We watched “The Natural” the other night, for the umpteenth time. It never grows old. It is our fable.

At least the movie version is, with Roy Hobbs’s transcendent home run (“That’s how it feels, isn’t it, to come through like that in a game?” said Mary as the soaring music played and the sparks from the short-circuited stadium stanchions lit Roy’s way ’round the bases) and the father-and-son catch in the farm field in the golden light at the end.

That light. I love that light! The same golden light one sees now at the end of these summer days. How can anything untoward befall when one is bathed in it, as we were for a couple of magical hours the other night.

Magic, of course, is a big part of it, in the form of Roy’s handmade “Wonder Boy” bat, his Excalibur, which as a child he hewed from a mighty oak that had been cleaved by a lightning bolt.

Though blessed, he suffered, was (almost) buried, and rose again — to play ball, stigmata and all.

Then the moment, when all that was good, when all that was true, when all that was honorable, when all that was just, when all that was commendable triumphed, and fireworks went off. The Tempter disdained, the woman who loved him regained.

It is a beautiful story — certainly if you’ve ever played baseball — though, as I’ve said, at variance with the book at times, when the mythic and banal collide.

Anyway, “The Natural” lifts up our hearts, and for that we are thankful.

Play it again, Sam. Play it again.

Taking into consideration the way our visitors are driving this summer and the pedestrians darting in front of cars outside of marked crosswalks, it has given me ample opportunity to think about heaven, if I should be so lucky to land there someday.

On weekends when I have to drive to the downtown area in Montauk I never know if I’ll make it home alive or with my Jeep still intact. It’s been close on several occasions. And so I’ve been trying to grasp this whole idea of heaven. I’m also eating a lot of chocolate, as I hear it’s calming and easier to obtain than Xanax.

According to Catholic lore, our bodies stay on earth to fertilize the ground, but our sprits soar to that heavenly place up in the sky. But what do our spirits look like when we enter the golden gates? Will we become floating puffballs without facial features? Will our spirits recognize the people we knew and loved on earth? Will our sexuality disappear? That could ease quite a bit of tension and maybe we all ould get along.

Will my puffball be able to wear my glasses so I can recognize others? If not, the spirit puffs will have to come nose to nose with me so I’ll know who they are. But will our spirits even have a nose? And will all our earthly ailments disappear? God that would be nice.

You may think this is crazy thinking, but with popular books on the best-seller list and movies being made about people who died and followed the light and then returned to earth, heaven may really exist.

If it’s as perfect a place as religious leaders lead us to believe, I probably wouldn’t even need my glasses or medications. I would no longer need glasses to see people puffs, and my cellulite would disappear. Unless my spirit puff is dimpled with those annoying blotches of fat that most women sport on their thighs.

I wonder at what age our spirits will appear to be. If we look too young, other spirit puffs will not recognize our older selves. If I could choose the age I’d like my spirit to be, I think I’d go for 40. My three children had been born and I was in pretty good shape, considering I had expelled those three children from my earthly self. Of course, it’s been all downhill since then.

Recently, while talking to my hairdresser, the body of all knowledge, she mentioned that a person who supposedly died and went to heaven sought out an old friend and was told he was on a higher level in heaven and unreachable.

Wow, now that sounds great. I’d love to be in a place where no one could bother me, especially in my business as a newspaper reporter who often gets called to task for other writers’ stories or editors’ mistakes. (Yes, they do make them too.)

I wonder if we would have a space to call our own, like a private cloud. It must be awfully crowded up there, and I’ve always been a bit of a loner, which makes some of my loved ones uncomfortable — they hate to think of me being by myself when my husband goes out night-fishing. But I love it. As long as my cloud has magazines and a few good books I’d be a happy spirit.

If heaven is as grand as they say, whoever they are, I imagine we can also choose the name we’d like to be called. I’ve always hated my name, so I would no longer wish to be called the spirit Janis. If we’re allowed by the Great One to choose our own names, I’m thinking Mother Moonlight Montauk.

And as nice as it’s supposed to be up there, I plan on staying close to home on weekends — heaven can wait.

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

East Hampton, N.Y., July 1, 2014: Concern and discussion about a number of new vehicles that have taken to the East Hampton roads seem all the rage in local scuttlebutt. New white Ford F-150s have been spotted tailgating the cars of older East Hampton Village residents who pilot smaller automobiles. Most of the people being tailgated are elderly ladies.

Many of the tailgaters are brutes holding cellphones to their ears, racing through the village, checking on their many contractual jobs, estimates, clients: The fastidious detailers hire themselves out to entitled homeowners of financial means. This is a problem!

When confronted about this tailgating, what do you think the tailgate man does? The nice new glazy-dark window of a brand-new white Ford F-150 is rolled up; the burly man in the truck keeps yakking on his cellphone. When push comes to shove, the man in the truck is oh too busy to acknowledge the mere pedestrian presence next to his spectacular truck. He has money to make, places to be, lumber to acquire — no time for you or your aging mommy. “Run those little cars off the road, send them home to eat cake,” the tough white-Ford F-150 guy thinks.

White Range rovers are appearing in Montauk with surfboards atop vehicles as if attending a Saturday night soiree at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

Splashy surf racks, combo double surfboard bags au deluxe, longboard kook-monger dudes with their bling dates! Ladies and gentlemen, are they doing lunch, visiting the riffraff poor surf-type inhabitants of the small most-eastern hamlet of Long Island, inspiring all with their gauche, white Range Rover manners?

Who had the nerve to sell them all those brand-new surf digs, gear, sunglasses, booties, wetsuits, surf leashes, car bike racks, fins, and more fins — like, wow! What is up with the car? No self-respecting surfer would drive such a vehicle unless he were in Africa. Seriously: This brand-new white Range Rover surf culture in Montauk has to stop!

Moving on: brand-new black Mercedes-Benz S.U.V. automobiles with the darkish tinted windows. Why do owners of this luxury vehicle keep pulling over on Further Lane on the right-hand side with the tail end of the car sticking out in the road to talk on their cellphones? Of course the driver’s phone is a hopped-up iPhone with a snazzy case the driver flaunts.

Cellphone raised to ear: A bystander can almost feel the peripheral anxiety of the driver of said luxury automobile. The ugly, boxy S.U.V. shines! The butt end of the automobile slapped in the road, slowing down people who actually have to work. What self-respecting American patriot would allow anyone to see him parked on such a famed lane in East Hampton acting that way?

Get those drivers to roll down those windows, get off their cellphones, smell the flowers, look up, look down, greet the neighbors, wave to the policeman, and cease and desist with this behavior. Pull that ugly, tinted-window, new black luxury car off the road, hide it behind a big tree. Stand off to the side of the road, talk on the cellphone, and be polite! Remember to turn the gas-guzzling, brand-new Benz off so it does not continue to spew carbons, burn fuel, and bother everyone.

A young local entrepreneur has come up with a resolution concerning these vehicles of poor choice. He, a ubiquitous young man, is offering for $200 per car to bring character to each individual vehicle of these brands. The white Range Rover can be spray-painted decorative gray and black. The black Mercedes S.U.V.s will be spray-coated in mud. Not to worry: The mud is 100-percent organic, biodegradable; the mud will even be dug legally from the property of a registered East Hampton Democrat. This is a winning situation; everyone will be happy. The organic contingency will be happy, and Republicans can mock the mud-spattered luxury automobile.

The brand-new white Ford F-150s pose mind-boggling problems. No one seems to know what to do about them. The owners of these vehicles cannot be rebuffed. The owners of the white Ford F-150s should stop tailgating everyone in their pursuit of the American Dream. However, the truck is white and a Ford. Also, new white Ford trucks infuriate Chevy truck owners.

If anyone has any suggestions concerning brand-new white Ford-F150s traversing the roads of East Hampton, please send your suggestions to 153 Main Street, East Hampton Star Newspaper, attn: Russell Bennett, Customer Relations.

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

Do you know what the difference is between $212,614 and $230,726? I don’t mean the figure you get if you subtract the first dollar amount from the second. I refer to the difference between what the chancellor of the New York City Department of Education earns annually and the salary the Bridgehampton School District superintendent, Lois Favre, will make next year.

Carmen Farina, who is in charge of 1,800 schools with about 1.1 million students, makes the lower amount. There are some 166 students in Bridgehampton, which has two portable classrooms in addition to a main building. According to the New York Post, however, Ms. Farina makes more than the president of the United States! (Of course, to come to that conclusion, you have to add the $199,579 pension Ms. Farina receives annually after 30 years as a teacher, and you have to ignore the perks the president receives.)

In 2011, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo suggested that school superintendents’ salaries be capped in much the same way that the state has capped increases in the amount of money school districts raise by taxes. He proposed $179,000 as the cap, and it’s easy to see how he arrived at that: The governor’s salary has been set by state law since 1999 at exactly $179,000, although Mr. Cuomo voluntarily returns 5 percent.

Comparing figures, I must admit, is something of a flawed exercise. You would need much more information and statistical expertise to be sure you weren’t comparing apples and oranges. But you’ve got to start somewhere if you want to decide whether the governor was right.

It seems that Jack Perna, superintendent of the Montauk School, would stand to earn $6,862 more if the governor got his way, and Mr. Perna is the principal of the school as well as the district superintendent. The current part-time Springs superintendent, John Finello, is to take home $174,167 next year; someone else is the Springs School principal.

Among those who would have to take a pay cut if the governor got his way is the superintendent of the East Hampton School District, Richard Burns, who will make $195,000 in the coming academic year. Sag Harbor recently hired a new superintendent, Katy Graves, putting her down for $215,000; that district also has an elementary and a middle school-high school principal. And in Amagansett, where an interim principal is being paid $300 a day, the superintendent, Eleanor Tritt, is to receive $188,000 next year. If we were going to make our calculations according to the logic applied by the New York Post, any other monetary benefits each of these administrators receives would have to be added.

One supposes that these salaries are governed by all sorts of variables, including educational degrees, training, and experience, but there has to be more to the story. Because the money schools spend comes primarily from property taxes, and because communities here contain some of the most expensive real estate in the country, our districts are rich and residents are quiescent. There have been no taxpayer revolts in recent years, but you never know.

Soccer is king at East Hampton High School — the team, in the absence of a varsity football squad, will be featured at homecoming this fall as the result of a student vote — and it has been king here at the adult level for years, beginning with emigrants from Costa Rica in the mid-1960s, after which came Mexicans, Colombians, and Ecuadorians, mostly from Cuenca (not to mention the Irish).

Yet some still refuse to credit the verdict of their own eyes. The crowd gathered around the television in the courtyard at Rowdy Hall last week for the United States-Belgium game was the largest I can remember there since the hot dog eating contest.

“All the parents now want their kids to move,” a father of two athletic daughters told me the other day. “They don’t want them staring at their iPhones and iPads all day. They want them playing sports like soccer, lacrosse, or track. I’m afraid it may be the end for softball and baseball.”

Not to mention football, which I’ve been told ranks behind bike riding, soccer, and ice hockey when it comes to concussions.

(Then of course, when listing sports on the rise here, there’s swimming, which boasts a robust youth movement that I would imagine is on a par with soccer and lacrosse.)

Back to the World Cup, I admit I was puzzled — I’d had the volume off — when all the American fans were cheering and applauding after the U.S. lost 1-0 to Germany, but later I was clued in. Yes, we lost, but because it had been such a narrow loss we had won!

How would that — winning by losing — sit with the red meat American psyche, I wondered. Much too subtle, like those power-sharing elections abroad.

Well, of course, we did really lose to Belgium, though, presumably everyone thought of Tim Howard, our goalie, as a winner.

As for the common American complaint that not enough goals are scored in soccer — which I think makes the game all the more riveting — count each one as 7 points, or 14!

In any event, to state the obvious, soccer is here to stay — not only in East Hampton, but in this country.

July Fourth isn’t what it used to be. It’s been six years or so since the last Declaration of Independence party hereabouts, an annual ritual that lasted for some two decades. It was extraordinary and all-American, a coming together of like-minded individuals to recognize the best things about the United States, things from which we all have benefited. The Declaration was read, a brass band played marches, and the Union Jack was lowered. Guests were then invited to speak or read from pertinent material.

The celebration was the idea of Ed Costikyan, a lawyer who was active in New York political affairs. He was joined in staging these events over the years by a Sagaponack neighbor, the television producer Al Perlmutter. Between them and their wives, Barbara Heine Costikyan and Joan Konner — and, later, Ethel Person and Stanley Diamond, who hosted the party at their Amagansett summer house — they offered guests a pluperfect way to celebrate the holidays. The guests were, like the hosts, professionals, lawyers, doctors, writers, and politicians.

The first party was held on the beach in Sagaponack, and it then moved onto the hosts’ lawns under tents. Nine guests were selected to read the document, and other partygoers then recited the names of the 56 signers. It was reported one year that some enthusiastic participants had visited the Bridgehampton library to research material before the big day. “America the Beautiful” was sung, as were occasional patriotic solos. The fare was as traditional as possible: hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, beer. 

I was late joining in, partly because the organizers didn’t want the press to be there. As the numbers grew, from about 50 to 150 or more, it was hard to keep the much-talked-about party secret. Partisan politics were not permitted, although Bruce Llewellyn, who lived in Bridgehampton at the time, and Betty Friedan, a Sag Harborite, were known to speak out on equal rights and women’s rights or Supreme Court decisions. It’s sad to realize how many of those who coalesced to make this such a memorable ritual are gone. It’s hard to imagine something like this being revived today. 

In at least one other way, however, July Fourth is what it always has been for me. Our family has had a house on Gardiner’s Bay with a perfect view of the Devon Yacht Club fireworks since the early ’60s. Friends and family have gathered on the beach there every July for about 50 years, from the time my eldest was a baby until today, when my children’s children, ranging from 4 years old to 13, get into the spirit by waving sparklers and glow-sticks.

The Rattray crowds on the beach have waxed and waned. In the really old days, when the fireworks were over and the kids in bed, we would sit around a bonfire singing till morning. There was a year at the very beginning when only one couple and their infant girls came to the party because it rained. (No matter. We roasted hot dogs in the living room fireplace.) For a time, in the ’80s, as many as 500 people would show up, and it turned into a major bacchanalia. 

In the last decade or so, our Fourth beach party has been considerably smaller and mellower. My son David and his wife, Lisa, run the show now, and they have stopped issuing formal invitations. Instead, they just open up the beach to whoever wants to participate in this quintessential summer evening.

The party is still for parents and children, but these days it’s for grandparents, too. Gangs of kids run up and down the sand, as it grows dark, splashing and making noise. But everyone still grows quiet, as if in awe, when the fireworks start. Kids return to mother’s lap and everyone’s face turns to the sky. Some years, the night is a bit of a happening. Two summers ago, for instance, my son enlisted friends to help him build a driftwood sailing ship on the beach. A video artist projected scenes of the sea on its sails before it was set aflame. 

Although I miss the Declaration of Independence party and the feelings of well-being and camaraderie it engendered, I exult in the fact that my family is still able to gather the clans on the Fourth of July. How lucky are we?

Last week, I wrote about a newfound interest in sea gulls, birds that I had, like many others here, tended to overlook. It was perhaps by some Murphy’s Law that one of my brothers-in-law and I ended up rescuing one on the Fourth of July.

A group of us, adults and children, had gone down to the bay for a swim. The kids noticed the gull, a black-back, sitting near the water’s edge, its head somewhat bloodied from an unseen wound. There was little we could do, we told them. Judging from its apparent immobility, some animal had probably pounced on it, and its time was just up. We could have phoned the animal rescue people, I supposed, but its chances seemed poor to none.

After a while, however, I went over for a closer look. There, under its left wing, I saw a fishing lure tangled in among the feathers. I called to Paul, who grabbed a towel, and we carefully picked the bird up. It was doing better than first appeared and did its damnedest to nip at Paul’s hands. As we stood up, we noticed that not only was the lure, a silver-and-blue plug with two treble hooks, impeding the bird’s ability to move, but a considerable length of fishing line trailed behind it as well. With Paul holding the bird, I ran for scissors and needle-nosed pliers.

It took quite some cutting and unwinding to remove the tough, green braided line to get the gull free. The lure, it turned out, did not appear to have dug into its flesh, but to have cut its legs in several places. It took about five minutes to remove the lure and all the line. A pile of some dozens of yards of it lay on the sand as Paul carried the bird back to the water and placed it gently down.

The first thing it did was sip some water from the bay, then walk gingerly back and forth. It hung around for an hour, and when I returned a while later, it was gone — good news, I wanted to believe. It was only afterward that I got to wondering about the great length of line. It struck me as odd that the gull could have been carrying so much of it.

Having had to work with some difficulty to cut it, it seemed unlikely that the gull could have gotten got caught in the line and caused it to break. Rather (and having run into something similar while fishing myself), I guessed that some angler had accidentally cast the lure right onto the gull, and instead of reeling it in and freeing it, decided to cut the line and let it fend for itself.

It was only chance that the gull ended up in front of our house and that Paul and I were there, ready, willing, and able to get it loose. Whatever had caused its head wounds would have been likely to return that night to finish the job, I thought. Now, I could be wrong about how the gull became ensnared, but I don’t think so. I’ll never know for sure, but I’ll keep my suspicions for the time being. That line was just too strong for it to have snapped on its own.

As for my own involvement with a bird and a lure, in that case, it was a cormorant I snagged off Gardiner’s Island. We slowly moved the boat as close as we could, scooped up the bird, and, despite its nips and scratches, set it free hardly the worse for the experience.

A truism about cooking is that if you lay a breaded coating onto just about anything and fry it up in a bit of oil, kids will eat it without objection. Still, it was with no minor degree of amazement that I was able to get a mess of fritters made from a notably pungent shellfish down our brood’s craws the other night.

I cannot claim sole authorship of this culinary experiment. My friend Jameson Ellis, who shares a certain curiosity about natural harvests, to put it mildly, had mused in passing about whether whelks might be prepared the way people in the Caribbean deal with conch. The question stuck.

The tide was extremely low at about midday on Saturday. Idling my boat over a sand flat that I can usually navigate without incident, I was surprised to suddenly, if gently, strike bottom, stirring up a dark cloud of silt. At anchor, I decided to seize the day and try for some clams.

When I was a child, this particular flat was loaded with sweet-tasting skimmer clams, but on Saturday there were none. There weren’t many quahogs either, and I felt a twinge of guilt taking the few methuselahs I scratched up. In the process, though, whelks came up in the rake, and, instead of throwing them back, I opted to toss them into my floating basket.

Their preparation was simple. Boiled for just a few minutes in salted water, they were easy to remove from their whorled shells. The meat took a trip through a food processor, then was blended with breadcrumbs, flour, chopped onion, an egg, salt, pepper, and a splash of beer (Montauk Brewing Company Driftwood Ale, if you must know). After some oil was nearly smoking in a wok, I cooked rough tablespoons of the battered whelk for a minute or two on each side, then drained them in a colander.

Traditionally, the knobbed whelks that became our dinner are considered predators, attacking clams and other shellfish. It is possible that by in turn making dinner of them, I may help the other, less mobile species that live under the same tides. We’ll see. It was a tasty undertaking at the very least.

It’s as Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography, I know Lyme disease when I experience it. I don’t care what the test — which has yet to come back — says.

It flattens one, utterly. Though this time — I’ve had it before, about 10 years ago — I was able to think, after a fashion; not that it’s an absolute requisite in this business.

I remember the last time I had it I couldn’t remember a thing. Editors would come in to my office saying I wasn’t making any sense, and I would say of course I wasn’t making any sense I had Lyme disease, goddammit.

It can make you testy like that; all seems unavailing. And all you want to do, all you can do, is sleep. I knocked off 14 to 15 hours the first two nights with long daytime naps.

Then, all of a sudden, we were asking each other at dinner what we really loved. Jimmy said beer and cigarettes (though maybe not in that order), I said Mary and tennis (in that order).

And I still feel that way now that the antibiotics have kicked in, and now that I can do the crossword again.

No, you don’t want Lyme disease, or whatever they call its various transmutations. (This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a tick bite.)

There were no telltale signs or failures to act within the allotted time. We’ve got more tweezers in the house than you can shake a tick at, and we’ve been dutifully putting Off on, and Mary’s picked many more ticks from her than I have from me this summer.

I have a theory that once you’ve had it it simply recurs, every now and then. A corrective to pride or some such? An intimation of death and resurrection? An ache-up call?

On one’s back, pretty much disembodied, there is, however, a sense of peace. But it comes at a price.

Yet soon, thanks to the antibiotics, the worst is over and you’re behind the wheel again, in the land of the livid — creeping, beeping, and bleeping.

“Tuesday afternoon is never ending, Wednesday morning papers didn’t come.” But that was okay, because I was sitting in front of a computer that Wednesday morning, and the news came to me.

How I came across the website I don’t recall, but instead of scrambling to meet another deadline I spent a few minutes on a page devoted to Beatles-related news. And there it was: Ringo Starr was to make a personal appearance at SoHo Contemporary Art on the Bowery in New York on June 20.

“June 20,” I thought. “That’s tomorrow.” The inner dialogue continued: All right, son, keep calm. This can happen.

The first “Relay” I wrote for The Star recounted a meeting with John Lennon, in Montauk, when I was 9. Another included a passing mention of a brief chat with Paul McCartney, last summer in Amagansett. Yet another was a clumsy meditation on the joy and sorrow of living, and not living, on the South Fork that, predictably, referenced Beatles lyrics and whatnot.

Yes, I’m still pretty hung up on those Beatles. I’ve even met Pete Best, the drummer sacked in favor of Mr. Starr in 1962. Alas, I never met George Harrison, and will be content to meet in his next life, or mine.

As it happened, Cathy and I were already going to drive to the city that day. Also, crucially, I knew Ringo’s publicist from my years at Billboard. I sent an urgent message: Is there any way my girlfriend and I can attend? Please?

It is for top art buyers only, was the reply. That said, a “red carpet” event would take place, “but it’s a hassle.” Still, she conveyed a noncommittal promise to try to slip us into the event. “We can play it by ear tomorrow” — was that musician jargon, I wondered — “but again, so far it is not possible.” It was good enough for me.

No, it was better than good enough. I’ve been listening to the Beatles from birth, probably, and am still knocked out by their magnum opus and remarkable story. It would be a good thing to convey my appreciation and gratitude to another of the demigods responsible.

We set off for New York and as spring turned to summer were standing on the Bowery under the late-afternoon sun. A glass of beer a few doors down from the gallery, and then we stood again among the gathering crowd and waited, and waited.

And then a big black van pulled to the curb and Ringo’s All-Starr Band stepped out and into the gallery, a pungent odor close behind. We waited.

And then, later, a big black S.U.V. slowed, and there he was. I saw his publicist among the small entourage that walked toward us, and then they disappeared inside and we waited some more.

In time, we too were ushered inside, a woman I did not know instructing us to remain by the door until further notice. The rear of the long room was abuzz, people and movement and noise and wine and music. He was there, though we could not see him.

And then, quietly, “He’s going to leave in about 15 minutes.” And then, “He’s going to leave in about 10 minutes.” And then the publicist approached and told us, firmly, to stand immediately inside the door, from which we had drifted.

The All-Starr Band in tow, she led Ringo toward the door. She turned to him and told him my name, and he turned toward me.

“Hi Ringo thank you so much I love you.” I think that’s what I said. And then, “Hare Krishna.”

Ringo, who I don’t think had said anything to that point, brightened. “Hare Krishna!” he replied, beaming.

What does that phrase even mean? In my very limited understanding, it is part of a mantra, a “transcendental vibration” that, when chanted, brings consciousness of the energy of God.

I haven’t gotten very far with the chanting, but I have found God consciousness in 212 sound recordings created between 1962 and 1970 and disseminated worldwide ever since. From the sweet harmonies to the jangling electric guitars to, yes, the rock-solid rhythms and supremely creative drumming of one Ringo Starr, they are all the transcendental vibration I’ll ever need.

Christopher Walsh is a reporter for The Star, and a musician himself.