Now that our visitors have settled in a bit and fallen in love with our beautiful beaches, lakes, ponds, and woodland areas, I think it’s time to introduce them to some of Montauk’s more colorful characters, hopefully without scaring them away, although that wouldn’t be such a bad thing either.

    In every small town in every city in every state, people who frequent the same gin joints tend to get nicknamed. Sometimes they’re simple, like Smiley (been there), or insulting, like Thunder Thighs (done that, still there), or Scoop (over it).

    But our beloved Montauk is anything but simple. We have quite a few nicknames for locals out here, and if you come across them this summer you should really know how to address them properly to fit in and avoid getting whacked or sent to the bottom of the lake.

    Let’s see, first there’s Squarehead, a construction contractor who’s said to be pretty good at his work. Actually, his head isn’t even square; it’s more of an oval shape, with a bit of fuzz on it.

    We also have Tommy Two Shoes, which sounds like a Mafia guy but I don’t think he’s equipped anyone with cement shoes and thrown them to the bottom of Lake Montauk lately. With his young kids usually in tow, he seems to be a good father. And he does wear two shoes, but so do the rest of us, so I’m not sure where that nickname came from.

    Tommy the Lep (for leprechaun) is a wild-looking Irishman with a mass of red, curly hair down his back that sometimes turns blond in summer, which makes me think he’s spending a bit too much time in the sun instead of working as hard as the rest of us.

    Joey Flapjaws, who I noticed got quite a neat haircut last week and looked pretty spiffy, will talk to anyone and give them a sermon, as he claims to be a former priest and likes to down raw eggs for some reason. It can get pretty quiet out here in winter so that’s always entertaining — and gross enough to make you choke on your beer!

    He does like to preach though, and give him a pulpit and you never know what’s going to come out of his mouth! Let’s just say it’s not always priestly and usually involves a fish tale or five.

    I’m sure I might be called something other than my name, but not to my face, which is good because I’d prefer not to know what people call me. To my face, I’m called Scoop, which is rather corny, but, whatever, it comes with the newspaper territory.

    When I was younger I was called Marilyn Gook because my two brothers thought I was a drama queen. I was also called Java Jaws, which I like to think was because of my wide smile, but it could have been because I flapped my jaws a lot and talked too much, which is a laugh and a half, as Debbie the Lep (another Irish transplant) would say, because these days I prefer to be more of a listener, although my friends and family would debate me on that.

    It’s a good thing I’ve quieted down or I could have become known as Jannie Flapjaws, and I don’t know if Montauk could handle two of us. When I was young I considered becoming a nun (stop laughing), so maybe Joe and I have a lot more in common than flapping jaws.

    We also have a man named Hollywood, a good-looking waiter who knows how to charm the ladies. Another guy is called Frankie French Fry. I’ve not a clue how he got that, but I don’t think it has anything to do with his love of French fries.

    Bing lives across the street from me, and while I haven’t heard him crooning any Christmas carols lately, he is quite a whistler.

    Lewis and Clark are always on an adventure or tinkering with some loud mechanical equipment. MacGyver is good with his hands and could probably fashion a fishing boat out of duct tape. We also have the Lone Ranger and Tonto, both swell fellows, neither of whom look like the real thing. Tonto looks nothing like Johnny Depp, and the Lone Ranger, well, he wears a poncho and a cowboy hat, even in warm weather. If we put an eye mask on him he could pass for a ranger in Babylon, maybe.

    We have Bulgarian George, for where he’s from, and Bald George, a name that you’ll see is obvious upon meeting him. He, too, has quite a few fish tales up his sleeve.

    My husband has had the misfortune of finding a couple of dead guys over the years, one of whom was a transient man who moved to Montauk several years ago and went fishing on my husband’s boat. As my husband steered the boat into port, he thought the guy was sunbathing and sleeping. After docking the boat, he shook him to wake him. The guy had a good sunburn but was dead, earning my husband the nickname Captain Kevorkian, which is kind of scary since I live with the Captain.

    I better start sleeping with my eyes open.

   Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   At the dump the other day, I reached into the paper bin to retrieve a slim volume of what I thought might be racy medieval lyrics — in Latin, as it turned out — and a fat “History of the World” by Toynbee, though abridged.

    The inscription referred to Santayana’s opinion that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, though the tome, while moldy (presumably the reason for it having been discarded, along with quite a few other books), didn’t look as if it had been read.

    I don’t blame the recipient, for it is also true that if we only remember the past we are condemned to become bores. Anyway, didn’t someone also say that history is what historians say it is (or was that editors?). Voltaire said history was “nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.” And Joyce said it was a nightmare from which he was trying to awake.

    But rather than consign Toynbee’s abridged history to the dustbin, I placed it back on the ledge, and was happy to see someone in an orange shirt and backward tilting baseball cap pick it up and place it in his car.

    It is this that used to attract me to the dump — the giving and taking. Though other than the occasional finds upon the ledges, which the staff customarily sweep clean, that communal era has ended, the exchange area seemingly having been consigned to the dustbin of local history.

    But maybe we should dust it off, for the other day when I went into the Ladies Village Improvement Society’s building, staggering under the weight of a dozen winter coats, I almost was turned away, its basement apparently having become stuffed with stuff.

    And now, having just returned from a cursory foray to the rear of the East Hampton Library, whose director, Dennis Fabiszak, is in danger of being buried in his office by boxes containing recent donations — the library had received, he told me, “5,000 books in the past 10 days” — there seems all the more reason to repeat the past lest we are condemned to forget it.

   There is no way to say for certain, but it sure looked like a village traffic control officer was sleeping on the beach the other morning. Like I said, it was hard to know.

    About a week ago, I was out for an early surf at the first Georgica jetty. The waves were small, but with only one other lone person to share them, it was a good way to start the day.

    Now, I don’t want to pile on the local T.C.O.s — they have a tough enough job walking around in the hot sun dealing with a certain entitled subset of the summer population who think things like parking rules should not apply to them. However, this particular young officer first caught my eye when, riding on a four-wheel “quad,” basically a glorified dirt bike, he entered a federal no-vehicles area set up to protect the endangered piping plovers that nest west of the jetty.

    Cautiously, it appeared, he work­ed his way past the plover fence, then parked just out of sight around a dune. He was out of sight, that is, from anyone on the beach; from where I waited for a wave a couple of dozen feet from the end of the jetty, I had a full view. He leaned back on the quad’s seat and did not move again.

    I was sympathetic. I recall well my own early 20s and at least once taking a nap under my desk when The Star had an office in Montauk. My mood changed when I saw a woman with two dogs, one held on a leash, the other running wildly, enter the protected area, passing the no-dogs signs and blithely walking on. The T.C.O., asleep or just unable to see because of his hiding spot, took no notice. When the loose dog ran up into the inner nesting area, I started to get angry. I thought I should say something to the woman, but knowing how such conversations can run out of control, I did not.

    It was, however, with more and more disgust that I watched as she eventually turned her dogs east, walking within the village’s new 300-foot leash zone without an apparent care in the world.

    In the past few weeks almost every time I have been to a village beach, I have seen someone with dogs running free in violation of the rules — or piles of dog waste or bags apparently containing the same left on the sand.

    I doubt anything short of an all-out ticket blitz would put a stop to dog owners ignoring the law. Sleeping T.C.O.s do not help the matter, but frankly, at least when they are supposed to be awake, they really have better things to do.

   The other day as I was explaining a cliché about boats to our oldest child, Adelia, I became acutely aware of the gap between us. The old saw, “A boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into,” meant nothing to her, she made clear as I tried to put it several different ways.

    Despite having grown up in a sailing family, I am now the owner of a 24-foot powerboat. The 1991 lobster-style fiberglass vessel was a gift from a friend who decided to take up flying instead of boating some years ago. It was mine, he said, for the cost of trucking it from its berth north of San Francisco.

    Adelia and I had been talking about the outboard motor and why was it that our boat could only travel across the water at about 12 knots when a friend’s Grady White might go 20 knots or more. It was all about horsepower, I explained. Our friend has a Yamaha 250; ours is a 125.

    “So why not get a bigger motor?” she asked.

    I said that more horsepower cost more money, and, plus, a bigger motor used more fuel. Then I dropped the cliché on her and got a blank stare in return.

    Given how infrequently I have been able to use the boat in the past few years, mostly because of the demands on my time and an attention-demanding toddler in the house, putting any more money into this particular hole in the water does not make sense. There was a boatyard bill for hauling and winterizing, more for summer dock space, a few bucks for registration, and a bit more to fill the gas tanks.

    Now, when we more or less are getting the kids’ summer schedules squared away, the East End has been locked into an unappealing couple of weeks with thunderstorms in the near-daily forecast.

    Truth is, the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July always seem like a prelude to real summer. There are screen windows to put up, beach chairs to dig out of storage, a garden to plant. By the July Fourth weekend, I’ve got most of it done, and, weather permitting, it will be boating time.

    This year, I really, truly, plan to get our money’s worth.

   If you were to sit in the back seat of my car or hitch a ride in my pocket, you would hear me composing rules like Gibbs does on “NCIS.” Naturally, because they are mine, they are less terse than his. Maybe they are suggestions and disgruntlements rather than rules, but I like “NCIS,” and if I can channel Gibbs, why not? Another favorite, Melissa Harris Perry on MSNBC, reads (on air) a letter to someone to whom she would like to make a point. She also inspires me. Herewith:

Dear people:

    Why don’t you think to towel off after your workout and before entering a crowded food store? Nobody wants your DNA on their lettuce.

    When going to a restaurant in flip flops, (ugh) please consider the people who have to look at your toes while eating their meal. If you wouldn’t want to look at your own feet, why would anyone else?

    Please remember not to pass on the right. The waves can wait.

    Please don’t pass four cars on the double yellow on the Napeague stretch. You are making me nervous.

    The painted zebra lines are not parking places.

    Please do not park your Hummer in the small car lot.

    Please be aware that the little wand on the left of the steering column is a device to indicate to other drivers your intention to turn either left or right. Push it up if you want to go right, push it down if you want to go left. The little sound you hear is not the rhythm section for your loud music and it is not a metronome. When it is ticking, the people behind you think you are about to turn. Don’t confuse others.

    If you are lost, pull over and then take out your phone, not before.

    Please remember that you can turn right on a red light unless otherwise admonished by a sign. The honking you hear, as you linger, is the folks who live here. Clearly you do not.

   Another, unrelated, but exasperating piece of information: Your nearly new washers and dryers and fridges are considered “throw-away.” If something goes wrong, they are considered too expensive to fix and are really only expected to last three years. Outrageous.

    Reminder: Walking barefoot on the beach can burn the soles of your feet halfway to the water.

    Reminder: Walking barefoot on grass can get you a tick between your toes, and worse.

    A hole dug in the sand and abandoned is a broken bone for someone who steps in it at dusk.

    Reminder: Wear sunscreen (because if you don’t, you will be really sorry later).

    Stay hydrated and know where the public privies are. You will be glad.

    Capture escapee balloons when you see them — they are hazards to sea life and birdlife and creepy to encounter in the water (think Portuguese man-of-war). Puncture your own balloons when the festivities are over and cut the plastic loops that hold six-packs together. You will be setting a good example for those around you.

    It is summer and it is hot and we can see that you are really pregnant and proud of your “baby bump,” but does the world really need to see the bump of your belly button? Think Kate Middleton, please.

    Howdy neighbor, I realize you think I might enjoy your taste in trance music in the middle of the afternoon, but it is drowning out the harpsichord.

    If the garbage cans at the beach are full, why not consider taking your trash back to where it came from — your house?

    Smoking cigars is your right, but if you like it so much why not roll up the windows, turn on the air-conditioning, and really take it all in, instead of making the beach smell like your ashtray.

    Wondering: Why would anyone want to jaywalk slowly?

    Please don’t feed the ducks and swans bread so hard you would not feed it to your grannie. Ducks and geese do not have teeth either.

    Reminder: The big, annoying, ugly (and badly designed) signs that prevent a clear view of the ocean from a parked car are creating jobs for someone, somewhere overseas.

    Enjoy the scenic views if you can, and have a nice summer.

   Durell Godfrey is a contributing photographer for The Star

   We were two weeks without a functioning washing machine, and not one of the local repair companies with which I had left messages had called me back about service. It seemed odd.

    We had been going to the in-laws to use their washer. For us, a family of five, plus beach towels at this time of year, that made for a lot of trips, missing items, and an all-around headache. Something had to be done.

    The problem was pretty clearly the pump that evacuates water from the drum. The front-loader would not drain at the end of its cycles, and the waste hose itself was heavy with increasingly smelly water.

    Were they all too busy to deal with this? Was I on some secret blacklist of repair people? I felt alone, scorned.

    At the one mom-and-pop shop where I did get someone on the phone, mom told me they no longer dealt with our brand of machine because it was difficult to get parts. That seemed fishy.

    It turned out that the Internet came through when I needed it and that the problem was indeed a dead pump. Searching on Google for “Frigidaire washer pump replacement,” I quickly found a how-to video for my specific model. It looked easy. Selecting a parts supplier was simple, too, and just a little over $100 later, a new pump was on its way. A small box arrived at the office two days later at most.

    At home, two screws held on a cover plate at the bottom of the washer. Two more screws held the pump in place. I used a large pair of pliers to ease the hose clamps away, and the old one was free. To install the new one, I just reversed the procedure.

    The only snag I encountered was calling to my wife to come get Ellis, our 3-year-old, who saw tools and wanted to help. I fired up a load of beach towels as a test; a satisfying draining gurgle was my first clue that my diagnosis and repair had worked.

    On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being changing a light bulb, the whole job rated a 3 at most. I didn’t get it. Why wouldn’t a repair shop want to make a couple hundred bucks if it were so easy?

    The old saying is that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. Around here, in the Hamptons in high summer, anyway, it appears that if you want something done at all, it’s up to you.

    I’m still waiting on those other call-backs.

   Protesters holding  signs reading “Trayvon Martin Lynch­ed” marched down University Place in New York, where I happened to be, on Monday. From across the street, the marchers seemed outnumbered by police. A long line of officers walked in tandem with them, another line of police on motorcycles edged the street, and other officers, apparently of higher rank, stood nearby, along with several vans. I had no idea what to expect and wondered if the police were sent out in high numbers only to keep order or because violence was feared.

    There have been other protests around the city and country after a jury of six women in Florida found George Zimmerman not guilty of either manslaughter or second degree murder. In the city on Sunday, thousands had grouped at Union Square, then moved up to Times Square and eventually into Harlem.

    At about the same time, some of the Web sites I look at started recounting the case of Marissa Alex­ander, who was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison, having been convicted of attempted murder after a gun she fired hit a wall, injuring no one.

    Twenty years is the mandatory minimum term under a 1999 Florida law, which requires an automatic 10-year term if someone shows a gun while committing certain felonies and 20 years if the gun is fired. Judges are left with no discretion in sentencing. (If someone is wounded, judges can mete out 25 years to life.)

    Ms. Alexander had given birth nine days before the incident, and it was reported that she had a protective order against her husband, Rico Gray, who had beaten her during pregnancy. Mr. Gray had a history of abusing her as well as other women, and she had been hospitalized at least once.

    She testified that she went to the house they had shared to get some of her clothes when they got into an argument. She said he laid hands on her, that she escaped after he tried to lock her in a bathroom; she then went to her car to retrieve a legally  obtained handgun, and fired what she later called a warning shot. Mr. Gray said she had aimed at him but missed. She was found guilty of  aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

    Not sufficiently informed about Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, I am not qualified to make an in-depth comparison about what happened between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin and between Marissa Alexander and Rico Gray. However, both Mr. Zimmerman and Ms. Alexander said they feared for their lives when they fired their guns. The jury did not believe Ms. Alexander and voted for conviction in 12 minutes. The six women on the Zimmerman panel, on the other hand, believed him. It was a crucial difference.

    Hovering over each case are the contexts in which the incidents occurred: domestic violence and disregard for women’s rights in one, institutionalized racism, perhaps, in both. There were rallies on behalf of Ms. Alexander, after her conviction, and a movement asking that she be pardoned is under way now. The Justice Department is reportedly considering whether to bring a civil rights case against Mr. Zimmerman.

    Regardless of what happens, these Florida laws and those who have written them should  be indicted in the court of public opinion.

   My iPhone 4 fell out of my back pocket and into the toilet.

    Three things raced through my mind when I heard the splash: Get it out! Dry it off! I can’t believe this is happening!

    I grabbed a towel and rubbed, and then I did what you are never, ever supposed to do when your cellphone gets wet: turned it on.

    A flicker of life! The little Apple silhouette — glowing, otherwordly — appeared . . . and vanished.

    Shaking the phone achieved nothing except a faint gurgle, probably imaginary. Now what? More power, I thought, hurrying to a wall plug (and thereby compounding the never-turn-it-on rule). This time I thought I saw a spark — the oh-boy-now-you’ve-done-it kind you see just before the bulb dies — then, nothing.

    This happened on June 6, a Thursday, a day that will go down in my personal infamy because two days later my two-year contract with AT&T was due to expire and I’d be getting an upgrade to a 5. By happy coincidence, AT&T was running big ads that same week offering up to a $100-credit on an old phone, depending on its condition.

    Depending on its condition! The nice young geek at the East Hampton store had already checked out my 4 and pronounced it eligible for the full $100 rebate! “See you very soon,” he’d said as I left.

    So, $100 down the drain. Literally.

    Thursdays are editorial meeting days at The Star, when we talk about the next week’s issue. Maybe somebody will have some ideas, I thought as I got in the car to go. It couldn’t hurt to ask.

    Sure enough, after they got through snickering there was universal agreement: Try rice. If rice doesn’t work you’ve had it, but try rice.

    Rice, it seems, has something in it, I forget what, that dries out moisture. You stuff the cellphone down into a bag of rice and leave it there for — well, it depends.

    I ran out of the meeting and drove to Citarella, the closest place I could think of with rice, and ran out with a bag of Nishiki Premium Grade Japanese White Rice, figuring the expensive stuff might work better than Uncle Ben’s. (“After you take your phone out of the rice, could I have the rice?” somebody asked.)

    That night, hoping for the kind of miracle that dozens of people on Google (which I should have consulted before trying the tune-in-turn-on routine) swore had happened to them, I took the phone out of the rice and pushed the On button.

    Nothing. I pushed it back in, way down deep, and stuck the bag in a cabinet next to a box of spaghetti.

    We were going to Oregon to visit family that weekend, but there were still two days day left before I could get my upgrade. I settled for a temporary GoPhone in the meantime, which I do not recommend except in a similar emergency and unless you have really good eyesight.

    Back at AT&T to turn it in, my geek heard the sad story with sympathy but little surprise. “Happens all the time,” he said, handing over the long-awaited iPhone 5 and a bill for $100 more than it should have been. “Never knew rice to work, myself.”

    We had a great week with the grandkids. Not long after we got back we had pasta for dinner, and — oh, yes — the miracle!

    I’ve learned something from this: Don’t keep a cellphone in your back pocket. Also, give rice a try, only give it plenty of time. A week would be about right.

   Irene Silverman is editor-at-large at The Star. She is at large in Amagansett at the moment.

   My brother-in-law said as I mumbled something about having to go to the U.S. Women’s Open this past week that there was, after all, nothing else to write about.

    “What nonsense,” I said. “There’s Little League!” And, indeed, our 9 and 10-year-olds were not to disappoint on the evening of July 1 as they took the wind out of Westhampton’s sails, by a score of 10-0, a merciless rout that was ended mercifully after four innings instead of the customary six.

    “Are we going to be in the newspaper?” Jackson Baris, one of Tim Garneau’s players, asked as that game began. “Yes, you will, but I’d rather write about you winning than losing,” I said.

    I’m glad to say the kids obliged. One wants upbeat things to write about if you’re like me, without having to take pains, such as you might in following golfers around 300 acres, however breathtakingly beautiful they may be.

    And so, knowing that my favorite photographer was eager to go, I, aside from a brief visit to Sebonack with my brother-in-law Friday afternoon, decided to watch it on TV.

    And I’m glad I did. The TV crew and commentators made far more sense of things than I, an avid non-golfer, ever could, and you couldn’t get any more upbeat than Inbee Park, who calmly took the course apart, winning her third straight major this year, tying a record set by Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1950.

    You’ve got to hand it to these South Koreans. How do they do it? I doubt they have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over there to join a club like Sebonack. To talk of democratizing the game when such obscene figures are involved seems absurd, though I know efforts are being made here. The First Tee national school program, about which I wrote recently, is in our schools now, and I’m mindful as well that a good number of private clubs, the Bridge, Maidstone, South Fork, and the East Hampton Golf Club among them, have beenvery helpful when it comes to supporting high school golf teams.

    Still, you wonder. Once the kids learn, where will they play? Montauk Downs maybe, which I’m told stacks up quite well when compared to the private courses out here. That’s where my brother-in-law plays, even on New Year’s Day.

    And even he (as I too have vowed) has said he’ll never go to another U.S. Men’s Open. There’s one coming to Shinnecock in 2018. I had to buy periscopes the last time a Men’s Open was played there, forbidden, as I was, to venture inside the ropes. “Periscope-a-dope,” Muhammad Ali would have called it. The good news is that I’ll either be retired or dead by then, perhaps both. Or just dead.

   I am not a believer in astrology, but could someone please tell me if Mercury is in retrograde? What a mixed-up jumble of a week I have been having.

    For starters, my computer decided not to accept incoming e-mail when it was plugged in at home; it would do so only when I took it down to the Star office, which is only a couple of hundred yards away. My husband’s computer kept receiving e-mail as usual at home, so I knew the problem wasn’t with our modem. I kept hinting to the computer, out loud, that I was lucky to live so close to the office, but the computer didn’t care. The I.T. man at The Star (a k a, the editor) just shook his head in puzzlement when asked if he had any clue.

    Then, oh joy, the charger slipped a cog — I guess I mean frayed a wire — and called it quits. I had been working, unwittingly, on battery power all day, and the screen went black in the middle of several deadlines. My husband was out somewhere in the car (probably buying strawberries), so I hitched a ride to the Computer Shop in Amagansett, bought a new charger, brought it home, and plugged it in at my usual bedroom desk.

    And then: a miracle. Somehow, the computer seemed placated by the new charger, soothed. It rewarded me with all my incoming e-mail. How peculiar is that?

    It wasn’t only my computer that went haywire in the past seven days. I spent Monday going in and out of the city for a minor surgical procedure. You don’t really want to know the details — it has to do with the second toe on my right foot — but all’s well that ends well. (I was able to put on my own shoes rather than a surgical boot and walk out of the examining room when it was over, which was certainly a relief in this hot July.) Still, the anticipation added to confusion of a gremlin-bedevilled week.

    At work, it wasn’t a normal, straightforward week, either. We have been putting together one of The Star’s Home Book supplements, to be published next Thursday, and, frankly, a couple of rabbits had to be pulled out of a hat to make it happen.

    Planning Home Books is fun. Advertisers like them; readers like them, and I like them, because I get to sneak-peek into all sorts of charming and glamorous places. But it is getting more and more difficult to find exclusive stories, given all the attention from outside media on the East End. An occasional house feature in The New York Times has always been par for the course, but these have never been terribly frequent, and there always were plenty of plum, publishable properties to go around. Now, however, all sorts of johnny-come-lately publications — some free, some not, some well-done, some not — are getting into the act.

    Expecting to do a photo essay on an outstanding house by a local architect for next week’s edition, we belatedly found that Hamptons Cottages & Gardens had gotten there before us. No sooner had we lined up a house by another amazing architect than we discovered that one of his houses had been featured in something called Beach. This latest glossy follows the tried-and-true celebrity formula, but also features house and home, and we sure don’t want to look like copycats. So it was back to the drawing board, pronto.

    Ah, well, an active mind is a youthful mind, and at least all this is keeping me on my toes. (Just not the second toe on the right foot.)