“Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits.” If that musical ditty doesn’t immediately ring a bell, I’ll tell you it is, or perhaps more properly used to be, a familiar (and jocular) ending for songs, particularly in bluegrass. I hadn’t thought of it for years, but I couldn’t get it out of my head for a couple of days recently, after making an amusing bungle of an attempt to make a simple appointment to have my hair cut.

    You know how people used to say Sag Harbor was once the bar capital of America, with more gin mills per capita —supposedly, anyway, and I suspect many port towns once made this boast —than any other place? I think we can now legitimately retitle it the salon capital of the South Fork.

    About two months ago, l had my hair done there by a woman named Jackie in a Main Street salon. I liked what she did, and it was time to do it again. My daughter-in-law had given me the phone number originally, but neither of us could remember it or find it again.

    I thought the place was called Salon 67 (it’s actually Salon 66) but couldn’t locate a listing in the phone book, either. So, naturally, I tried information. Quickly given a number, I called and made an appointment. The polite woman who answered the phone said her name was Irina, but didn’t comment when I asked to have an appointment with Jackie. (Or so I thought.)

    A few days later, something unexpectedly came up, and I found it necessary to reschedule my appointment. Once again, I had neglected to write down the phone number, and I tried information again. But this time, the operator insisted no Salon 67 or 66 was listed anywhere on the South Fork. Hm.

    Just why the talented Jackie doesn’t have a listed phone number for Salon 66 is still unclear to me; has time passed me by, and are land lines becoming a thing of the past? I gather she relies on her cellphone and business cards and is doing quite well. She has set up her shop where Marty’s Barbershop used to be —but that didn’t help me find the number.

    Now, the circulation manager at The Star knows a few Internet tricks. She didn’t tell how she ferreted out Jackie’s last name and cellphone number, but that’s exactly what she did. When I called to make a new appointment, however, Jackie was surprised: No, she said, I had not called previously or made any appointment at Salon 66.

    So whom had I called?

    I was both mystified and bemused.

    Turns out that there are more small salons in Sag Harbor than in East Hampton, Bridgehampton, or South­ampton. One of them was expecting me on Thursday at 4, but . . . which one? Hoping to find the answer, I searched the Web and came up with too many to call: Fingers Fine Haircutting, the Style Bar, the Harbor Salon, Studio 99, the Quibaldi Salon, and at least four others. I anxiously wondered what Irina would think when I rudely didn’t appear for my appointment.

    Then, to my surprise, my phone rang the day before the Thursday on which I had inadvertently made an appointment in the wrong place. It was Salon Xavier calling to confirm. Oh, dear: I owed them an explanation.

    When I finally got to Jackie’s, we had a good laugh.

   Summer is over. For me, anyway. I’ve been at The Star for June and July as an intern from the University of Colorado at Boulder. I don’t have to tell you that The Star is a terrific publication — you’ve probably been reading it for years.

    The stories are well researched by dedicated journalists who are serious about their craft. The newspaper that comes out each week is the beautiful result of a few dozen people and their pursuit of excellence. It’s been an honor to be a small part of that unit this summer.

    This internship has certainly taught me quite a bit about the journalism industry. The Star is in a charming old building with dozens of awards lining its walls. The editors have taken my reasonably written stories and other work and they’ve smoothed out the rough edges. Some of my stories needed more buffing than smoothing. I couldn’t have found a better place to learn and grow as I continue to improve my skills as a journalist. If I only had more time here.

   But, it’s back to my real life. I’ve been working part time on a master’s degree in journalism while I’ve worked full time at the university as an academic adviser for undergrads. I love working with young people — helping them navigate their way through college and majors, careers, and their social lives — many of them away from home for the first time.

    This summer gave me something I haven’t had in a long time, the thing I’ve wanted most in the world. This summer gave me time. I’ve had time to visit friends and family and introduce my children to dozens of people who are important in my life. I’ve had time at the beach. We’ve spent oodles of time wandering around Montauk while both of my boys searched for the perfect necklace to bring home. I’ve had time to just watch my children enjoy themselves without schedules of any kind.

    They’ve participated in sand castle contests, baseball games on the beach, a trip to the Lighthouse. They’ve been to an outdoor movie in Amagansett, made dozens of trips to Ben and Jerry’s, played some mini-golf, enrolled in surf camp, and swam pretty much every single day. Their usually blonde hair has been bleached from chlorine, sun, and the sea. Their little bodies are brown despite the tremendous amounts of sunscreen we’ve applied.

    Coming all the way to Montauk from Colorado for the summer has been quite an adventure. Throw two young boys into the mix and it makes things even more interesting. I asked my 9-year-old to describe his summer in one word.

    “Amazing,” he responded with shining eyes and a smile.

    Tomorrow we start our journey home. My oldest son starts fourth grade on Aug. 15 and the little guy starts kindergarten a week later. I’ll go back to work at the university. And life will go back to normal for a while. For a while.

    This summer, the internship, the entire experience really, have given me a lot to think about. I love the work ethic of the folks at The Star and of New Yorkers in general and I really love to write. Introducing my children to a summer at the beach and the wonders of searching for beautiful treasures from the sea has been fantastic.

    Once I get home, I’ll start trying to figure out if there is a way for me to write more, have summers off, and bring the boys back for summers on the East End once in a while. Lofty? Sure it is. That’s okay, though. I love a challenge.

 Kathy Noonan, an intern at The Star this summer, lives in Boulder, Colo.

   In the end, the catbird won the battle of the blueberries.

   For whatever unknown-to-me confluence of meteorological circumstances, 2012 has shaped up to be a great year for the native high-bush blueberry bushes that grow at the edge of the swamps near our house. I noticed the pale-green young ber­ries late last month, and watched closely as they neared ripeness.

    So too did a catbird or two, which I could hear unseen in the brush issuing warning cries when I lingered near the patch. The calls seemed to say, “Be gone. These are mine.”

    Time being what it is in the busy season at The Star, and with three children at home, there was little chance I would get to the berries. Yet one morning before the day got too hot, I put on long sleeves and boots and picked about half a pint’s worth. I put my precious haul on the kitchen counter, a mistake, because I had to shoo off Lisa as she reached for a handful.

    Regular readers may remember that it is about this time of the year that I begin to write about making jams, jellies, or preserves. Long ago, as I have said before, I gave up on making large batches of any one variety. Instead, I try to put up a jar or three of what comes into season as it comes into season.

    So far, the shelf reserved for such things has a couple of jars of strawberry jam on it and a couple of sweet-pickled summer squash. Later will come beach plum jelly, wild grape jelly, black raspberry preserves, and, later still, canned tomatoes.

    The blueberries, though I managed to cook them into jam on Saturday morning before shuttling off our eldest child to camp, will not take their place on the shelf. The few ounces of goodness they produced when boiled up with an equal weight of sugar are destined for immediate consumption.There will be none to follow.

    By the time I made it back to the patch to pick anew, the catbird had stripped the branches bare.

    Read a letter recently in The East Hampton Press the writer of which was outraged that a successful psychiatrist, who’d had “one glass of wine” at dinner, and who was driving his 86-year-old mother home, had been caught up in the police dragnet of a few weeks back.

    That fatal glass of wine had resulted in the “guilty-before-proven-innocent” psychiatrist spending the night in jail “along with 20-plus others.” The cops, she concluded, had acted out of spite, envious of the successful. Something “right out of Nazi Germany [had] occurred.”

    Now I know what to say should I be pulled over: Not “Do you know Eddie Ecker?” but “Do you know I’m a member of the 99 percent? See, it says so on the rear bumper.”

    Class warfare (“But the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep” — Ecclesiastes 5:12) and Nazi Germany aside, I don’t like these mass stops either, though a lawyer friend said they were for the greater good and that therefore were not a fit subject for hyperventilation. “You really shouldn’t drive after having had two glasses of wine,” she said. And before I could say, “red or white?” added, “Contrary to what that letter writer says, you wouldn’t be arrested if you’d only had one.”

    I was sobered by her admonition, especially on hearing her say an accident victim stopped at a traffic light had been arrested for D.W.I. after his car had been struck by another drunken driver who had died in the collision.

    It is not the time, I suppose, given the five deaths and serious accidents here this summer, to recite Article V of the Constitution’s amendments, the one having to do with with warrantless (and thus illegal) searches and seizures.

    Still, I have some cavils: As for class warfare, Latinos seem usually to bear the brunt of it here rather than prominent psychiatrists, and as for the greater good, one wonders, having read Tom McMorrow’s front-page story last week about the Brazilian couple pulled over on Montauk’s lonely Industrial Road, if it is always served by our police. And finally, one wonders, having just been administered the sobriety field test by McMorrow himself, how many teetotaling “seniors” whose sense of balance has waned would pass!

    And now on to something more cheery. I was at the dump, as is my wont most summer days, when hailed by Joe O’Connell, a fellow avid tennis player who had enjoyed my golf guffawing column of the week before. The setting seemed particularly apt inasmuch as I and he — especially he, who has two new knees to which he recently added a new right shoulder — are living, walking examples of the efficacy of personal recycling.

    “Look!” he said, extending his right arm straight to the sky. Because shoulders are tricky and require a lot of rehabbing — and sometimes are never quite right — he said he had been forced to serve underhand for a while, “but the guys I play with had trouble getting those underhand serves back.” I told him I’d found the same thing last week when forced by a strained lower abdominal muscle that’s taken about a month in coming around to serve softly (though overhand) to my opponents as well. “Despite that, I won as many games as I usually do,” I said. “And now I know now I’ll be able to play this way into my 90s!”

    He spoke for both of us when he said in parting, “I’ll never give up!”

   On reading Gavin Menu and Cailin Riley’s pieces on me in The East Hampton Press last week, my ears were burning, my heart was soaring, and my cheek was sticking out when I told my co-workers that it must have been a slow news week.

    Slow news week or no, I was fascinated to read about me, and — even more important — to read pieces that were written very well, with grace and with the quality of mercy not strain’d; though I’m sorry, in Cailin’s case, that my ramblings were so vague and tendentious that she probably had to spend an inordinate amount of time in fashioning that silk purse from my sow’s ear.

    “All I remember of the interview,” I said to my colleague Rusty Drumm, “was that I went on and on, and kept saying, ‘Oh Jeez, maybe you shouldn’t print that. . . .’ ”

    “The shoe was on the other foot,” he said, with a smile.

    If it weren’t for my outsized ego (my daughter Emily constantly marvels that the people in our family who have the least reason to preen — she and I, namely — are always doing so), I would be warier still of the press, for, as a journalist who has interviewed many people, and who is generally a blabbermouth, I know that interviews involve a great leap of faith on the part of the inter­viewee. One can always be misunderstood, one can always say something(s) stupid that will wind up in print, and one can always in going on and on make it supremely difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff — assuming that there is any wheat!

    “No wonder you’re the best sportswriter in the state!” I said in a thank-you phone message to Cailin the day the Graves-to-Be-Enshrined interview, which had the facts right, the quotes right, and the tone right, came out. “I’m going to go out and buy 50 copies!”

    Just joking. But I tend to do too much of that, I think. So, seriously, thank you very much, Cailin and Gavin, and Ed and Claude and Kathy. . . . L’chaim.

   When one of my tennis partners the other morning asked what I did, I told him I wrote sports for The Star, and had worked at the paper for such a long time, going on 45 years now, that I was probably fit to be embalmed.

    “But first,” I said, “I’m to be enshrined!”

    I have thought seriously lately of changing the greeting on my voice message machine from “I’m either at a game, going to a game, or coming from a game” to “I’m either being enshrined, going to be enshrined, or coming back from having been enshrined,” but Mary and my eldest daughter, Emily, have turned thumbs down on that.

    “I couldn’t believe that no one could think of anything but nice things to say about you,” Emily said, after she’d read the piece Cailin Riley wrote about my East Hampton High School Hall of Fame induction in The East Hampton Press which I’d sent her.

    “Well, you have to suspend your disbelief at times like this,” I said. “I may cheat at backgammon, making me a candidate for the Hall of Shame, but you have to admit I do write well. One has to take the chaff with the wheat — assuming there is any wheat! As to the piece, I’ve always depended on the kindness of sportswriters.”

    “I like what you said about being in ‘the joy department,’ ” Emily said. “I am too. It’s a joy to teach first graders. They’re little experts when they come to you. Each one’s alit passionately on subjects in preschool that they love — trains, dinosaurs, bugs, whatever. I was reading them “Charlotte’s Web” the other day and was saying that Charlotte had gone off to lay her eggs when one of the kids began sobbing. We all looked at him, and then he said, “When spiders lay their eggs, that means they’re going to die.”    

    “A future entomologist,” I said.

    Teaching first graders and then having the summer off puts Emily in the joy-squared department, I guess, while plain old joy will have to suffice for me.

    Getting back to Cailin’s article, Claude Beudert said he had hoped she’d put in the nice thing he’d said about Mary, who, he assured Cailin, had quickened my pulse and got me breathing again. (These weren’t his words — I’ve been writing lately about Jean Carlos Barrientos’s brave save of a drowning man in the ocean off Napeague, but it’s dawned on me that these medical terms describe well what Mary did . . . cardioimaginative resuscitation.)

    I would have continued on living, yes, and working ably, and being cordial, but I would not have experienced the joy that I have in these past 27 years were it not for Mary. It’s because of her that I can say blithely that I’m in the joy department, and can promise solemnly never no more to cheat at backgammon.

   East Hampton had a major development boom in the 1980s. At least in developers’ dreams: A 400-unit subdivision was planned for Montauk’s Hither Woods, 64 oceanfront house lots were to be carved from Shadmoor in Montauk, the 845-acre Grace Estate in Northwest was to become a community modeled on Hilton Head, S.C., with clustered and single-family houses and a nine-hole golf course, and Barcelona Neck, between Northwest Woods and Sag Harbor, was on the block.

    And what did the East Hampton Town Board at the time do? In 1982, it abolished the Town Planning Department. And what did voters do? They turned the board out of office and voted for open space. Democrats took over Town Hall in 1984, re-established the Planning Department, and worked with the county and state to buy and turn much of this acreage into parkland.

    Today, 30 years later, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quig­ley have proposed putting all the town agencies and quasi-judicial boards under one so-called “environmental” umbrella. Deja vu all over again? The proposed change would eviscerate the Planning Department, whose staff evaluates every application before the decision-making planning and zoning boards. The rationale given is simple: to make government efficient.

    Remembering what happened in the ’80s, however, it may be that because the East End has remained relatively unscathed by the economic downturn, similar development pressure has made itself heard among the powers that be.

    Under the proposal, the Planning Department would be assigned to long-range planning, This sounds legitimate, until you stop to think about it. In order for such long-range town planning to be in any way effective, it would have to lead to the revision of the comprehensive plan after public hearings and adoption of new regulations.

    If Mr. Wilkinson, Ms. Quigley, and their supporters believe East Hampton has gone overboard in protecting the environment and would benefit from a broader tax base — along with a larger population and the housing, services, infrastructure, and schools that would require — they should say so out loud and call for another blueprint for the future, including strategies for reaching new goals and cost estimates. Otherwise, their suggested reorganization does no more than put the cart before the horse.

   It’s been a long time since I’ve been single and in the market, but having a contractor do some work around the house this year kind of took me back to the thrills and insecurities of my dating days.

    You finally find the guy you want, the one who impresses you with his smarts and know-how. But if it’s springtime or even close to it, you know he’s seeing other people. Still, he calls. You make a date. He cancels once or twice, but then he calls you on his own and makes another date. He shows up. You’re elated. You see him every day for the second half of a week. You’re walking on air all weekend. Things really seem to be moving along nicely. This could really be Mr. Right.

    Then he doesn’t show up, for one, two, three days.

    He doesn’t call. You find yourself looking out the window every time a big truck goes by.

    You break down and send him a text, carefully wording it so you don’t sound too needy. He texts you back right away. He lost his phone, misplaced your number, he’s so glad you got in touch. He’s still totally into you and he’ll be by tomorrow or the next day. He sends flowers. Oh, wait, it’s a contractor we’re talking about. He sends one member of his crew to take care of some important-seeming task — maybe making a big pile of dirt or filling in a big hole. Something that makes you feel as if you’re on track again.

    You go door shopping together. Online. This is getting serious.

    He starts coming by a few times a week again. You love what he does for you. And then Memorial Day weekend rolls around. One small part of the job is three-quarters done. Another part is midway between chaos and completion. You haven’t seen him or heard from him for days . . . weeks? It feels like forever.

    He’s left you for someone richer and more fabulous. You’re sure you’ll never see him again. You send him an e-mail. You text him again. You feel abandoned. You can’t call; you could never disguise the desperation in your voice.

    Then he calls again. He’s coming by today. He’ll be there all week. He’s finishing the job. Everything you asked for . . . well almost . . . is done. He puts the fence back up, picks up his tools, and moves out. And you say to yourself, “That’s it? He’s leaving? Just like that? It’s over?”

    Carissa Katz, an associate editor at The Star, is happily married with two kids.

   During the 20 or so years when we rented our winter house in town every summer and moved to one five miles away, on Gardiner’s Bay, we had the drill down pat. Even when the kids were young — when we had a dog and a cat or two, plus assorted pets like Ginger, the goat, and Peeper, the aggressive goose — the process worked. Patterns developed about what had to be done. I knew which china to store away and which to leave for the tenants. Never mind that when we got to our summer house it was chaos; the tenants, at least, weren’t left with a mess.

    That ritual came to an end after one of my sons got married and took over what had been our summer house as his year-round home. Nevertheless, I have often wondered if the system could be revived, somehow — perhaps if we moved out of our village house and into one owned by my husband’s family, down by the ocean, for August. Or, maybe, by playing the real-estate domino game, renting something smaller for ourselves for a month and still making a bit of money on this one.

    Last year, I decided I needed to take these idle thoughts more seriously. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I discovered just what it would take to get the house ready to show. Suddenly, it seemed, everything from the window shades to the front steps needed fixing or upgrading. Nevertheless, I dove into the process with this summer in mind. I told myself that even if we didn’t rent out the house, it would be nice to have it shipshape again.

    If you live in one place for many years, you are bound to find a task such as this overwhelming. Plenty of things around the house had worn out or gently fallen into disrepair. My daughter says the concept of  “shabby chic” could have been inspired by our family.) Would tenants be happy with our 1960s Le Creuset pots and truly ancient cast-iron pans? Would they be comfortable with our old cotton-poly-blend sheets, or would I need to buy new, matched sets? Would they mind the shelves that were overflowing with books? Certainly, the empty jars and forgotten staples in the pantry would have to go; and probably the toys in the grandchildren’s playroom would have to be boxed up and carried to the attic, as well.

     Then, of course, there would be the closets. When they are small and stuffed, as ours are, it is incredibly dreary to empty them. And what should I do with the antique Chinese bibelots in the corner cupboard, which were brought home from Shanghai in the 1920s (and have practically never been moved since)?

    Photos of gorgeous houses — in shelter magazines or on the pages of publications like The East Hampton Star — can be insidious. I don’t dare spend too much time poring over them, because I am afraid of being infected with Martha Stewart syndrome: an obsessive compulsion to reach for impossible-to-meet standards of organization and spiffiness. As far as I’m concerned, it’s akin to the unreasonable beauty standards young girls are burdened with by ubiquitous media images of super-skinny fashion models and surgically enhanced Hollywood stars. (My laundry room just doesn’t measure up! My towels are too thin!)

    So now it is the end of June, and I’ve long since missed the potential summer renters who start looking in February or March. I’m reconciled to reality. A long trip in August is not in the cards. But there’s still next year. And the house is indeed shaping up . . . except for just one thing: The brokers tell me if I really want to rent I’ve got to put in a pool.

   While everyone in America is celebrating the Fourth of July on Wednesday, I will take a moment to celebrate my dog, Brodie, an incredible golden doodle who looks like a platinum blond, purebred golden retriever. Sounds silly, I know, but read on nonetheless and you too might celebrate him. He is my hero.

    I promised in my Christmas column that I would never again write about my very painful knee problem. But it’s not fixed, so I’m breaking my promise. Yep, that’s me, Janis the promise-breaker. And besides, everyone I know in Montauk is probably wondering why the hell is she walking so funny with that grimace on her face?

    I’m one of those people who write what they know. And I know my knee is screwed! I believe I damaged it on all those long walks I used to take daily in Montauk, through the woods, to the cliffs at Camp Hero, and to the Montauk Lighthouse, which is exactly one mile from my home. But I’ll tell you: It hurts like hell, folks, and even after two knee surgeries and visits to countless doctors I still walk with a gait. It’s noticeable, not just by pedestrians, but by Brodie, who has helped me in many ways that all the doctors I’ve seen have not. He helps me walk.

    The first time it happened I didn’t really know what he was doing, nuzzling my butt and leaning on me as I walked down the hallway of my house. I thought he was just horny. But then I realized, oh my God, he’s trying to help me! (And I’m welling up with tears here at the memory.)

    Usually a big, fluffy goofball, always laughing and smiling at us, Brodie saw from his dog bed that I was having trouble, clutching the wall as I walked, and he jumped up to support me. He leans very gently on my left side and I hold on to him while he walks me step by step down the hallway with a very serious look on his beautiful face. I note his beauty because everyone who meets him thinks he’s a she. He’s a pretty boy. I wonder how he even knew that it was my left leg that’s been giving me so much trouble. He has shown a side of him that I didn’t even know he had.

    I always wanted a golden retriever, as I’ve heard that they are amazing dogs. But I resisted because of their shedding problem and an allergic child. When I was offered this adorable little golden doodle puppy, I was told they don’t shed. Wrong! He sheds so badly I could make a blanket out of his fur. That is, if I were handy, and I’m not, or if I were inclined to sleep under a dog blanket, which I’m not, because though he’s my hero he still smells like a dog.

    At the end of my hallway is the bathroom to the right and bedroom to the left. Wherever I’m heading he guides me there and then waits either outside the bathroom door or in the hallway outside the bedroom to take me back to the main part of the house. The first time my husband saw him do it he couldn’t believe it. He now calls him my therapy dog.

    And so I think Brodie deserves an award for heroism. I imagine the pretty boy walking to the stage, guiding me, head held high and proud, to accept his award, but that’s only in my fantasy.

    In reality Brodie wouldn’t make it to the stage for an award. He’d be greeting and jumping on everyone along the way. He’s a jumper and that’s one thing we haven’t been able to contain. He can’t help it. This dog is so full of love it oozes out of him and he treats everyone from complete strangers to the gas station attendant as his long-lost best friend. If he sees a human far off, he’ll stand on his hind legs and prance toward him like a gazelle to show the love. But dogs were meant to be a man or a woman’s best friend, so we have to allow him that.

    And while you’re watching fireworks and raising a glass, please make a toast to dogs everywhere. They are amazing creatures, even if they sometimes don’t look it.

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.