I get the feeling that some of our prosperous institutions and second-home owners here are engaged in a race to the bottom to see who can be top Scrooge.

A wealthy East End school announces it will cease paying salaried employees for their 30-minute lunch period. This amounts to a 6-percent pay cut. A country club in sound financial condition awards a 2-percent pay raise to its staff, then, pleading poverty, reduces its health insurance contribution by an amount that surpasses the salary increase.

Often, employers offer no health insurance. This is apparent during winter, when second homes are usually inactive and their immigrant employees, many of whom have become U.S. citizens, return to their homelands to get medical and dental treatment at about one-fifth the price for comparable care here. During work months they forbear treatment or resort to hospital emergency rooms. The Affordable Care Act will help, but with still-high premiums, coverage gaps, and absences of employer participation, health care in the Hamptons will remain very expensive.

Some of these health care travelers serve as domestics in the homes here of individuals on the Forbes 400 richest Americans list. While they are working — and perhaps enduring infected teeth or threatening coronary and pulmonary conditions — they might be taking care of a presidential-aspirant houseguest who has established a reputation as a supporter of universal health insurance and who is here amidst the Hamptons treasure trove to network for campaign contributions.

Do we, as East Hampton citizens, stay out of this? Do we believe that houseguest decorum prohibits guests from scrutinizing their hosts’ generosity to the hired help and, perhaps, that we mustn’t intrude anyway because the presence of wealth and fame here spins off into local jobs and business we need?

Or, as I prefer, do we decide a candidate must enquire — that there is rightful public concern about the conjoining of big money and high office and that aspirants to such things as our presidency should demand to know what their billionaire hosts are doing about their employee health benefits before blessing them with the kudos of their presence?

The town board, which I believe cares about all East Hampton residents and finds itself appropriating funds for services engendered by shortfalls of health care coverage, can get involved by urging the town’s wealthiest employers to examine and if need be recalibrate their stances on employee health benefits.

The board might induce such a reassessment via a nonbinding resolution, a step without legal effect but capable of exerting significant moral force. There would be devils in the details, but differences can be worked out, as they must be with any legislation. I would like to see the resolution cover all U.S. citizens and legal residents working on the books here for any school, business, or part-time or full-time East Hampton resident with a net worth of $20 million or more.

Such a resolution would be less rare and radical than it might seem. Municipal legislatures, both conservative and liberal, frequently employ them to exhort action by their citizenry or the state or federal government. In 2013 Mount Hope, N.Y., passed a resolution urging repeal of Governor Cuomo’s SAFE Act, which has expanded state control of assault weapons. In 2012, the New York City Council passed a resolution opposing corporate personhood.

What could be more appropriate than the Town of East Hampton, site of the second gilded age in full flower, urging its year-round and seasonal residents with 8 to 11-figure wealth to make sure their employees needn’t work months without access to needed health care?

The workers I spoke with for this article are my neighbors. They have each been on their job for years. They take great pride in providing for their families and giving their employers a good day’s work. We used to call them the backbone of the country. Now, we allow our political and financial leaders to nickel and dime them. It is demoralizing. It disrupts and destroys families. It shatters our nation’s unity. And it is vulgar.

Richard Rosenthal is a veteran of the Great Depression and World War II.

Nothing new here. I ride my bike through the streets and it’s all the norm — loud pink taxis swooping up fares, red buses chugging up Sukhumvit Road, growling mobs of motorbikes mustering under traffic lights. I do not see a single soldier, gun, or tank. Everyone seems intent on business as usual.

Wasn’t there a coup d’état here last night? Aren’t we under martial law?

Looking a little closer, however, the evidence is there: The traffic sprawls much farther than usual, and is even more chaotic.

The TV at the Witch Pie Factory, where I eat lunch, doesn’t offer regular programming. Instead, it is broadcasting a static test pattern bearing the five insignia of the branches of the Royal Thai Armed Forces. Presumably, all the other channels are doing the same.

There is a sheet of paper taped to the door of my building, informing all occupants that, effective immediately, there’s a curfew in Thailand: We’re to be off the streets from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Intolerably, the little family-run laundry across the street has not finished ironing the 20 articles of clothing I brought in two days ago. This has nothing to do with the coup. This I am actually familiar with. I narrow my eyes to slits but then smile graciously (as one must). I am laughed at.

But it’s a military putsch — my first. I’m fired up. I expect to see tanks, and I want everyone else to share my excitement and fuel my outrage. But all the Thais I speak to decline, knowingly, to make a big deal of it: “It happens,” they say, shrugging. “We’ve had worse.”

As if we were due one.

And, perhaps we are.

The last coup was in 2006, and before that it was 1991. There have been five in the 38-year span of my time on this planet. Each time it’s been the same story. There’s a pattern, and there’s perhaps a problem with Thai-style democracy.

For seven months now, the normal functioning of government has been stymied by yellow-clad protesters (the so-called “yellow shirts”). Their opponents are the red shirts, who, generally speaking, represent Thailand’s working class. While nationwide the red shirts far outnumber their jaundiced counterparts, the yellow shirts (representing the moneyed elite) are highly concentrated in the capital, where, consequently, they wield inordinate power — managing in recent months to shut down Bangkok’s major intersections, invade government buildings, and frustrate attempts to hold fair and open elections.

Despite all this, they fell short of their goal of ousting the reds from their commanding majority in Parliament. The red shirts, for their part, were unable convincingly to neutralize their opponents, who kept popping up with new insults and challenges to their authority.

And so it was an impasse, and unrest crept into the streets. Among other things, there have been grenades lobbed, guns fired, an occupied bus set ablaze. Twenty-eight people have lost their lives in seven months. The army, for all appearances loath to intervene — despite repeated calls, since November, to do so — finally stepped in on Tuesday, May 20, declaring martial law, and then again the following Thursday, when they seized power from Parliament in a bloodless coup.

The army’s claim is that they could not risk the growing violence, which is plausible enough. But it remains unclear how long they intend to remain in power, and their talk of “reforms,” which they say must happen before new elections are held, are greeted with skepticism by many Thais.

The army has traditionally sided with the minority yellow shirts, who have not won a national election since 1992. Nobody knows what the proposed reforms might entail; but if, this time, the military sticks to precedent and installs an unelected, unpopular yellow government, it would be regarded, especially by vocal student organizations, as an affront to the people. Should that happen in the current climate, nobody can predict what would result.

Unfortunately, that is the pattern: The red shirts have handily won all five elections since 2001, and except for once they’ve been ousted each time — twice by the military, twice by the courts. Thais are getting tired of their popularly mandated governments being usurped by powerful Bangkok interests.

The news reports that, since the day of the coup, about 200 journalists, politicians, and academics — from both sides — have been detained by the military. Most complied and were released after a day or two, though one esteemed academic, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, responded to his summons by claiming to be too busy — and valiantly offered to send his pet Chihuahua in his stead.

There have been daily anti-coup demonstrations at the Victory Monument in central Bangkok. There’s been talk of an uprising out of Isan, the northeast stronghold of the red shirts. There’s even been talk of civil war. It’s hard to imagine, but not impossible to imagine.

We’ll see.

At the Witch Pie Factory, there’s still a static armed forces test pattern on TV. The traffic has gotten worse, not better. We’re still being told to be off the streets after 10 o’clock.

For now, though, and for me, the city is functioning more or less as usual. The stores are open; the people, characteristically unruffled, get on with it; the schools and government offices are functioning.

I finally got my ironing back.

By all accounts, no tourists have been troubled.

It’s three days later, and I’ve still not seen a soldier or a tank.

For those of us who live and work in Bangkok, it is still good to be here. There is a breathlessness, a calm-before-the-storm feeling. Maybe that’s just the early onset of rainy season.

We’ll see.

Jamie Schelz taught cultural history at the Ross School and for seven years worked at BookHampton in East Hampton. He has lived in Thailand since 2010 and teaches science and social studies at Wells International School in Bangkok.

As we honor the 70th anniversary of D-Day this week, it is worth noting that the number of surviving veterans of World War II is tiny. Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, only about 16,000 were still alive in 2012, one in 1,000.

At the recent rate of loss, the number of living U.S. veterans from World War II will be down to 8,000 by the end of 2014 — i.e., one survivor for every 2,000 people who served.

The median age of World War II active-duty survivors was 92 in 2011. Charlie Miner Jr., a summer resident of East Hampton, is one of those survivors, and he turned 92 a few months ago. I have talked to him at length in part because I am writing about the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first treasury secretary, Will Woodin, and Miner is the son of Woodin’s eldest daughter, Ann.

Miner went to school in New York City and studied engineering with the Princeton class of 1943. Before he graduated, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces and graduated from single-engine flying school in March 1943.

“Because I had an engineering background,” he said, “I was assigned immediately to a sub-depot in Charlotte, N.C., where they rebuilt planes that had crashed in the region. My job was to test-fly the rebuilt planes before they were returned to their home bases. A variety of planes were being rebuilt, so I got flying time in many types of aircraft.”

Miner was married in October 1944, and two weeks later reported for combat training in B-25s at the Greenville, N.C., Army Air Base. The two-engine North American B-25 Mitchell bomber was named after Gen. Billy Mitchell, an advocate of greater air power. The plane is described on the Boeing website as the “most versatile” and “most heavily armed” bomber in World War II. It had a crew of five — a pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, radio operator, and gunner. It was distinguished as the aircraft that completed the historic surprise raid over Tokyo in 1942.

After his training, Miner was sent to Europe, where he was instructed by Royal Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force pilots who had been assigned the B-25. While the B-25 was versatile, it could be delicate if flown above the maximum speed, which was 518 kilometers per hour for the earliest model. Miner still wonders about the risk-taking propensity of a few of his instructors:

“Some of those R.A.F. and Italian pilots were daredevils. They didn’t seem to care if they lived or died. The Mosquito was a laminated-wood plane, which meant it could remain undetected by radar and yet break the sound barrier. The pilots loved it. They would dive from 5,000 feet. But in one case, the wooden wing just sheared off. The pilot, of course, went straight down with the rest of the plane and was killed.”

Later models of the Mitchell bomber (B-25A through B-25J) increased the armaments to allow the bombers to shoot back at targets, and the maximum speed was lowered.

When the German army was pushed north in the Italian boot, Miner’s squadron relocated to Fano on the Adriatic, about 150 miles south of Venice. From there they flew about 18 missions at about 15,000 feet over the Brenner Pass in the Alps between Italy and Austria.

The war in Europe ended in May 1945. In July of that year, Charlie was handed a B-25 to fly home. He had to fly indirectly because of the limited range of the planes. The B-25B had a theoretical 3,000-mile maximum range, but only by adding droppable fuel tanks. Such tanks made possible the previously cited surprise Doolittle raid on Tokyo in April 1942. The bombers could take off fast enough to be launched from an aircraft carrier, but could not land safely. So the pilots were told to drop their bombs on Tokyo and then try to find an airport in China.

A combination of unexpected discovery and bad weather resulted in all 16 of the B-25Bs being lost in the raid, but Doolittle’s squadron got out of Japan’s air space and most of the crews survived. Col. James (Jimmy) Doolittle feared he would be court-martialed, but instead, F.D.R. gave him the Medal of Honor and raised him two grades to lieutenant general.

Miner had to bring one of these B-25s back without extra fuel tanks. He had to fly down the West African coast to avoid the North Atlantic squalls and provide for frequent refueling. He flew over to the Ascension Islands, then on to Natal, Brazil, then to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and finally to Savannah, Ga., refueling at each stop.

Safely home with his B-25, Miner went back to civilian life. He first worked for the New York Central Railroad under Willard Place, vice president for finance. From there he worked for the Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation in Darien, Conn., on the concept of building railroad cars with fiberglass-reinforced plastic shells. While the concept eventually worked, the first impact stress test by Pullman failed spectacularly as the experimental cars shattered. Miner reoriented the idea, pioneering the application of fiberglass-reinforced plastics to the building of boats, an idea that succeeded and took over much of the industry.

Miner left the fiberglass business for Wall Street, working first for Rand & Company in the municipal bond department. He then joined Clark, Dodge & Company in the same area. It became part of Dean Witter and later part of Morgan Stanley. Charlie Miner quit the business at nearly 70 years of age.

The toll — of the Depression, of World War II, and just advancing age — on the survivors from Charlie’s generation may be judged by the fact that he was told at his 70th reunion last year that only 125 members of his Princeton class of 1943 are still alive — out of the 630 original members of the class. Fewer than 10 members of his class showed up, and to his disappointment he didn’t know any of them.

The number is now down to 104.

Miner travels to East Hampton every summer from June to September and then returns to Vero Beach, Fla. When congratulated on his success at being a survivor, he falls back on gallows humor. At several places he hangs out, he says, “the average age is . . . deceased.” If you are playing golf for money, he says, “collect when you are 2 bucks ahead because your opponent may not finish the round.”

But despite it all, he says, quoting from a phlegmatic friend vacationing in Florida who was looking at clouds taking over the sky, “It’s better than Massachusetts.”

And better than flying through anti-aircraft ordnance.

John Tepper Marlin, Ph.D., who has lived in Springs since 1981, is chief economist for the Warrior Family Foundation. He is attending D-Day memorials in Normandy, where his uncle, Dr. Willem J. van Stockum, the pilot of a bomber that was shot down, is buried. A tribute and monument by French townspeople there will be made to him and his crew.

As a general practitioner on eastern Long Island for 25 years, I have become habituated to tick-borne illnesses. I have had Lyme disease four times. Last summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day, while my office in Wainscott saw 100 cases a week, a tick the size of a poppy seed almost killed me.

I attributed headaches on the Fourth of July to too little sleep. A different joint pain every day was from not getting enough exercise. Fits of fatigue were normal trying to accommodate the Hamptons’ quadrupling population. After a week, the migratory and intermittent symptoms made it difficult to ignore the obvious Lyme.

I figured that I had been bitten by an infected deer tick nymph and did not get the characteristic circular or oval rash, erythema migrans. It is underappreciated that the primary culprit transmitting Lyme to humans, the blacklegged deer tick, has a two-year life cycle. Every spring each adult female can lay 3,000 eggs that hatch into larvae in the summer. The minuscule larvae are not infected and latch onto rodents, birds, pets, or humans for their first blood meal. The larvae become infected if their hosts are infected.

In the Northeast, white-footed mice and other rodents are the primary reservoir for the bacterium that causes Lyme. After a blood meal, larvae molt into nymphs that need another blood meal before they can mature into adults. In endemic areas, 25 percent of the nymphs may be infected, and 50 percent of the adults. Female ticks, not males, transmit infections.

Knowing that many blood tests for Lyme are negative, I was glad that my antibodies were elevated. When I started taking amoxicillin and felt worse, I took consolation that this paradoxical accentuation of symptoms, a Herxheimer reaction, was common.

The second week of July was hot enough to soak my shirts with perspiration, but the clinic had air-conditioning. When patients commented on my profuse sweating and pallor, and suggested that I see a doctor, I reassured them that I had Lyme disease. Then I became too weak to work, losing a pound a day, putting spoons in the refrigerator.

In addition to Lyme, my office also saw three to five cases of ehrlichiosis and anaplasmosis every week, from bacteria that infect white blood cells, and babesiosis, a parasite that infects red blood cells, both from deer ticks. Lone Star ticks can also carry ehrlichiosis. Unlike Lyme, where it can take weeks or months to run out of excuses, people with anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, and babesiosis are acutely ill and need to be treated promptly. Rocky Mountain spotted fever also presents itself with high fevers and rash, but it is much less common and comes from a dog tick.

When a second blood test showed a drop in my white blood cells that made me susceptible to infections, low platelets that increased my risk of bleeding, and elevated liver enzymes, I recognized the stamp of ehrlichiosis. I started taking doxycycline, which covered Lyme and ehrlichiosis. But I was confined to my living room, sweating in front of a fan, writing a short list of things I wanted to do before dying.

As a physician with an inflamed imagination, I rivaled my most hypochondriacal patients, blithering with alarm. After 16 days the headache behind my left eye became so severe I thought I had a brain tumor. Bleeding gums when I brushed my teeth fueled worries of leukemia. Afraid of picking up another infection in the emergency room, I went to Southampton Hospital’s lab, which was experienced in all tick-borne diseases.

I cried when the lab called and said that there were intracellular ring forms in my red blood cells. I had three tick-borne diseases at the same time: Lyme, ehrlichiosis, and babesiosis. Babesiosis is similar to malaria and required two additional medicines, atovaquone and azithro­mycin.

My headache’s vanishing 12 hours after taking the first dose of the new medicines reminded me of an old adage, “There is no greater pleasure than the cessation of pain.” Although I had to take the medicines for babesiosis for 10 days, in addition to doxycycline for four weeks, I recovered enough to get back to work by the end of the month. I was lucky. (There is not enough space here to address chronic Lyme, or the origin of eastern Long Island’s tick-borne endemic.)

After treating tick-borne diseases for a quarter-century, I am impressed that most patients with Lyme have been easy to diagnose and treat, if you listen to family members or co-workers who say, “I know what you have. You’re crazy! Every day you complain about a different ache and pain.”

Because of the epidemic of tick-borne diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a prophylaxis of one or two days of doxycycline for patients bitten by an engorged tick. With the exception of babesiosis, doxycycline helps prevent all known tick-borne diseases on Long Island, including miyamotoi, a new spirochete in deer ticks. There is no prophylaxis for children under the age of 8 or 9 years old — doxycycline permanently stains their teeth.

Anyone who is acutely ill with high fevers and sweats should go to the emergency room, where preliminary blood tests are available within an hour. Anaplasmosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever can be life-threatening.

Fully recovered, I am encouraged by the recent push for a Lyme vaccine, and better diagnostic tests. In the meantime, I am lengthening my short list, and checking for ticks.

Beware of nymphs!

Blake Kerr, M.D., runs Wainscott Walk-In Medical Care. He lives in Water Mill.

By Hy Abady

     "There are eight million stories in the Naked City." So closed a black-and-white series on TV when TV was limited to fewer channels than fingers on two hands. And the Internet might have been a brand of hair spray with a penetrating quality.

     There must be many, many more stories now. But the story I want to tell is one of what must be the stories of hundreds of thousands of single women in the city. From 45 to death. Divorced, widowed, alone, and at various stages of unhappiness.

     You can see these women at Pilates, at yoga. You see them at health clubs, fully made up. You see them on the subway, staring straight ahead, wondering if tonight will be Whole Foods takeout or Lean Cuisine. They are everywhere and yet invisible.

     Everyone wants to meet someone, right? Everyone wants to walk hand in hand on a beach during a sunset, head on a shoulder, marveling at their good fortune that they have found someone. At last, someone.

     It is very hard to find someone.

     I know this woman named Natalie. The name doesn't matter; it could be any single woman, in her mid-60s, living alone on the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side. Maybe a cat, maybe a job, but definitely no man.

     She was married once while she had a job and a sexy figure and the world seemed the way it should go. Like what her parents had. Her sister. She was in her 30s, not a young bride, but still a blushing one. A grateful one. Her husband is a prominent photographer. Was. Well, he may still be prominent and may still be a photographer, but he is no longer her husband.

     It didn't last very long, the marriage. No kids. And Natalie soldiered on, working at a fairly responsible job, traveling, dating here and there, and then less and less, and spending more and more time with her beloved nieces.

     Decades pass.

     You can't really be called the dreaded moniker "spinster" or, worse, "old maid" when you've had a marriage behind you. But Natalie reverted to her maiden name and blocked the two-year marriage as if it had never happened. The two never spoke again, never even ran into each other, both still living in the same naked city, and after a short while -- maybe about as long as the marriage itself lasted -- she got over the pain of it. And never talked about it. Like it never happened.

     As she swerved into her 40s, 50s, and 60s, opportunities in both work and romance dried up. She was still close to her nieces and her sister (who had a happy marriage, lasting now close to 50 years). There was no more travel.

     At a certain point you think, or Natalie thought, that's just the end of it. Not just the end of sex, but of love. Or companionship. Or even just a date. Her only and fairly close connections to men were with her brother-in-law and a gay man, a neighbor, whom she had dinner with once every couple of months, both of them complaining at each other about the lack of men.

     Girlfriends? A couple did manage to meet men, and she became a tiresome third wheel. Others dropped off as they moved out of town for other opportunities or possibilities. Maybe there were more men in Denver? More available men in Seattle? Perhaps widowers in Florida were looking for companionship, even if they were pushing 80.

     Natalie stayed put. Stayed in her studio apartment, downsized from the larger one-bedroom co-op she had sold at a nice profit, now renting a third-floor walk-up. She stayed. In her bathrobe most days, gaining weight and figuring why not a pint of Haagen-Dazs with the "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills"? (Not really paying attention.) Who could care?

     On days of better resolve, she took a trip to the Fairway for some kale and some carrots, some inexpensive fish, as she started thinking being heavy on top of being lonely and also depressed is not the best combo for meeting a man.

     Right around the time she started rethinking the Rocky Road, the Chunky Monkey, the nieces staged a sort-of intervention. "Aunt Natalie, you are a beautiful woman underneath the sadness and the bathrobe. Get yourself to the gym, try to lose 20 pounds, pick up some cashmere at Uniqlo, and let's get you on Match.com."

     Natalie, who could barely work a computer, somehow thought, Why not? It was a reluctant "why not," but one of the nieces, a work-from-home fashion designer, agreed to be a gym buddy, picking up Natalie four mornings a week to work out. And to shop.

     The 20 pounds came off in two months, she had her hair lightened, and when she looked in the mirror, she found herself suddenly attractive again. Desirable, even.

     The niece, Gina, took some pictures. A week's worth. On a beach in the Hamptons. In a cocktail dress with cleavage, holding forth a white wine. In repose, gazing out a window, hand at the glass.

     A profile, honest, short, slightly provocative, was written. It was the Natalie Natalie was once and now felt she might quite possibly be again.

     She spent an hour every afternoon getting used to the site. To the typing. And the typing. After typing and typing and rejecting and thinking, Hmm, maybe, after a couple of coffee dates that came to nothing, along came a Jack. And then a John. A romantic trip to Mexico with one of them. Sex. Walks on the beach. Sex on the beach!

     The transformation from lonely single microwaving a bag of popcorn, watching Bette Davis on TCM, to a vibrant, confident, sexy woman, the woman she once was decades ago, took less than a year. (Kind of like the Bette Davis character in "Now, Voyager.")

     Ultimately, neither John nor Jack was right. But both turned out to be amazing practice.

     Enter Paul on the site. His wife died two years before. No kids. A retired tax attorney. Salt-and-pepper hair. Handsome. Lonely. Looking.

     Bingo.

     Sparks. Chemistry. Love. At long last love, the real thing, at 67 and 68, Natalie being the year older.

     Natalie and Paul got married last weekend.

     You just never know.

     Hy Abady, a part-time Hamptoner for more than 35 years, has two new books in the works, nonfiction and a novel. He is a frequent contributor of "Guestwords," and a number of his pieces appear in "Back in The Star Again: True Stories From the East End."

    After I dropped off my daughter, Elizabeth, at L.I.U. Post Monday morning, my right turn south on Route 107 was brutally interrupted by a weaving asphalt truck, eerily similar to one that cut me off in front of the now-defunct Highway Diner, so to avoid an almost certain obituary and bumper-to-bumper traffic past Ikea, Sears, and Theresa (“Long Island Medium”) Caputo’s house, I split-second decided to take the road less traveled and stayed the course east along Northern Boulevard for a lazy ride back to Springs along Route 25A, a road I haven’t traveled in 25 years.

    Certainly the drive on 495 would have shaved an hour off my trip, but I felt a sense of nostalgia along 25A, back to a time when I courted my wife all those years ago, stopping in shops on Main Street in Cold Spring and Huntington Harbor, holding hands, sipping cappuccino, her laughing at my jokes — all evaporating like a rainbow over Maidstone Beach.

    The drive through Laurel Hollow was quite pleasant, a long winding road not unlike Cedar Street, sans the mile-high, bark-like utility poles, but then came our old haunt, Main Street, Cold Spring Harbor, and the connected shoebox-size, pastel-colored shops I remember oh so well. The memories of my wife and me together, before four kids, rushed through me like an effervescent explosion of oxygen, perking me up quickly. I was expecting the fragrance of her Giorgio perfume to awake me like the ammonium carbonate my football coach pushed under my nose so many times when I got slammed in Astoria Park, but alas, no Giorgio, no smelling salts, just the pleasing aroma of fresh-baked bread and cherry blossoms in bloom.

    Surprisingly, I found a spot in front of the Gourmet Whaler, a place I remember as Gour­met Delights for its croissants and aromatic sweet coffee, all reminiscent of an English Tea Shoppe on Front Street in Bermuda, and so I parked across the street in a toll-free lot, strolled inside, and struck up a conversation with the striking, blond-haired, green-eyed Connie Stevens look-alike owner, who introduced herself as Connie, coincidentally having grown up a few blocks from me in Queens.

    “A small world,” I said as I dropped $2 on the counter for a cup of freshly brewed Hazelnut international coffee.

    “That one’s on me,” Connie said as her green eyes twinkled like a Hollywood special effect.

    “Thanks, but next time,” I said as I left the cash on the counter and returned to the summer of ’87.

    Time stood still as I strolled ever so lazily along Main Street, sipping my coffee through an imperfectly torn white plastic coffee lid, finding myself magically within a Billy Joel tune, happy, content, at peace.

    I was so thankful to stumble upon such wonderful moments, smiling at passers-by, chatting with people I didn’t know and might never see again, blessed to avoid the highway traffic and rediscover a part of Long Island perhaps not granted to many.

    Leaving Cold Spring Harbor, I needn’t play my daughter’s Katy Perry CD, or should I admit my Katy Perry CD, my euphoria from a trip back in time was stimulating enough for the ride home. But then suddenly, like a spin through the old “Time Tunnel” TV series, all that changed when I drove through Selden and Coram and saw endless “For Rent” signs, vacant stores, blocks and blocks of blighted empty buildings, images you might see in Midwest ghost towns or nuclear blast test zones, but here on Long Island in areas where I never expected to see such hopelessness, so many lost jobs, so many ruined families, so much sadness, perhaps results of the encroachment of huge box stores. My neck still hurts from twisting side to side, scanning the heartache.

    Upon my return home, I read with angst a story about allowing large formula stores to invade our community, a community much like Cold Spring Harbor, with history, with character, with so much life, free of the compassionless highway mind-set.

    I realized had I not taken Route 25A, I would’ve been like thousands of others on 495, hurried to close another deal, sell another product, paint another wall, catch a rerun of “Family Feud,” but rather found solitude along a simple two-lane street with bushy pink trees among simple stores free of websites and web designers, stores that survive on people like me making a deliberate turn down a road ancient to some but the road of choice to many.

    Perhaps our future, perhaps our demise, lies in huge orange hardware stores, or a red bull’s-eye logo, or a massive block-long blue W discounter, but as for me, my wrong turn down the road less traveled reminded me I prefer simple pastel-colored shoebox stores on two-lane roads lined with bushy pink trees.

    Frank Vespe is a regular “Guestwords” contributor.

    Finding the perfect gift for someone can be difficult. It requires knowledge of the recipient, creativity, budget considerations, and expectations of how the gift will be received. This year I got a gift chosen with love.

    My daughter, Sophie, sewed a beautiful cotton cosmetics bag for me in a blue-and-white flowered print fabric; she knows I love anything blue and white. The inside is lined with bright yellow material with white polka dots, and it has a nice pleat on each side and a zipper. Filled with an assortment of beauty products, it is fit to qualify as a “gift with purchase” in any fine department store’s cosmetics department. You know the kind, a free seven-piece combination of lipstick and eye shadow in shades you would never wear.

    But in Sophie’s gift kit are things I can actually use. Included are the following beauty products: a light brown eyebrow pencil, a lip liner, Luscious Liquid Lipstick, a soft pink blush, and a jar of 5-percent glycolic acid cream to smooth out skin and minimize age spots. Quite the haul; even more impressive given the state of her finances. My daughter and her husband are both academics and don’t have a lot of money.

    Sophie said, “Mom, you do a good job, but you could use softer, more subtle colors.” She praised the glycolic acid cream and told me how she used it regularly and loved it. She was sharing her beauty secrets, and I was flattered. Thinking that she’s getting old at 35, she gives me instructions on how to use the glycolic cream and tells me that I can move up to the 10 percent if necessary.

    I used to be beautiful for a living, and my daughter had seen photos from my modeling days. Three months pregnant with Sophie, I flew to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands for an Almay beauty shoot with the photographer Albert Watson. It was the last modeling job I did, capping a 15-year career of doing print ads and TV commercials for Clairol, Breck, and Revlon.

    A natural beauty, Sophie wears makeup but looks as if she isn’t wearing any. She has a very light touch. She’s beautiful in an Ingrid Bergman, old-fashioned movie star way.

    I thanked her for her gift and first thought that she wanted to change me and modernize my makeup application, but loved the fact that she made and assembled it herself and spent a lot of time and money. On me.

    But then the next day I looked at the bag and took out all the products. I felt them in my hand and touched my face with the soft sable brush. I felt the heft of the pencil and squirted a little blush and massaged it into my cheeks, immediately attaining a healthy glow. On went the lip gloss, and I attempted a few strokes with the eyebrow pencil.

    Examining the contents more closely, I realized that Sophie wanted me to look good. I found her in the kitchen, gave her a hug, and thanked her again and told her how much I loved my gift and why. And of course cried while doing so.

    Sophie said, “Mom, I care, you’re still beautiful.” I didn’t take the gift as a sign of criticism, but as a gift of love for an aging mother from a daughter who thought she should still be beautiful.

    I remember when Sophie was 3 years old and I was about the same age as she is now; she was standing on the toilet seat and we were eye to eye as I looked into the mirror and applied makeup. She was a few inches away from my face when she said, “Mommy, you’re getting wrinkles. You’re getting old. You’re going to die.”

    She had me in the grave in a few seconds. I assured her that, yes, I would die someday, but it wouldn’t be for a very long time.

    I’ve been using the glycolic cream and notice a difference in the texture of my skin; it’s much smoother, not sure about fewer wrinkles. The brow equipment I’m experimenting with, and the lipstick is indeed much softer and subtler than my usual bright pink.

    I look good. For my age.

    Joanne Pateman is a regular contributor of “Guestwords” who lives in Southampton.

    Ron Fleming lived on Meeting House Lane, Amagansett. His 73rd birthday would have been April 21 of this year, 2014.

    Ron lived in a house built not long after the turn of the last century, its architecture and style from that time, similar to beach houses along Bluff Road, large, gracious, and welcoming. “The house with the red shutters,” when giving directions.

    Ron bought the house in the 1960s and converted a garage into a bungalow, where he moved for the summer while he rented the house. He cultivated gardens in his front yard, the house set back from the road. Blooming shrubs and flowers graced the side along the driveway, and the deep backyard, which included the bungalow, was another expansive setting of trees, shrubbery, and flowers.

    The interior of the house was Victoriana. For many years Ron had an antiques store in Boston. Inside on the other side of his heavy front door, I felt the world had laid down its weight, or I had. Guests relaxed. For 10 years he hosted a gay men’s Thanksgiving dinner, 12 of us seated at a large table in the snug dining room. His banter in conversation was whimsical and friendly, sometimes acerbic, with a quip about “stupid things” going on in town. He felt it would be helpful to have had the Amagansett “Lanes” designated a historic district. In that regard, he lamented the razing of an old house on Indian Wells Highway. It was, he said, a travesty to demolish it.

    What would he say then of his house after he died? The property sold immediately to a developer who in no time razed the grand old place, flattened the bungalow, tore up all the trees and gardens, leveling everything to the ground. If Ron’s death felt precipitous, this rapid destruction of his property added to the sense that Ron was completely obliterated from the earth. By his request some of his ashes had been scattered on his gardens. Even that faint remnant was now dug up.

    What is replacing Ron’s house is what anyone can see driving up and down the Amagansett Lanes. Developers are building tall houses on narrow lots, so that with multiple peaked roofs they appear to be latter-day castles pushed inward and up. What are the zoning requirements? Is the pyramid rule still in effect?

    Not all lots are narrow, requiring houses with pitched rooflines to look pinched. Some lots are larger, providing greater perspective.

    On Atlantic Avenue, where apparently adjacent lots were purchased, a large house also fills all available space. I knew the mother and daughter who lived in one of the previous homes. When I met her in the early 1980s, Paulene See was the oldest living member of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church, where I was the minister. Her daughter, Virginia Morgan, lived with her. When Paulene died, Virginia came to the manse where I lived and gave me $1,000 cash to be used in her mother’s memory. We purchased plantings for the front of the church, which subsequently Ron Fleming cared for during the present pastorate of the Rev. Steven Howarth. And Ron added plants and trees.

    Older residents of Amagansett may say of a house regardless of who lives there now, that was the Bennett house, or that’s the Schellinger house. On the northwest corner of Indian Wells and Further Lane, the expansive white house was the Terry home, where the widow, Katharine Terry Scoville, lived. Her husband was the Rev. Clarence Beecher Scoville, of the Presbyterian Church. I knew Katharine in her advanced age.

    At least that Terry/Scoville house is still standing, so it can be identified historically with personal reference. Not so the new constructions replacing those that have been razed. We cannot say of the replacement to Ron Fleming’s house, that is the Fleming house.

    Then there is Scoville Hall on Meeting House Lane. It was destroyed by fire two and a half years ago and awaits reconstruction. An architect with sensitivity to the church’s history and place in the hamlet will design something appropriate to its ministry as a church and community center. Though not part of the church, the property immediately east of the manse, owned by Wilson Griffing Jr., now deceased, is for sale. Will it be bound by restrictions because it faces Main Street and is therefore part of Amagansett’s historic district?

    Not every house has to be kept as it was from an earlier time, as though there could be no change or development. A given property cannot always be the Terry house, for example. Who besides the town crier, Hugh King, knows such things, anyway? By that reasoning Amagansett would have nothing but 18th-century houses, and so — someone might wisecrack — just open the hamlet up as a museum.

    In fact, there was a lot of building in Amagansett and in town going into the second half of the 20th century, much of it modest family dwellings on half-acre lots. My own home in Springs is one of those. Oceanfront properties are another matter, and I’m not writing about those.

    Is there some “golden mean” between keeping everything as it was and tearing down and building over with castles-in-the-air architecture? Is there an aesthetics for Amagansett?

    To speak of aesthetics philosophically is to become engaged in a discussion of beauty. Classically, beauty refers to such things as symmetry, proportion, harmony, and is associated with the moral force of truth and goodness.

    Whatever the particular architectural design, I would suggest two aesthetic criteria.

    One, to draw from classical argument, does the house have a sense of proportion and harmony with its setting? Is there breathing space such that the structure does not take up the whole parcel of land? Does the new building take into account the architecture of the neighborhood, not to duplicate other structures but to be harmonious with them? Is there a sense of composition with the whole, not separateness?

    Two, related to the first, what strikes me about some of these new structures is that they are being built with an appeal to the individual alone. That is — the owner in isolation from the neighborhood. I suggest a social philosophy as a second aesthetic criterion.

    Individuals are part of a community in social context. People in their homes live next door and down the lane from other people living in their homes. What I see currently is the undermining if not destruction of social cohesion. The inference seems architecturally to be of these newer castles in the air — this will be my house, my castle, and I’m not concerned about the neighborhood except to protect property values.

    That may be an unfair inference, and I admit it depends on the people who reside in the new houses. They may indeed want to be neighbors and make good neighbors. But my caution remains against the vaulting of the individual, raised up without reference to community. That concern is the moral component of aesthetics.

    Ron Fleming’s house invited you in. It had a welcoming entrance and facade. There were gardens. It was open to the street, not closed from the street. There was symmetry and proportion in relation to the property and neighborhood. There was also Ron’s good will, his jolly personality, which expressed itself with neighbors and in his particular dedication to the Presbyterian Church.

    I am writing in remembrance of Ron as a friend. He died last July from melanoma, which had progressed rapidly through his body from its initial diagnosis the previous fall. His death therefore was relatively quick, his departure sudden, as we felt it, those of us who knew him.

    In his name I argue for the preservation of community.

    Robert Stuart was the minister of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church from 1982 to 1998. A member of the Ashawagh Hall Writers Workshop, he recently completed a memoir having to do with sexuality and religious faith.

    The pictures created the questions, and perseverance revealed the story. A family photograph much like one in possession of the East Hampton Village office shows Jud Banister, who would go on to become village mayor, in military uniform, captain’s bars on his epaulets plainly visible in the village’s photo. The family also has Jud’s framed commission certificate, signed by Gov. Charles S. Whitman and Adjutant General Charles H. Sherrill, from when he became captain of one of the two New York Guard units in East Hampton formed in late 1917.

    How did he become a commissioned captain in the State Guard, the volunteer corps established in support of the New York National Guard? Early research into Jud’s life in East Hampton surfaced an East Hampton Star article when he was elected Fire Department chief in 1930. The article implied that he had been captain of the department’s Hook and Ladder Company for the previous 15 years. It seemed obvious that many of the same men who were in the East Hampton Rifle Club, soon to be the Home Defense League and ultimately the New York Guard, had been in the department, and some with his company knew his leadership skills and bestowed one of the two captaincies on him.

    This theory lasted a while, but succumbed to more research. The problem? Jud didn’t join the Fire Department until 1919, after the war and the disbanding of the State Guard in East Hampton. What did the Star archives cover during World War I?

    Patriotism and preparedness rapidly became the town’s watchwords when the United States declared war on Germany in April of 1917. By early May, spurred on by actions in Southampton, the men of East Hampton decided to form a rifle club. In mid-May The Star reported the creation of the new organization. A preparedness committee overseen by a general committee, with work divided among several subcommittees, enthusiastically accepted the challenge to advance East Hampton’s capability to do her part in the war.

    Felix Dominy, coincidentally the chief of the Fire Department, led a military subcommittee that included John Gilmartin, Jud Banister, I.Y. Halsey, and Raymond A. Smith. Dominy reported the subcommittee’s results to nearly 260 men hastily called to East Hampton High School on April 15. Prominent members of the summer colony and D.J. Gardiner were prepared to pay for rifles and uniforms and make land available for training. The Star reported that the club “will be directly affiliated with the National Rifle Association of America, and will adopt the by-laws of that Association, but in addition will adopt by-laws applying to this particular association.”

    A different age and time, for sure. Jud was elected executive officer of the new rifle club.

    The new 134-member organization was profiled in a front-page column titled “East Hampton Rifle Club.” Agreeing to drill every Tuesday and Thursday evening, the members elected their officers. Lorenzo Dyer, who served as captain of a New Jersey regiment during the Spanish-American War, was elected captain. Jud Banister was elected first lieutenant and John Gilmartin second lieutenant — militia democracy in action.

    This was the founding organization that became East Hampton’s two companies of the New York Guard. The Star made clear that each man was well qualified for his position, “having had considerable training before the organization of the East Hampton Home Defense.”

    This was the phrase that perplexed our family. Jud was a great-uncle of my wife, Carol, but we were unaware of his “considerable training,” and for a time had few clues to pursue. That is, until my brother-in-law discovered a double picture of Jud in his attic.

    The 5-by-7-inch matte frame held two oval pictures of Jud. On the right, a handsome young man, he is wearing a suit and vest with bowtie, looking as if prepared for the most important job interview of his life. But the picture in the left oval shows him seeming much younger, hair parted in the middle, but wearing a uniform, the number 27 clearly stitched on each side of his stiff collar. Barely visible is a portion of the coat’s waist belt, but the little that shows supports the appearance of a uniform.

    But what kind of uniform, what type of outfit? No supporting information was discovered. The words “considerable training” and the picture must be related, but how? The answer, pursued intermittently over three years, did not come easy, but when it did it all came into focus.

    Jud looked so young in the picture that the idea of its showing a military uniform seemed implausible. Perhaps a Boy Scout or other youth group uniform? That didn’t work, as the Boy Scouts and similar organizations were begun after Jud moved to East Hampton. Dry holes. Then a process breakthrough.

    After photocopying hundreds of pages of Star archives with news about Jud, his family or friends, and peers during his life in East Hampton, I came to realize that other items on the photocopy page also had relevance and provided interesting contextual information. Archives of Potsdam and Malone, N.Y., newspapers, from when Jud and his parents lived there, helped round out his and his sister Ede’s life before East Hampton. Could those newspaper pages have other useful information? They did.

    By sheer luck, one of the Malone newspapers included a brief mention of recent activities of the 27th Separate Company of the New York National Guard unit of Malone. Oh my. More searching produced several articles about the 27th Separate Company, also known as Company E. A Nov. 11, 1903, issue of The Malone Farmer even mentioned a Private Bannister, misspelled name and all, who was appointed to the recruitment committee. But he looked so young in our photograph, could he really have been in Company E?

    The Malone Armory closed many years ago, but its records are archived in the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs. The museum’s website listed several boxes containing documents from the time Jud could have been with the unit, primarily 1901 to 1903. Carol and I submitted a request to the museum to see several record books and arranged a visit in September 2011. Our visit was rewarded!

    Property records, drill attendance records, company lists — but the most important document, titled “Descriptive Book, Form 3,” held all the key information. Neatly recorded in very legible handwriting (can anyone write legibly nowadays?) were the enlistment records of Company E, 27th Separate Company, from Oct. 31, 1900, to Jan. 31, 1907. At the bottom of page 98 of the 81/2-by-14-inch ledger-style book listing four December 1901 enrollments was the name Banister, Judson Lewis, Private.

    Jud enlisted on Dec. 10, 1901, giving his age as 18, the minimum allowed. He was described as 5 feet 11 inches tall, with gray eyes and light brown hair, living at 67 Academy Street, Malone, and working as a laundryman. His place of birth was Potsdam, N.Y., and the final entry, under “Remarks,” revealed that he was dropped from the rolls on Feb. 9, 1904, because of a change of address.

    The other books recorded Jud’s drill attendance, his summer camp duties, and his property records. One described company orders for specific drills, including rifle practice and the demonstration of “considerable training” over the two-plus years before he moved to East Hampton.

    Teddy Roosevelt was president, having succeeded the assassinated President McKinley on Sept. 14, 1901. Roosevelt already had a high profile, involving, among other things, his leadership of the Rough Riders up Cuba’s San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War of 1898. His impact on young men of Jud’s age was significant, and many at the time wanted to join military organizations, especially the state’s National Guard, such as the 27th Separate Company of Malone.

    They could embrace the solidarity of comradeship as members of a military organization and still hold a job and support their families. The motivation and emotion of the times likely led a young man to enlist on Dec. 10, 1901, and claim to be 18 when he had only turned 17 three months earlier.

    When Jud moved to East Hampton in the spring of 1904, he had served 26 months of his five-year National Guard commitment. Finally, both the picture and his considerable training made sense.

    Steve Rideout frequently visits East Hampton to research family history. He lives in Shutesbury, Mass.

    When I was 8, my artistic parents divorced and my mother married an intelligent lawyer who took us from a small house to a much bigger house. The basement in our new house is where I learned to box.

    I was like a small mole, burrowing down into the dark, dank soil of that basement, and it quickly became my new home. It proved a refuge from the verbally violent atmosphere my mother unwittingly got us into. Boxing became my passion. The heavy bag, the light bag, and the brown leather, 16-ounce boxing gloves became my allies. I was a young boy and didn’t do introspection too well; all I knew was punching a heavy bag felt really good.

    The rigors and ecstasies of boxing lasted throughout my childhood. Anger became an exciting and profitable emotion, and now that I knew what to do with it, I refused to give it up. Boxing was brutal and bitter, but I loved it. At least that’s what I told myself.

    The truth was I hated boxing as much as I loved it. Boxing was my successful dysfunction.

    The angry dropouts in school became my tribal family. Ours was a rough clan of punks whose cardinal rules were “Shut up or put up” and “Never start a fight, but always end it” and “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” Our pastimes were sports, hanging out in town, and neglecting homework.

    For me, the ultimate goal of my dark, angry existence was to one day fight in Madison Square Garden for a Golden Gloves title. Throughout my school years I honed my arms, chest, and legs in preparation for my forthcoming epic battle in the Golden Gloves.

    Growing up, I purposely ignored my mind’s development. My deep, underlying belief was in the strength and nobility of my body. Unlike my belligerent stepfather, who battered us with his intelligent tongue, my body was my weapon, not my brain.

    At 18, I finally entered the Gloves. Week after week, I beat my opponents until I reached the finals. The night of the finals, I was sick with the flu and weighed six and a half pounds lighter than normal. Weakened, but still confident, I stepped through the ring ropes of Madison Square Garden and lost a close three-round decision. Losing was horrible.

    Soon, my boxing family began to break up, too. Some guys entered the pro boxing ranks, some went to work, and others landed in jail. Somehow I squeaked into college. I quit boxing as if I were quitting a drug. I was afraid it would fatally distract me from my studies, and I didn’t want to become an occasional boxer.

    So I plunged into a life of books, libraries, and endless studies. I began hitting books instead of people. The classroom became my ring, but I had to work double-time in order to overcome my lackluster academic past. I rarely spoke of my previous life. There were too many clichés and preconceptions about flat-nosed pugs to overcome.

    Years later, in my mid-30s, I found myself working as an English teacher in New York. For me, becoming a high school teacher was like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. I had always convinced myself that I was born with more fast-twitch muscle in my body than quick synapses in my brain. College had proved to be an emotional roller coaster, but it was there where I discovered that punching out a perfect paragraph was fundamentally more profitable and exciting than punching someone’s face.

    One afternoon, after teaching school, I entered a local boxing gym. Although I had never truly abandoned boxing, it set about saving me once more — this time from a gnawing sense of middle-aged alienation and hollowness. I didn’t drop to my knees in great happiness or feel a rush of adrenalin. I was older and wiser, and the youthful fantasy of Golden Gloves redemption had long melted away.

    When I first hung up the gloves as a kid, I was relieved not to be getting smacked on the nose anymore. Life was gentler. I could eat juicy hamburgers and tasty cupcakes whenever I wanted, but I always felt as though something had been subtracted from my flesh. My blood never pumped so fast. Did I miss the human contact?

    I began training again.

    One day, the gym owner called me over. “Wanna be my head coach?” he said. “You c’n work nights, after teachin’.”

    I looked at his damaged face, the sweaty fighters, and the grimy gym. What I once saw as brilliant, beautiful, even magical, I now saw as ordinary, ignorant, and even pathetic.

    Was I too soft for this again? Was I more comfortable with the civility of teaching?

    “In’erested?” he slurred.

    New York City is the mecca of boxing, and there is truth in that name. Many confused young boys have started out as punks in these dark, violent gyms, fought in the Golden Gloves, and ended up world champions. Two of my friends did. But did I want to be part of this wild, dangerous, stupid, crazy sport anymore? Beating people up? Damaged faces and brains?

    “Well?” he said.

    Did I want to burrow down into my stepfather’s dark, dank basement again?

    I looked at the man’s flat nose. “Boxing is stupid!” I said to myself. “I hate boxing. I hated it the first day I laced up my first pair of gloves down in my basement. I hated it 10 years later when I quit. But boxing saved my life. It was the bloodsucking leech that fed upon my anger, my hurt, my hate, and my fear. Boxing purified me. That’s why I love it.”

    “Okay,” I told him.

    A month later, a middleweight named Denny walked into the gym. “You the coach?”

    I nodded.

    “I wanna enter the Gloves,” he said, dropping his duffle bag to the floor.

    What personal pain had brought Denny here? Did he have the same appetite for violence that I once had?

    He continued looking at me.

    Was this the circle of life? There were still so many unhappy memories breathing in my gut about my stepfather’s sad basement. Could I convince myself that by coaching Denny I could sculpt beauty into his body and brain? When a kid moves sweetly, is that art? Does a coach chisel a human statue?

    “Why don’t you get outta here and learn how to write a perfect paragraph instead of learning how to throw a perfect punch,” I almost spit.

    “I need a coach,” he said, rolling his wide shoulders.

    I stared at Denny and saw my own face. “Okay,” I whispered, “suit up.”

    Sure enough, Denny’s past was miserable: a mother’s suicide, a father’s death, and his own heroin addiction. I watched him gracefully punish the heavy bag and murder his reflection in the mirror. Here was a boy-bomb with beautiful muscular violence just begging to be molded.

    If Martha Graham can sculpt a ballerina, I can sculpt a fighter. If she can educate toes, I can educate fists.

    Three months later, I pried the ring ropes open with my foot and arms and Denny stepped into the ring to fight for the Golden Gloves middleweight title in Madison Square Garden. We looked at each other silently, but at the same time held back, afraid of what each other’s eyes were saying. There was a patina of Vaseline and sweat on his chiseled face.

    The bell rang. I sat in the corner and watched him pound out an elegant, passionate, and lopsided decision over his opponent. Denny was a thing of great beauty — a wonderful work of art.

    Boxing is insane. But it’s a healthy insane.

    As the referee raised Denny’s hand in victory and the crowd cheered its approval, I realized that I had climbed out of that dark basement and a part of me was up in that ring with him.

    Peter Wood, an English teacher at White Plains High School who spends summers in East Hampton, is the author of “Confessions of a Fighter: Battling Through the Golden Gloves” and “A Clenched Fist: The Making of a Golden Gloves Champion,” both from Ringside Books. The 2014 Golden Gloves wrap up April 17 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.