider throwing garbage out the window or leaving their household trash at the beach, maybe, maybe they will have a tiny memory of the adults who wanted to make their world tidy, if for just one day.

Maybe they will learn by example and not entitlement, reject some hierarchy that says there is always someone lowlier than I am to pick up my droppings.

This is what I pondered as I picked up stuff by the side of the road. I wonder if they thought well of me or thought of me at all.

We’ll see at the next cleanup if anyone but us “got it.” Thanks Dell Cullum, and the rest, for trying.

See you then, I hope.

By the way, stopping to get close to Mother Nature’s little sister, the Napeague stretch, revealed lady slipper orchids, ferns, and some tiny white flowers that resembled clematis but were not vines. Open your eyes, folks; the world is an amazing place. Please leave it cleaner than the day you arrived.

Durell Godfrey, who said she “gets annoyed easily,” is a contributing photographer for The Star.

It would be best if I spared our eldest child my emotional confessions, but the house is now very different with her packed off to school in Delaware.

Her room will need a cleaning, but it is mostly empty with all the clothing she cared about taken along, the rest in piles for hand-me-downs. Leo, who was supposed to be her pig, remains, of course, resting on his bed by the fireplace as I work this morning. It is bittersweet; I know it is the best thing for her, but I miss her a whole lot.

Parents of younger children tend toward incredulous when I offer my observation that by the time kids reach their early teenage years they have learned just about all they will from their parents. I suppose it depends on the individual child, but it seems to me at least that by high school, the real education comes from peers, teachers, and interactions with all that can be found beyond the walls of home.

The seminomadic herding people of East Africa send their boys away to tend the animals and roam the hills when they reach that volatile moment, when they are first becoming men. I had heard it explained as a way to keep their meddlesome adolescent energy at a distance from the home camps, but it seems to me as much an education by doing as anything else. Can we find a parallel in our shooing American children out of their rooms and away from their smartphone screens for their next big phase of self-development? Maybe.

Boarding school was really our daughter Adelia’s choice. If she found a place that suited her, and we could afford it, we were not going to stand in her way, we said. There was a period during the process when she seemed eager to get as far away from East Hampton as possible.

“Daddy,” she said more than once, “can I go to school in London?” We visited a school in California. She asked about Paris. Obviously, this was not a kid we were going to be able to keep down on the farm, as the old song goes.

It is a cliché that childhood goes too fast, and it is difficult to write about this without getting maudlin. It is astonishing to think, though, that the baby who so few years ago would not go to sleep unless she was being bounced and held, is now off on her own in the great big world.

Good luck, kid. I’m proud of you.

I was thinking of calling the Hampton Jitney to see if I couldn’t get them to wrap one of their buses with a photo of me and fellow septuagenarian Gary Bowen, winners this past Sunday of East Hampton Indoor’s men’s B doubles championship, but modesty prevailed.

“In case you missed it on ESPN,” I emailed my son, “Gary Bowen and I won E.H.I.T.’s men’s B doubles championship!”

Frankly, I hadn’t held out much hope that we would. Not only were our opponents far younger, but we weren’t given much time to rest up from a semifinal agon the day before.

“Don’t come, Mary,” I said to my wife early Sunday morning, “it’s going to be a slaughter.”

Like a creaky torero with his best passes behind him, I laid out my Fred Perry tennis whites on the bed. There would be blood on the Har-Tru — and, unless I brushed my teeth, bad breath in the afternoon.

At least you will have spent yourself in a worthy cause, an inner voice confided. You will not be on this day among those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Gary had been telling me all during the tournament to “play up, play up,” and so I did, beating back as many serve returns as I could. We won the first set with relative ease, at 6-2.

“You’re a lion at the net!” Gary, who in the early ’60s played basketball at Brown, marveled at one point.

But our opponents were more inclined, I’m sure, to think I was a-lyin’ when late in the second set, which they won 6-4,  Scott Rubenstein overruled an out call (“by one ten-thousandth of an inch”) I’d made.

“It’s in,” he said, and the battle continued.

When it was over at last, I sank to my knees, bowed my head, and raised a hand to heaven. Gary, who had played wonderfully, was over the moon.

It was proposed the post-match photo be taken at the site of the damn spot, which prompted Scott to say, “I called it in and you still couldn’t beat these guys in their mid-70s.”

Their day will come, and rather soon too, I expect. Meanwhile, I went on to the Classic later that day with a light heart and the wheels singing, the first time, I think, that that’s ever happened.

Oh, and Mary did come — somewhere along in the first set. It was like the golden-lit scene at Wrigley in “The Natural,” only she’s prettier than Glenn Close.

Quahog chowder for 100? That’s right. In years gone by, with the bay beach in front of our house, we did things in a big way. The chowder was a hit for a couple of summers and then — oh, dear — we made a bouillabaisse. The latter recipe is lost to history because we wanted to forget about it.

What happened was that we left the huge soup kettle, which wasn’t empty, on the beach overnight and the smell was so bad in the morning that we had to drag it across the dunes to bury what was left.

The recipe for quahog chowder for 100, however, was published in “The Potato Book” by Myrna Davis, and it just happens to be in the Habitat section of The Star today. It calls for a bushel of chowder clams and 15 pounds of striped bass, which gets me to what I have been thinking about all week. 

Striped bass is a family favorite, and we have just celebrated a birthday with a huge one, poached, decorated with thin cucumber slices as scales, and served with dill sauce. Delicious.

I was surprised at how costly striped bass is. One reason is that only fish between 28 and 38 inches can be caught commercially and each fish has to be tagged. Tags cost either $32 or $195 (for 32 or 195 tags), and a state Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman told me that 450 fishermen bought shares this year. Striped bass caught on rod and reel have to be at least 28 inches as well, and only one fish is allowed per person per day.

When haul seining was permitted here, striped bass was the money fish. You’re not apt to see a crew hauling a seine full of bass onto the ocean beaches these days, or to have one tossed to you as a gift, although I understand that a few baymen still seine with gill nets.

I got talking to Charlotte Klein Sasso of Stuart’s Seafood Market in Amagansett the other day, and she confirmed that the cost of striped bass was up there with the best-quality tuna, about $25 or $27 a pound. (I found out later that striped bass was $32.99 a pound at Citarella this week, and tuna was $29.99.)

Speaking about local fish, Charlotte said customers were beginning to realize that instead of dorade or branzino, which come from foreign waters, the waters around the South Fork are teeming with wonderful fish in season, like bluefish, porgies, and Spanish mackerel, and cost a lot less. At Citarella this week, for example, bluefish was $7.99 a pound, but it didn’t have any. I love them all, not only because they are good as well as inexpensive, but because they are caught locally, and fresher than fresh.

To tell the truth, the birthday boy, my husband, likes bluefish even more than striped bass, but I wanted the presentation at dinner to be impressive, like a salmon you might see at a wedding.

My own fondness for bluefish goes back a long time to the first I ever caught. I hooked the fish in the Three Mile Harbor channel as we were sailing in on our old catboat. Quick-thinking, the boat was brought about, and I overcame my excitement to bring the fish aboard. This memory is hard to forget.

As for quahog chowder, what could be more local than that? Although you might want to check out monkfish or weakfish or another local fish if you plan to buy 15 pounds.

Click for the recipe for quahog chowder for 100

For year-rounders, summer is not generally the time for relaxation. Beaches and outdoor pursuits beckon, but for us working stiffs, the nonstop revelry of July and August feels like an endurance test. This season’s almost uninterrupted sunshine provided vacationers with extra days of beach and pool and paddleboarding and tennis, but for the most part we year-rounders were looking forward to the pressure easing after Labor Day.

Over the weekend, however, I did somehow manage to belatedly get into that vacation-relaxation mood. I think it was an anticipatory sense of impending relief that gave my husband and me permission to take it easy and enjoy the home stretch.

At lunchtime on Saturday, Villa Italian Specialties in East Hampton was packed to the bursting point. Three different lines were set up, one for customers clamoring to place orders, another for those paying for their readymade pastas and salads, and a third for those waiting, patiently and not so patiently, to be called when their Villa Combos were ready.

Like most year-rounders, I usually avoid food-shopping at peak hours, but we dove right in, and I felt like a real tourist joining the long-weekend scrum. We took our eggplant Parmesan sandwiches home, set the table outside under a big copper beech tree, and watched the perfect blue sky through the branches.

I felt like a tourist again on Sunday, when, stopping at Breadzilla in Wainscott after yoga, I found myself among a crowd of first-timers who obviously weren’t familiar with the protocol — where to stand, how to order. Later that day, my husband and I took one of our 5-year-old grandsons for a leisurely browse at the Sag Harbor Variety Store (a.k.a. the 5 & 10), where little Teddy — who has been nicknamed Speedo this summer for his incredible energy and propensity for running — displayed remarkable restraint, carefully inspecting every toy and game before selecting a small pack of Pokemon cards as his special treat.

If the Sag Harbor Variety Store isn’t exactly a high-glamour destination, a shopping errand there is undoubtedly a delight for jaded city people, for those too young to remember when 5 & 10s were common, and for those nostalgic for small-town life. It sells every imaginable household gadget and craft supply, and there is a mechanical pony outside, which kids can ride for 25 cents. From its cheerful façade and vintage sign to its modest prices, it is thoroughly unHamptons.

(From time to time rumors have been spread of the store’s demise, but they haven’t been true. Frankly, I think it is a historic landmark that should be preserved. Would the citizens group Save Sag Harbor take that on if the dark day ever arrived?)

After our little Pokemon-buying excursion, we took our grandson to Buddhaberry on Sag Harbor’s Main Street, where, this time, I was the tourist too clueless to navigate the system or the crowd. Frozen-yogurt fans stood two deep in front of the fro-yo and candy-topping downspouts. Teddy had been there before and helped us oldsters figure it out.

The end of summer is supposed to be bittersweet, more melancholy, in theory, than anything else. But those of us who have been holding our breath until September, when calm returns and traffic eases, see the opposite side of this coin: The end of summer is a happy ending. I guess that is why we grinned and enjoyed its waning days.

 Back in East Hampton on Monday, Labor Day itself, I walked down Main Street accompanying an older grandchild while she shopped for a swimsuit. We found one at Gubbins, then stopped at Starbucks for some sort of frozen strawberry shortcake Frapuccino concoction. That afternoon, I actually sat down and read a book! Finally, my husband and I wrapped up our mini-staycation by indulging in dinner at a waterfront restaurant, taking advantage of the view before the fine weather ends, as end it must.

He is Jamaican. He is a big man, tall and broad. He gets on in Montauk with me at 7 a.m. We both sit down in front, where there is more legroom. We are riding the 10C.

The 10C makes its run from downtown Montauk to the East Hampton train station and back five times a day. It travels the old highway between town and Hither Hills State Park, then it’s Montauk Highway the rest of the way.

It is one of the few routes in the Suffolk County transit system that operates on Sundays.

In between its East Hampton runs, it circles around Montauk, starting at the Jitney stop, up Second House, up Flamingo to Gosman’s, then to Ditch via West Lake, and back to the beginning.

The 10C is the path of least resistance.

For most of the year, its clientele are a mix of Jamaicans, Latinos, and whites. The riders of the 10C are the workers, the people behind the curtain who enable the Hamptons to be the Hamptons.

In the summer, a few of the European students who have come to Montauk to work and play can be found riding the 10C.

During your summer ride, you hear a mix of languages and accents.

No one rides the 10C because they want to. They ride it because they have to.

You have to get from here to there, you don’t have a car, and the L.I.R.R. service on weekdays on the South Fork is nonexistent.

You’re thankful each time you get on during the summer to find the A.C. is working. Ditto the heat in the winter. Neither is guaranteed for your $2.25.

Have to be in East Hampton from Montauk by 10 a.m.? The 7 a.m. 10C is your only option.

The 10C is a portal to the rest of Suffolk County. Once you arrive at the East Hampton train station, you can transfer to buses headed to Bridgehampton or Riverhead or even Center Moriches, if you’re feeling exotic, though you’ll have to do an extra transfer to get there.

The ride does have its moments. In the dead of winter, as the bus heads west along the old highway, you get to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic, a stirring sight. No extra charge.

The electronically generated voice that announces the stops has its own take on local names. Napeague Harbor is “Nah-puh-kee Harbor.” Amagansett is “Ah-muh-gan-set.”

There is a rack on the front of the bus that holds up to two bikes. That is the key to my modus operandi when I am carless: The bus takes me to East Hampton; the bike does the rest.

I nod at the faces I recognize as they pass down the aisle. Sometimes they respond, sometimes they don’t.

A few days ago, I had a long talk with a man from St. Thomas. He is an attendant at Gurney’s Spa, and lives in the back of the resort. He got on at the East Hampton train station carrying a brand- new microwave he had bought in Bridgehampton.

He told me he likes the new management at the resort.

The next morning, he got back on the bus at Gurney’s carrying the same microwave. It was damaged goods. Another trip to Bridgehampton.

Occasionally, I spot a face I know from East Hampton Town Justice Court. They have pleaded guilty to D.W.I., and have lost their license for six months, or a year. Awkward, but it occasionally leads to an interesting conversation.

The big man sitting next to me is singing to himself. He has a pleasant, deep voice.

He is riding the 10C.

T.E. McMorrow covers crime and the courts for The East Hampton Star.

The first photograph of mine that was published in this paper was, I believe, in 1979. It was on the cover, and it was of Pete Kromer, a haul-seiner and a friend, kneeling on the ocean beach at the end of a giant bag of weakfish while simultaneously tossing two in the air to his truck.

It was one of those Decisive Moment kinda photographs, that still stands with the best of my work. It was also shot on Tri-X, the once much-revered weapon of photojournalists the world over. The only problem with this photograph was the caption, which I didn’t write and only saw when the paper came out the next day.

The caption read, “Bass, mostly.” This meant striped bass, and the problem with that was that there was not a single striped bass in that net. They were all weakfish.

We haul-seiners at that time were facing mounting pressure on the political side and from the lobby of sports fishermen, who were trying to end a way of fishing that was a tradition out here for over 300 years. So any reference to large numbers of striped bass caught by us were just used as ammunition against us. Needless to say, I was in a boatload of trouble for weeks back down at the beach.

I had caption trouble and just plain photo trouble two more times at The Star, and while I won’t name the person who did me in the second and third times, I will say that I had nothing to do with either incident.

The second debacle came when I gave a photograph to the then-photo editor to hang on her refrigerator to help motivate her to stay on her diet. It was a photograph of my good friend Carlos Anduze sitting cross-legged on a kitchen floor in the Dominican Republic with a makeshift white turban on and dark sunglasses. Lisa de Kooning was with us, and being the animal lover that she was, there was a lot of canned dog food at our cottage that she would give freely to all of the underfed island dogs.

So my (it was just a joke between Carlos and me, and he even said, “Cono, take my picture”) photograph of the sinister-looking Arab with a heaping spoonful of Alpo inches from his mouth goes on the letters page of The Star. I don’t even remember what that caption said, and it did not matter because the angry “how dare you, there are starving children in the world” letters to the editor came pouring in.

The third and final incident involved a photograph that I took and would have actually put in the paper myself, but again, it was the caption that hung me out to dry. These three incidents are in my mind not a bad track record considering the fact that I’ve probably had thousands of my photographs in The Star.

Anyway, this was an early morning, nicely lit pastoral scene photograph of a black woman holding a white baby down near Town Pond. Again, I took it and I would have, and probably did, put it in the paper myself. It was the caption (that I didn’t write), the single word “Harmony,” that brought on a second torrent of “How dare you? Racial inequality, you should be ashamed of yourself” and on and on, letters to the editor.

I really disagreed with these people because I took this photograph and I didn’t see that at all. It was the caption, I guess, that really rattled them.

In defense of The Star, there are many people out there poised to strike whenever anything is printed these days, and although it is now more in the form of an online comment, as opposed to a letter to the editor, many of them, plainly put, have nothing better to do than chip away back and forth on and on at any topic. The ones who are really good at it can take a topic a simple as making gazpacho and turn that into a hateful tirade against President Obama.

Tonight, I’m traveling to Greece for a week, and hopefully the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, which is now home to over 90,000 people who have fled the war in Syria. The camp is eight miles from the border of Syria. It is in these two locations that I hope to take a lot of photographs that don’t need any captions. Not one single word.

Doug Kuntz, an award-winning photojournalist who once served as this paper’s photo editor, is now a contributing photographer to The Star.

On the eve of my father’s birthday my son arrived with two daughters exceedingly lively and between Pepperoni’s and Sam’s we sported free at the edge of the sea.

Their energy is gale-force a shock to the system and if your pulse tends to run slower you will be shaken up. No time for commas.

“That was ‘Ode to Joy’ you just played Zora . . . ? No? ‘Ode to a Rather Pleasant Feeling’ then?”

We sip tea as instructed from cups they’ve somehow brought down without incident from a dresser twice their height and Maya plays Etude in B minor — a major achievement I think. It’s great to know that the Lighthouse is to give her a grand piano.

Then hip-hop. Zora leading the way one hand shading her mouth the other flung out then elbows and legs alternately flying.

On to the General Store and Ping-Pong and then to the sea — Cebra Maya Zora and me.

Where I read that Maia was Atlas’s daughter and of Tithonus whose mother in asking for immortality from Zeus forgot to ask at the same time for perpetual youth as in Endymion’s case thus rendering him daily older grayer more shrunken and shrill till he became a cicada.

It would be fun to live long enough to see my granddaughters metamorphose.

Then they were gone — by way of a conga line that Zora led to the car from Sam’s — and then the commas, yes, the commas, began asking if they could not come back in.