A heartfelt thanks to East Hampton citizens for supporting our efforts to import coyotes from Maine to the Hamptons. You are right that coyotes will go a long way to cleaning up the present summertime mess that one resident described in a letter to The Star as a climate of “hell.”

    I have lived in the Hamptons for 40 years and watched our town degenerate from paradise to a sweating, ill-mannered, noisy, deer-and-tick-infested traffic jam. Something must be done — but what?

    Our answer: coyotes.

    Let me regress a bit — for years I have followed the controversy over deer (and ticks). Some want shooting, some contraceptives (for the deer), others just surround their houses with 10-foot-high deer fence so that the deer stand on the outside looking in as if we humans are in a zoo and the deer are nonpaying customers. I do not appreciate being caged in a zoo for the amusement of deer. I am a consumer with a genuine lifestyle — not an object of amusement.

    So what has this to do with coyotes? Just this: Because the Hamptons have evolved into such a “hell,” years ago I fled north to Maine for the summer — a peninsula jutting into the sea, a hilltop cabin surrounded by blueberry fields, a view of Acadia National Park’s mountains, sun and moon rising from the water, in fact, an immense leafblowerless, almost scary, and certainly holy silence. That’s summer in my area of Maine.

    Our Maine tourists are mannerly, traffic is modest, and there are few ticks. Why few ticks? Because the deer are controlled by the coyotes. To be a baby deer in Maine is to be eaten — much as we consumers hack up lamb and veal to display in neat packages at the meat counter without further thought. In fact, just to be really far, far out — much as we ate TV dinners while watching George W.’s “shock and awe” campaign, which destroyed, oh, say, 300,000 Iraqi children, give or take a thousand. Coyotes do it better but they aren’t prime-time material.

    There are of course downsides to this miracle cure to the Hamptons hell: Coyotes also attack cats and dogs and have been known to bring down a jogger or two. My neighbor, Jon Swift, almost lost his 85-pound mutt Jack this summer when Jack was surrounded in the twilight by a pack of coyotes.

    Here’s how coyotes do it (clever fellows). They invited Jack — a kin canine — to play with them. “Yip, yip, yip!” dancing about. Jack, a boisterous king of the fields, was interested. Who doesn’t like to play with cousins? But soon Jack noticed that these cousins played rough. In fact, Jack was dinner. My neighbor stopped all this by banging pots and pans and the coyotes retreated.

    After that I kept my dogs in after sunset. In the cabin, they listened to the coyotes in the fields with some worry. The coyotes cackled and yapped like a New England town meeting, especially after they had killed something yummy.

    The point? After we introduce coyotes to the Hamptons to clean up our deer, we must be vigilant with our cats and dogs (cats are a mere appetizer for coyotes).

    Heartless, you say? I love deer. Often while driving I will pull over to the roadside while they graze and within a few feet of them gaze into their eyes. Such innocence. And when they leap no animal, including us — certainly us! — comes close to their grace. Sigh.

    But we must remember we are being destroyed by grace. As consumers we must be practical. We got rid of grace 2,000 years ago, washed our hands of him (although he did have some practical uses). So we can’t let it return in some burst of ill-advised sentimentality.

    Why? So we can get our gardens and shrubs back from the deer and end the plague of tick infestations nurtured by our innocent but deadly cloven-hoofed predators. I’ve had Lyme disease twice and two of my dogs did too, as did my wife. That stuff can kill you. It’s grace or us.

    My Maine neighbor offered a further bit of wisdom for coyote export to the Hamptons. Since coyotes like to gang up and attack whatever looks like lunch — i.e., joggers in shorts — all it will take is for one jogger or skateboarder or roller skater to be terrified by a pack of coyotes and for word to get back to Manhattan, and our tourist industry, guided by our esteemed town board (“the business of America is business”), will collapse. Our sidewalks will be walkable again; the summertime hoo-ha will flee to Nantucket, where it belongs. Ralph Lauren and Tiffany’s and the rest will abandon Main Street. We will have our village back again.

    Think of it. Mom-and-pop stores. Maybe the Pets Painted With Love shop will return. No more real estate offices inflating prices into the many millions for the 1 percent who’ve made the summertime Hamptons the world epicenter for excess.

    Whoops, I just tipped my hand. I hadn’t meant to preach. This is a practical proposal. I didn’t mean to note that one $5,000 sweater purchased in East Hampton Village would save the lives of hundreds of suffering children in poor countries. But I’m getting out of control here. Rage is seeping in. I’m mad, you see, losing it.

    Best turn it all over to the coyotes. After they have done their job, we will have our town back.

    Then we can slaughter the coyotes.

Bill Henderson is founder of Pushcart Press and editor of the annual Pushcart Prize. His latest book is “All My Dogs: A Life.”

   The architect’s plan was impressive. A three-span suspension bridge connecting island to mainland. A big dream, a multimillion-dollar project when first envisioned, but never to be. At least so far.

    New York State Route 114 connects Greenport and East Hampton on Long Island’s East End, but with the route crossing Shelter Island, the drive requires two ferry rides. Connecting that island with the North and South Forks by bridge was a dream of many influential politicians during the first four decades of the 20th century. But not everyone supported the grand scheme.

    While doing research on Jud Banister, who was East Hampton Village mayor from 1936 to 1954 and the great-uncle of my wife, Carol, I inevitably came across many news stories of various celebrities and prominent members of the so-called summer colony. Jud interacted with many of them over the course of his mayorship, and frequently one would be an elected member of the village board during his tenure. Though not the focus of my research, a few had obvious connections to Jud. Phelan Beale was one.

    Anyone with a fascination for any and all things Hamptons has heard of Grey Gardens and knows the basic story of Big and Little Edie Beale, aunt and cousin, respectively, of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Less has been written about Phelan Beale, Big Edie’s husband, who bought Grey Gardens for her.

    He and his father-in-law, John Bouvier II, were strong supporters of the East Hampton Fire Department. Their storytelling was much sought at the annual department dinner that Jud always attended during his many years as captain of Hook and Ladder Company 1. The Star colorfully described the skits performed and stories told by Phelan and the Major, as his father-in-law was known.

    Phelan cemented his political involvement by joining two prominent Suffolk County gentlemen in a taxpayer petition against the county board of supervisors in the spring of 1931. Among several issues, the petition sought a countywide referendum on a proposal to buy $5,000,000 in bonds, largely to finance construction of two bridges connecting Shelter Island to the North and South Forks. The supervisors, while agreeing that the bridges could not be built without federal permission, nevertheless rejected the request to hold a taxpayer referendum.

    By that summer, The Riverhead News accused Phelan of being a small-time East Hampton taxpayer of questionable residency, an out-of-county Democrat with impure motives trying to join the taxpayer action. Ten days later he responded to the editor, his letter reprinted in full in The Star’s Aug. 21 edition. After summarizing The Riverhead News’ profile of his character, he offered the following clarification:

    “May I say that I regard East Hampton as my bona fide residence and that I keep my wife’s house there (which I gave to her as is the custom of husbands) open the year round and that I pay taxes on two parcels at other places in Suffolk County. I plead guilty to a Southern Democracy rearing and admit that I have been a staunch Democrat in New York for the past 30 years and am now a consistent Suffolk County Democrat.”

    Having cleared away “the chaff,” as he called it, he described his opposition to the county bond issue and specifically its support for the Shelter Island bridges. He believed any dispassionate analysis would show no crying need for them. The supervisors were accused of being cowards for not submitting the bond issue to the voters, and he asserted that their summary action to deny that opportunity was an attempt to “put a fast one over” the voters and, in his opinion, illegal. There is no evidence a vote was ever taken, but another county newspaper reported that two out of three respondents opposed the bridge bond issue in a straw poll of more than 3,000 readers.

    By the end of 1931, the issue was so well known that it became the centerpiece of a satirical debate at the East Hampton Fire Department. “Debate Jury Throws Bridge Case Out Court,” said The Star’s Dec. 11, 1931, edition. Jud Banister, now department chief, was one of the jurymen. Other members served as witnesses for and against the bridges, but as the front-page subtitle declared, “Counselors Forgot to Swear in Witnesses; Refreshments Pacify Everyone.”

    On Friday, Nov. 4, 1932, Phelan placed a prominent ad in The Star addressed “To whom it may concern” and proceeded to suggest that while many politicians and political newspapers were supporting the re-election of President Hoover, he presented a case supporting change. In closing, he took a final shot at the county supervisors, writing, “let us change all down the line, including the political party in Suffolk County that appropriated $5,000,000 of the taxpayers’ money for the needless bridges to Shelter Island, and in so doing refused to allow the taxpayers to vote on the question.”

    The Depression was setting in hard by early 1933, and taxes were a major issue for many on the East End. In early March, The Star covered a meeting of taxpayers attended by more than 600 in the Masonic Hall. “Phelan Beale Holds Interest of Gathering for Over an Hour,” said the subtitle. He was still taking on the entrenched political establishment. The Shelter Island bridges were not mentioned in the article, but they had not gone away.

    Their potential construction loomed again throughout much of 1937. First District Assemblyman Edmund Lupton successfully introduced legislation in the New York State Assembly to support bridge construction. But within a week, a Star headline said, “Lupton Blames Democrats for Bridge Bill Defeat in Senate.” Lupton declared that “the possibility of building the Shelter Island bridges in time for the World’s Fair is practically gone.”

    A month later, however, The Star ran the picture of the architect’s plan for the bridges, and a county engineer said they could be completed in time for the 1939 World’s Fair contingent on receipt of federal money. Hermon Bishop, the county engineer, had filed an application for funding from the Works Progress Administration and explained the complex financing and toll-recovery process. A portion of the funding would be borne by the county through a general obligation bond issue.

    As for Phelan, a small article in The Star announced his death in June of 1956 in Mississippi and described his marriage in 1917 to Edith Bouvier Beale. The short note said she and their three children, Edith, Phelan Jr., and Bouvier, survived him.

    “One way? That’ll be $14, please” is repeated on Shelter Island’s South Ferry when I roll down my window and explain our intentions twice a year to visit East Hampton as we continue our research. The bridge, really bridges, to somewhere, in our case the South Fork, were never built, but as Phelan believed, there has never been a crying need for them. And we really like taking the ferries anyway.

    Steve Rideout regularly contributes “Guestwords” to The Star. He lives in Shutesbury, Mass.

    He has a youthful face, a ready smile, is charming and kind, and like many men over the age of 70, he has lived through a trying time brought on by prostate cancer. His name is Steve Patterson, and he is grateful to be a prostate cancer survivor.

    It began in March 2009 when Steve’s prostate-specific antigen reading spiked to 3, then to 4, and then to 6. His internist advised him to make an appointment with a urologist as soon as possible. Steve was at his primary residence in Florida at the time, and one of his neighbors recommended a urologist who subsequently performed a biopsy. It revealed that Steve had cancer in two cores of his prostate with a Gleason score of 6. The higher the Gleason score, the more likely a cancer will grow and spread rapidly. A Gleason score of 6 or lower indicates a less aggressive cancer, while a grade of 7 or more indicates an aggressive cancer.

    Steve was immediately consumed by anxiety, worried that any treatment would leave him impotent and incontinent. Unsure of what to do next, Steve turned to an old friend who had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous prostate gland. The friend advised Steve to go to Johns Hopkins, praising its urology department and singling out a surgeon named Alan Partin, who is a professor of urology and urologist in chief in the hospital’s department of urology and oncology.

    Steve resigned himself to the inevitability that he would have to undergo serious and risky surgery, but Dr. Partin’s empathy helped him relax. Sitting opposite Dr. Partin, Steve wasn’t sure he heard the words correctly: “You barely have prostate cancer.”

    The cancer was small and not aggressive, and Steve was advised to take part in the Watchful Waiting program at Johns Hopkins. The doctor explained that Steve would have a P.S.A. test every six months and a biopsy once a year. He also gave Steve a packet of information about the Expectant Management program.

    A major emphasis in Expectant Management involves a healthy diet. Steve was urged to make changes to his diet and give up breads and desserts made from white flour, give up red meat, give up white rice, white sugar, and white potatoes. Replace white pasta with whole-wheat pasta. Then add the following anti-cancer foods: turmeric, pomegranate juice, soy milk, fish, fish oil, and extra-virgin olive oil. Steve should also give up drinking alcohol and participate in a daily exercise program, but this part of the program didn’t work so well.

    Like a fading fog, Steve’s anxiety lifted. He felt reassured. He was in the hands of a top doctor who imparted a depth of knowledge and experience. Steve was not out of the woods, but at least there was a path that he could follow, and Dr. Partin had given him a compass.

    After six months, Steve’s P.S.A. had not increased. Good news. After a year, a biopsy revealed no changes in his Gleason score. More good news. It was becoming increasingly easier to smile. The idea of surgery was now an old discarded route on a map that he would not have to consult. He imagined a new route mapped by Dr. Partin. For months, or perhaps even years, he would undergo regular P.S.A. tests and annual biopsies. Chances are the cancer would be contained. He drank his pomegranate juice and soy milk, took his fish oil supplements, and cooked with olive oil.

    Steve felt no anxiety when he went to Johns Hopkins for his third biopsy in June 2011. He had endured the unpleasant procedure before, and the results had always been positive.

    A few days afterward, it was a beautiful summer morning in East Hampton. Steve was on his deck reading a newspaper when his phone rang. Dr. Partin asked to see him. Steve made an appointment for the following week. A new anxiety had entered his life.

    Steve learned that two cores of cancer had grown to four cores. More important, one of the cores was a Gleason 7: a bad rating for an aggressive cancer. Steve felt that his luck had hit a roadblock. He was no longer a member of the Watchful Waiting club. His membership had been revoked. What now?

    Dr. Partin once again outlined the path to follow. He explained Steve’s three treatment options: surgery, external beam radiation, and radioactive seed implantation. Though a highly regarded surgeon, Dr. Partin recommended that Steve undergo external beam radiation. Steve expressed reservations about radiation because he had friends who had serious side effects from the procedure. The doctor indicated that radiation treatment of the prostate had undergone major advancements in the last few years, and he concluded by saying that surgery involved real risks that were not present in noninvasive radiation. And yet, both procedures produced effectively the same results. So why take the risk?

    Like many men in his position, Steve subsequently spoke to several physicians about the efficacy of radiation and about its side effects. One close friend, who was also a doctor, said he would choose external beam radiation. Steve weighed the advice and went that route.

    Now he had to choose where to have the treatment. The facility closest to his home in Florida was 45 miles away. In New York, he could receive state-of-the-art treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. When he learned that he would require 10 weeks of treatment, 5 days a week, he decided it would be necessary to rent an apartment in Manhattan. His niece found him a sublet on the Lower East Side in the same complex where she and her family lived. An express bus that stopped four short blocks away would let him off in front of Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

    By September, Steve had his initial consultation with an oncologist and was scheduled to undergo treatment. The process began with the insertion of three beacon transponders into Steve’s prostate. These markers, which remain in one’s prostate for a lifetime, permit a radiologist to deliver beams of radiation precisely to the targeted area without destroying healthy tissue. A half-body plaster cast was then made to cover the area from Steve’s chest to the middle of his thighs. Tattoos were imprinted on his thighs so that the radiologist could properly align Steve’s body with the radiation machine.

    Placed in his body cast on a table, Steve was ready for the first of 48 treatments. The table was raised about six feet, and the radiation machine circled his body, moving clockwise, issuing brief shots of radiation at 6, 10, 12, 2, and 4 o’clock on an imaginary timepiece. Each zap of radiation took less than 2 minutes, and the entire process took 15 to 20 minutes. The procedure produced neither pain nor discomfort.

    Following the completion of 48 treatments in December 2011, Steve was scheduled to have his P.S.A. tested in June 2012. It was 1.4, a dramatic decrease from the 6.6 it had been prior to his treatment. The grueling experience had come to an end. Steve’s doctors believed that his cancer had been successfully eradicated by radiation. He could once again lead a normal life.

    When I spoke with Steve at his home in East Hampton, he said: “Each person who is diagnosed with nonaggressive prostate cancer should have a serious conversation with his doctor about Watchful Waiting. Watchful Waiting was an important period for me — it gave me the time to examine various possibilities and come to grips with what cancer might mean for me. It wasn’t an end-of-life issue; instead, it was very much a quality-of-life issue. I had heard horror stories of men who could no longer enjoy sexual activity and had to wear diapers to deal with the embarrassment of incontinence. I have been quite fortunate. I have not suffered those consequences, and my life goes on much as it did before. Though I’m 73 years old, I feel relatively youthful and I’m enjoying life. I am a person of faith, and feel very blessed.”

    And I could see the happiness in his face.

    Jeffrey Sussman, the author of 10 nonfiction books, is writing a book about cancer patients, of which this is part of one chapter. He is the president of Jeffrey Sussman, Inc., a marketing and public relations firm that is online at powerpublicity.com. He has a house in East Hampton.

    We were invited to a wedding in Jerusalem. It’s impossible for me to go to the Middle East without a stop in Lebanon, my mother’s homeland, for which I have a real fascination and emotional bond. So, with a friend, I left the beautiful, verdant, and conflict-free environment of East Hampton for Beirut, en route for Israel.

    Arriving in Beirut never fails to stir the soul. Approaching Hariri Airport, one can see the mountains rising from the coast speckled with villages and towns, and then the city, with its jumble of buildings — and the strongholds of Hezbollah just to the south. The resilience and resourcefulness of the Lebanese have enabled the city to be built and rebuilt time and again, and it now exhibits some outstanding architecture, yet it is still dotted with shelled buildings to remind its citizens of the terrible years of the civil war in the 1970s and ’80s.

    The latest development is Zaitunay Bay, designed with a handsome boardwalk and an abundance of charming restaurants overlooking the Mediterranean. It is not hard to imagine the number of fleets and civilizations that came across this part of the world and wanted to settle there — the Phoenicians, Hittites, Romans, Arabs, and Ottomans, to mention but a few. The Levant is a term that covers the eastern Mediterranean port cities. As Philip Mansel points out in his book “Levant,” diversity and flexibility were the essence of Levantine cities. And much of this cosmopolitan, democratic element still remains in Beirut, albeit imperfectly.

    On this visit, I was determined to see the conditions of the Palestinians in Lebanon, whose situation represents one of the world’s longest ongoing unresolved problems. It is easy to forget that there are still four million in camps in the region, over 60 years since they had to leave Palestine in 1948. The Lebanese have “played host” to approximately 400,000 refugees for over 60 years.

    The camps are run by UNRWA (a United Nations organization), but a number of other organizations try to help the refugees. We visited one called INAASH (the Association for the Development of Palestinian Camps), which helps Palestinian women economically through the sale of their exquisite embroidered work. The quality and design of this work are exceptionally good, and we bought several pieces.

    Another organization is the Unite Lebanon Youth Project, which is run by the dynamic Melek el Nimer, a Turkish woman married to a wealthy Palestinian. They have opened their beautiful home in the hills to young Palestinians from the camps who have never had an opportunity to see the countryside before. Melek, with a group of dedicated volunteers, works on helping promising students with their English, their studies, and taking the SAT exams, with a view to getting scholarships to the American University of Beirut and colleges in the States and elsewhere. They also work on a number of programs and activities in the camps. Through the youth project, we were able to visit the Bourj al-Barajneh camp in the southern suburb of Beirut.

    It was a shock. Previously, I had briefly driven through the Sabra and Shatila camps (where Ariel Sharon had reached with the Israeli Army in 1982 and had enabled a rebel Phalange militia to massacre more than 4,000 Palestinians), which were teeming, messy slums bustling with activity. Bourj has approximately 25,000 people living in one square kilometer. The mud and cement houses are tiny, tightly packed, with floors ingeniously and randomly built one on top of the other, but it seemed quieter and cleaner. Recently, however, more Palestinian families have arrived, pushed out of the Syrian camps during the current conflict.

    The Palestinians have been so demonized that many people are scared to go to the camps, or are advised not to. Others fear seeming voyeuristic. To me, that is just a way of avoiding the whole issue. The only potential danger one faces is that of electric shock since the narrow alleyways are woven with electricity cables interspersed with water pipes.

    We saw the tragic hopelessness and helplessness in the eyes of the people. It was heartbreaking. We visited a playground, about 20 yards square, where groups of delightful, innocent preschool children in smart blue smocks take turns playing on meager toys for half an hour a day. These were third-generation refugees. We saw disaffected youths sitting about idly, with nothing to do. We saw an old people’s center, where the elderly, with gentle, toothless smiles, play Patience endlessly. There is not much to chat about. Waiting, waiting. How long has it been since they saw even a blade of grass, or a leafy tree? When we asked our young guide whether they had television, he retorted, “We are civilized, you know!”

    People often blame the countries surrounding Israel for not absorbing the refugees. But how can they? Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt — they all have their own economic problems, diasporas, delicate political situations. Leb­anon itself is tiny; it has the invasive (and now fleeing) Syrians to the east, Hezbollah and the Israelis to the south. At long last, Lebanon has permitted refugees to take low-level jobs, but not in the professions. There has always been the hope that at least some of the Palestinians would be able to go back. Other countries in the Persian Gulf region have hired and absorbed a certain number of Palestinians, who are known to be among the most industrious and least aggressive people in the Arab world.

    While the Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories have now adopted nonviolent protests, the fundamental question we have to ask ourselves is why four million Palestinians are still suffering so greatly today. We have to try to see their condition as they see it. We have to imagine how we would feel if we were driven out of our homes where our families had lived for centuries. It was not an empty land. In an attempt to understand the Palestinian side, I read three books: “Mornings in Jenin” by Susan Abulhawa, “Sharon and My Mother-in-Law” by Suad Amiry, and “A World I Loved” by Wadad Cortas. It is extraordinary what these people have been through and continue to suffer.

    From Lebanon on to another perspective in Israel. In visiting Jerusalem, one is visiting one of the most beautiful, fascinating places on earth. It is like living in history. Even a nonbeliever could not fail to be moved by the aura. It means so much to so many. It is inherently an international city, central to three of the world’s major religions. We visited an archaeological dig being conducted to find the palace of King David. This site alone demonstrates the layers of civilizations both pre and post the Israelite period 3,000 years ago. It may or may not be David’s palace; there is no concrete evidence. The Jebusites, for instance, who immediately preceded the Israelites, are the ones credited with inventing the amazing water supply tunnels.

    We were there only five days but that was long enough to see the high wall around Jerusalem, the numerous Israeli settlements on the West Bank — from huge suburban, fully landscaped complexes to barbed-wire encampments in the desert. It is not a comfortable feeling at any level. In Arab East Jerusalem, lovely old stone buildings taken over by extremists brazenly sport Star of David flags: Just recently the Knesset enacted a law whereby Jewish buyers have the right of first refusal at the lowest price on Arab property up for sale.

    Inch by inch, in the name of security and ideology, the Israelis seem to be taking over Arab territories. Aside from Israeli Arabs — 1.6 million of them — who have Israeli citizenship yet are treated very much as second-class citizens, there are still Palestinians in camps on their own land, e.g., Jenin on the West Bank. Recently the Israeli government stated that it plans to take over several Palestinian villages to “make room for military installations.” If we as Western visitors experienced the abrasive treatment of young Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, how must it feel to the Arab community trying to move around?

    We did not see much of the West Bank, but we did visit Bethlehem, which is almost like a ghost town at this point since it is so difficult for Arabs to get to their jobs. We also visited the Shorouq Society for Women run by the redoubtable Fatima Faroun in the Jerusalem suburb of Al-Eizariya. Getting there was tortuous, the route being so circuitous. Fatima, heavily veiled and accented, is working to empower those women who suffer the double blow of being abused by their husbands and living in occupied territory, where starting up microfinance businesses is quite challenging. “If I don’t help them, who will?” she said.

    As women’s organizations the world over point out, when women who marry at 12 or 14 have nothing to do but produce babies, the populations will continue to grow. And until there is a political solution, all the education and empowerment in the world cannot be fully effective.

    We read much about the potential demographic problem that Israel faces. I asked an Arab and a Jew what they felt the future held. “I guess we will have to learn to live together,” said the Arab. “Never,” said the Jew, “that will never happen.” It is tragic because these people have more in common than they care to admit and once lived peacefully together.

    At present you do not get the impression that the Israeli government really wants peace or a two-state solution, regardless of whether the Palestinian leadership of Fatah and Hamas acknowledges Israel’s right to exist. The government is currently preoccupied with the Iranian problem. So the stalling continues.

    Over the years it has become increasingly apparent that the solution to the Palestinian problem will have to be a global one. Many countries had a hand in what happened in 1917, 1948, 1967, and 1973, not least the other Arab countries. Certainly mistakes made by the Palestinian political leadership leave it far from blameless. Yet it seems nothing will be settled until there is genuine acknowledgement of what the Palestinians gave up and continue to suffer. Their grievance needs to be addressed.

    Leila Maw Straus lives in Manhattan and East Hampton.

   If your sun-spotted hand has ever held a tennis racket, put this on the bucket list. Die-hards: Skip the miscellany and go straight to Saturday.

    Brilliant advice from Debbie Mays, a former Londoner, who advised me to prepare for all kinds of weather, which I did. It was 60 degrees and rained a bit every day. Sometimes more than a bit, but I was well jacketed and never left the hotel without an umbrella in hand.

    Transportation: District Line tube. Exit at Smithfields. Brilliant, again.

    An overcast Thursday in London, July 6, 2012. Cast: Carole, dowager and memoirist. Susan, middle daughter and history professor. Victoria, youngest daughter and corporate businessperson. In absentia: Abigail, oldest daughter and college administrator, who at 7.75 months pregnant stayed in New Orleans, yet present in spirit.

    I did experience a bit of a tinge when I paid the 70-plus pounds taxi fare (the conversion rate was 1.76 so the end result was painful) as Victoria and I arrived at the newly renovated Savoy, where we were graciously ushered into our high-ceilinged, well-lit, and well-appointed rooms. I flicked on BBC One and watched Wimbledon while awaiting Susan’s arrival from Seville, Spain, where she had spent the month of June researching 18th-century ship inventories. Ever frugal, Susan arrived by tube.

    Since the fashion-driven Victoria was intent on purchasing a Cambridge satchel (if you’re under 30, check these out), we headed by taxi, again, to the legendary Harrods. Since this much-coveted satchel, as it turns out, is really a schoolbag, we were directed from handbags to the children’s floor, where we would find a better selection. On our way, we stepped off the escalator to gape at the massive statue, titled “Innocent Victims,” of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed, who seem to be in the middle of executing a “Dancing With the Stars” routine. (Statue title: discussion point.) Victoria ended up deciding she would buy the item online so that she could get her name put on a metal plaque.

    I was struck by the large number of burka-clad women in groups of three or four, all laden with shopping bags and carrying exquisite handbags, which gave the portly department store a bit of a bazaar flavor. Since Victoria had taken notes while reading “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” we headed across the street to TopShop, where she succeeded in buying a “very-in denim” jacket and an olive jacket. We studied the street map and agreed to walk down Sloane Street to Chelsea, where we were meeting a friend for dinner at Ziani’s, an Italian neighborhood restaurant he had selected at our insistence. Leisurely strolling, we window-shopped, Brit-watched, and stopped to watch tennis players in Cadogan Place, which I mistook for public gardens. As the Brits say, the restaurant choice was “brilliant.”

    Friday: rain. After a substantial breakfast in the hotel’s River restaurant, we stopped in communal awe as we marveled at the hotel’s pastry chef, who was turning milk chocolate into perfect yellow replicas of tennis balls. We loved the Wimbledon theme. The price was steep but I did need to buy a hostess gift for American expats who had invited us to dinner that night at their home in South Kensington. If I could find nothing that morning in my pursuit of the perfect console table, I would spring for the tennis balls, which I later did. Susan was meeting a professor friend for lunch at the British Library while Victoria and I hit the treadmills at the hotel gym, where we alternately watched Wimbledon and a hotel guest so heavily tattooed we jointly decided that he had to be a British rock star, working off a regimen of drugs veterinarians typically administer to racehorses.

    At dinner with my old friends, the talk was of the Olympics, the economy — Barclays, in particular — higher education, gastronomy, and Wimbledon. The meal concluded with a summer pudding of syruped berries and brioche, after which our hostess broke the tennis ball into equal portions and passed it around. Superb.

    Saturday: overcast but clear. Women’s final. Serena Williams vs. Agnieszka Radwanska.

    We took the District Line to Wimbledon and arrived at about 11. Not surprisingly, rain was threatening, which in no way dampened our excitement or the high spirits of the swarming crowds. We explored the lush grounds, where masses of purple flowers, a Wimbledon signature color along with hunter green, lined every twist and turn.

    Victoria and Susan headed for the shops while I watched the boys doubles until dribbles of rain delayed the game. If we had been experienced Wimbledon-goers, we would have headed immediately to the Debenture Club’s — yes, we were badged members — courtside restaurants. Since the host explained that we would have needed to arrive by 11:30 for a seating, we dashed to the restaurant on the other side of the stair and secured a table. Self-service with salads, shrimp, and heavier fare. And, of course, strawberries.

    A word about the crowd. In the royal box, men wore jackets and ties and one daring woman sported a pantsuit. Navy blazers were the men’s dress of the day and there was very little, if any, denim. The blazer-clad 20-something in front of us (we were not in the royal box) took an iPhone picture of Serena’s backside during warm-up and Facebooked it to his friends with the comment, “Serious junk.”

    When the linespeople and referees in their navy blazers with white piping marched out in single file, the crowd went wild. A minute or so later, Agnieszka Radwanska, with body language that read hesitant, entered first, followed by a seemingly confident Serena Williams. Each carried a bouquet of long-stemmed purple flowers, a classy touch.

    Both players exhibited the cold, serious demeanor of champions, remaining stone-faced when they made unforced errors, nor did they smile when they hit a winner. Serena and Aggie were so well matched that the atmosphere in Centre Court was rife with tension throughout the match. Serena’s serve was typically in the 120-mile-per-hour range, which Aggie gradually began returning. Each player had a follow-through that would have brought a flicker to any pro’s heart. They hit balls that no ordinary mortal could reach, much less hit, and yet they, no ordinary mortals, did.

    The crowd, which seemed slightly to favor the well-established Serena, wanted tennis and was rewarded with three sets. Radwanska’s game, in which she had been matching Serena shot for shot, faltered, and Serena’s aces, overheads, and backhands cinched her victory. Serena fell to the ground, collected herself, and leapt into the stands to hug her father, which brought tears to my eyes, working her way down the family box with embraces for Venus, family members, and her mum. Her memorable quote in her post-victory interview was (bear in mind I have three daughters), “I want whatever Venus has.”

    At the awards ceremony, the semifinalist Radwanska said tearily, “I played the best tennis of my life,” which brought the sit-stand, sit-stand crowd to its feet again.

    After the women’s final, we raced to the Courtside Terrace, where we succeeded in scoring a balcony table. For us, this was a competitive event. The much-touted tea, strawberries, cream, and, especially, the scones proved disappointing, which Victoria described as a “first world problem.” (First world problem is a handle for a tweeter/twitterer.) The afternoon tea with the stale scones and plastic-wrapped sandwiches, I informed them, was their dinner.

    As I began my antiques venture on Friday, I had stopped in impulsively at the Savoy Theatre and bought stall tickets to Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys,” starring Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths. If I had known that after the women’s final two more matches would be held, including, gasp, the women’s doubles final, I never would have opted for the theater. We did stay for a few games of the men’s doubles, packed up, and headed back to the theater. After the play, my daughters commented, “Well, we had a little culture,” as I continued to kick myself.

    Sunday, the gentlemen’s final: Andy Murray (crown prince) vs. Roger Federer.

    My daughter Susan, who had been doing her research in Spain, where the temperature had reached 112 degrees, failed to bring any warm clothing. Because the stores did not open until noon on Sunday, we hit Covent Garden’s Burberry Brit, and Barbour, and ended up with a sweatshirt from H&M. This meant we were cutting it close to make the 2 o’clock final. We hotfooted it to the tube, knew the lay of the land, and were in our seats 10 minutes before the game. Our Facebook friend, I was pleased to note, was not at the gentlemen’s final. Celeb sighting . . . Kate and Pippa. We spotted Anna Wintour, Vogue boss, at the women’s final but could not find her at the gentlemen’s. David Beckham and wife, Posh, were in the royal box for Murray-Federer as well. Muted clapping on their part.

    All eyes were on the royal box for the celeb sighting of Kate and Pippa. A 60ish blonde was in the royal box too, and we are not sure whether it was Camilla. It wasn’t the queen.

    The British television and newspapers were plastered with footage of Andy Murray, the first Brit in the final in 70-plus years. To say that the crowd was behind Murray is a serious understatement. It was almost tiring. When he won the first set, the crowd could barely contain itself. I asked my daughter early in the gentlemen’s match whether there were any tips she thought we might pick up watching these finals. She looked at me and responded matter-of-factly, “I think it’s fair to say that they are playing on a different level.” I was chastened.

    While their serves seemed equally matched, Murray’s perhaps a bit better, the Brit in front of me explained to his bored wife that Federer was more of a tactical player. His shots did have a pinpoint accuracy to them. Federer was so smooth and so fluid on the court, he made tennis look effortless. When rain delayed the game and the announcement was made that the roof was going up, the crowd dispersed, jamming the restaurants. It was almost as if the crowd needed the 20-minute lull to relax. A cheer went up in the fourth set: “Murray” followed by three claps. (I participated.)

    Although it never seemed as if Federer had the match sewn up, he did. When he won, he did the by now obligatory fall to the ground. One of the interviewers asked him if 30 was the new 20. Sigh.

    After the Venus Rosewater silver trays are presented, the champion walks around the stadium, holding the circular tray aloft and displaying it to the fans. Serena had been ecstatic as she had circled, but Roger seemed increasingly sheepish.

    After the men’s final, we stayed for the mixed doubles, where in seven minutes we saw four games and decided it was time to leave Centre Court and buy souvenirs. The only shop remaining open was the museum store. The crowd was overwhelming so we abandoned the souvenir idea and trekked up the hill.

    Our dinner at an Indian restaurant, Gaylord, daughters’ choice, had the feel of an anticlimax, particularly since we walked there in an incessant rain. The next day, we took the tube to Heathrow, parting at our respective terminals.

    Not quite willing to give up the British experience and fighting off jet lag, on Tuesday night I went to see the Broadway play “One Man, Two Guvnors” (British cast). Although farce doesn’t do it for me, it was a fitting ending for the post-Wimbledon experience, and I found myself laughing out loud. If you do go, bring a sandwich.

Carole O’Malley Gaunt is the author of “Hungry Hill,” a memoir. She lives part time in Sag Harbor.

    Something always needs tweaking or tightening at the restaurant, so I am a regular at True Value and Riverhead Building Supply, Thayer’s Hardware, Herrick Hardware, Kmart, and Lowe’s. Greeting you in most stores is a multi-headed monster that dispenses candy and jawbreakers and gumballs. Even at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, when I am flagging and could use a pick-me-up or a lay-me-down, I can resist most caloric temptations.

    Not Peanut M&M’s. They stop me in my tracks. They trigger salivation glands and cause mild palpitations.

    I love Peanut M&M’s. Green, purple, yellow, dark brown, tan, orange, or blue. It doesn’t matter. Even the red ones, colored with a dye so dangerous — FD&C Red #40, E129 — that it is banned in eight Eurozone countries. I don’t care. I care, but I can’t help myself. FD&C Blue Dye No. 1? Nasty stuff that miraculously helped white rats with spinal cord injuries to walk again. The only noticeable side effect was that it turned their white ears, nose, and/or feet a lovely turquoise. The rats didn’t seem to mind.

    “Your nose is so blue, Charles.”

    “That’s okay, Sadie. Last month I couldn’t walk.”

    “What did they give you?”

    “A steady diet of blue M&M’s.”

    “You look good, Charles.”

    “Thank you, Sadie.”

    “But if your nose stays blue for more than four hours, shouldn’t you call a doctor?”

    “It’s been blue for two weeks, babe.”

    “Oh.”

    “Hey, where you are going, Sadie? Don’t run away.”

    It was love at first sound for me. Whose first word was not some variation of “Mom”? Or “Mommy”? (M&M&M.) And for men of a certain age, our first hero was Mickey Mouse, a rodent who could sing like Sinatra, dance like Astaire, and capture Minnie Mouse like Valentino with a velvet mousetrap. And then came Mickey Mantle, that inexorable force of Americana that became even greater when teamed up with Roger Maris, dubbed the M&M Boys, the greatest power duo of all time.

    At the same time, another force of nature was hitting long balls in Hollywood. Marilyn Monroe. Just saying her name was a sensual experience. Her initials had the same luxurious curves as her bodacious physique. So those two simple letters, M and M, represented an exciting melange of motherhood and celebrity and sexuality and dominance and drama and a rodent icon fronting an international entertainment empire.

    M&M candies originally had nothing to do with athletes or actresses. They were named for two businessmen, Forrest Mars, of Mars, Inc., and Bill Murrie, president of Hershey’s Chocolate. Their last names wouldn’t fit on a small button, so they reduced them to two lower-case m’s in 1941, and 13 years later stuck peanuts inside those m&m’s and sealed my fate.

    When receiving only four Peanut M&M’s for two bits, I used to feel emotionally shortchanged, singled out for a skimpy return; the last thing you need in the middle of an ordinary day is a painful reminder in a hardware store of all the exchanges that left you feeling empty and cheated. Candy can be so cruel. Back in the day, you would find a big bowl of snacks sitting on the counter of these same stores, and you would help yourself. They trusted you. You trusted them. You were neighbors. It didn’t matter if they displayed undistributed Halloween leftovers or stale Kisses — the candy was there, and you enjoyed it all the more because it was free. You even put a few in your pocket (when no one was looking).

    That was then. Vending machines are now. And they are usually made in Ontario, Canada, by a company named Beaver. Atop each globe is the name in bas-relief and a metal rendering of the cute, semi-aquatic, large-tailed rodent. (I know, there are more rodents in this article than Peanut M&M’s.) Fact is, you never know how many Peanut M&M’s will come tumbling out of the beaver’s mouth, or get stuck somewhere in the back of his throat; one or two usually end up on the floor. It took me years to get over the frustration of so few colorful, delicious, imperfect spheres landing in my hand. Then I realized it was like a quick and inexpensive trip to a casino. The fewer Peanut M&M’s that came rolling out of that beaver’s maw, the luckier I was. Less fat, fewer calories. Four Peanut M&M’s? Better than five. And five was twice as good as 10 in this new anti-supersized Bloom­bergian America.

    Less is more. Small is largess.

    Old-fashioned chocolate M&M’s have one-third the calories of Peanut M&M’s, and less than half the carbs. Saturated fat? A serving of Peanut M&M’s has over 5 grams of fat, 12 grams of carbs, and 10 grams of sugar in every serving. A serving, as defined by the M&M people, is 10 pieces. Ten pieces? Ha! If you get 10 Peanut M&M’s from a vending machine, you’ve hit the jackpot, dude, and should expect bells and whistles, flashing lights, loose women, and a free room somewhere in Montauk with a fresh fish dinner served by Carl Safina.

    But why does each vending machine upchuck different amounts? I called the Beaver Machine Corporation in Ontario, Canada. I spoke to Jacqui. Jacqui wouldn’t give me her last name or title. She must field a lot of calls from south of her border. I asked Jacqui how many Peanut M&M’s should slide out of the beaver’s mouth for an American quarter. After a brief disquisition on the stability of the Canadian currency, Jacqui explained that Beaver, Inc., always lets the store set the amount.

    “It’s an O.D.,” said Jacqui.

    “O.D.?” I echoed. “Sounds ominous.”

    “Operator decision,” Jacqui said. “We set each machine to the middle level and then show each store how to readjust, up or down. We relinquish all control over that number.”

    I asked Jacqui what she thought a fair number would be.

    “I have no idea. I have never eaten anything from a vending machine.”

    “You don’t have any vending machines at Beaver headquarters?” I asked.

    “Oh, we sure do,” said Jacqui. “We have lots of them, but we know too much about them to eat anything that comes out of them. You think anyone who works at McDonald’s would ever eat a Chicken McNugget? No way.

Eh?”

    Eh.

    Bruce Buschel owns Southfork Kitchen in Bridgehampton and is a freelance writer, director, producer, snacker.

“Beautiful Highway, Excellent

Service Plazas, No Traffic Jams”

5 Stars

    We’d been told about motorists who’d been tied up in interminable traffic jams on the way to East Hampton, particularly during the summer months. But we’d also heard about the window of opportunity, which has apparently become a legend like the Loch Ness Monster or the Abominable Snowman. Voyagers to East Hampton have sought the window of opportunity the way King Arthur and his knights sought the Holy Grail, and many intrepid motorists, like Charlie on the M.T.A., “never return” once they disappear into the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Actually we have to report that there is a window of opportunity that is infallible and begins just before midnight on Friday and ends at 3 p.m. Saturday when most people are still at the beach. Admittedly this means missing dinner on Friday, most of Saturday afternoon, and all of Sunday, but it was worth it to us since we avoided getting stuck in traffic and managed to go back and forth from East Hampton to N.Y. averaging only two hours each way!

“No Strikes and You’re Out”

1 Star

    We’d heard about the Artists and Writers Softball Game in East Hampton for years. I’m a writer as you can see and always contribute reviews of the places we visit to TripAdvisor. In addition, my wife is a painter who possesses a huge inventory of ambitious canvases, which depict, amongst other things, life in East Hampton. With this kind of C.V. we packed our mitts and bats, worrying only about the field and whether or not we should bring our cleats. Both of us are experienced softball players and we figured all’s we had to do was show up and she would be picked for the artists and me for the writers squad. That’s not the way things worked out. We were shocked to find out that you had to qualify. It was a little like the Olympics with a National Book Award nomination in fiction or nonfiction being a minimum qualification for writers and being one of Larry Gagosian’s roster of artists constituting the minimum for painters or sculptors. My wife felt a little better when she learned that Damien Hirst had been turned down for the artists team, before being represented by Gagosian. We could have stayed just to watch the game, but I’ve been writing these travel advisories for years and I spun my wheels in anger before skidding out of the parking lot.

“Let Hurts Put You

In the Driver’s Seat”

1 Star

    We rented in the Springs for the first time this summer. We’d heard on good authority that there was a place that rented luxury cars — Hummers, Mercedes, Audis, Jaguars, Ferraris — which they’d park on the shoulder of the road outside your hedges to make it look like you’re having a big party. The theory is, if your neighbors see that you are having big prestigious parties, they will invite you to theirs. Apparently that is not how things work in East Hampton. There were many gatherings with lines of cars parked outside houses in our neighborhood all through the summer months and we didn’t receive one invitation despite our investment in the rent-a-cars.

“Would Tolstoy Have Gotten

A Table at Nick and Toni’s?”

2 Stars

    They are not nasty, impolitic, or impolite at Nick and Toni’s. In fact, the staff treats deserving couples who drive up looking for a table the way Doctors Without Borders treats starving refugees in the Sudan. The question is, why would the average non-Nobel or Oscar-winning human being want to eat at Nick and Toni’s? For the food? C’mon. The zucchini chips may be good, but is it worth the indignity of actually seeing where one stands in the Great Chain of Being? What I learned from our experience of trying to eat at Nick and Toni’s over the course of a summer is that if you are low on the food chain, then you’d better acquire your food elsewhere. Yes, we did get a table one evening when there was a cloudburst which caused a five-car pileup that cut off all eastbound traffic (we were coming from the opposite direction). The restaurant was still crowded with celebrities who’d been helicoptered in. The service was very efficient and the food as expected was excellent, but the experience was hardly worth the stress. We spent the whole evening tearing ourselves apart for not being as creative as Steven Spielberg or as rich as Ron Perelman and then drove home in silence after getting into a big fight in which we blamed each other for our failed expectations.

    Francis Levy, who lives in Manhattan and Wainscott, is the author of the novels “Erotomania: A Romance” and “Seven Days in Rio.” He blogs at TheScreamingPope.com.

Surfing the Net recently, I finally figured out what’s gone wrong with baseball. The cheapest seat at an upcoming Yankees-Red Sox series was $55, about four times the cost of an official major league baseball, which goes for $13.99. In my baseball days, back in the 1930s, the cost of a baseball was four times that of a bleacher seat, about a dollar for the ball, 25 cents for the ticket, and only 10 cents for kids under 12, which is what my friend Dick Warren and I were in 1937, when Boom-Boom was pitching for the San Francisco Missions.

    Now I do concede an element of apples and oranges here in that the Missions were a “minor” Pacific Coast League team. But then the perks we got for our 10 cents more than made up for the variations in league status. There was Ball Day when the players stood on platforms and tossed baseballs to the kids to scramble for, hundreds of baseballs, and some pretty good fights broke out in the pileups that followed. Imagine what the lawyers, insurance companies, and today’s fretful parents who ring their kids’ cellphones every 15 minutes they aren’t home would say to that one.

    Dick, who was the smaller, nimbler, and more daring of us, got four balls on one afternoon. And then there was Bat Day, when we’d get autographed Louisville Sluggers. Real bats with autographs no player would think of asking money for.

    The most important perk of all, however, was that we got to hang out with Boom-Boom. Boom-Boom was Walter Wil­liam Beck, a relief pitcher for the Missions from 1935 through 1938. An Internet photo shows a gangly young man with an innocent country-boy Jimmy Stewart look that masks the sophistications of hot-rod racing under the torrid sun and torrid nights making out in the back seat of a borrowed Airflow Chrysler.

    The 10-cent right-field bleacher seats came right down to the field level, where in the narrow foul space between the diamond and the stands the Missions’ pitchers warmed up (not protected girly-boy bullpens in those days). When the Missions were behind 10 to 2, as they often were, Boom-Boom, a sidearm spitballer, would be called upon to go in and finalize his team’s humiliation. He’d saunter out of the dugout to warm up and Dick and I would clamber over the bleacher seats to the front field-level row, where he would pause long enough to give us chewing gum, in lieu of the chewing tobacco Dick requested, inform us that the country was so messed up it should be given back to the Indians, and tell us that his present objective was to get Ted Norbert, left fielder for the rival San Francisco Seals, to hit an infield pop-up so high the center fielder would have time to meander in, yawn, and catch the ball. Norbert, who succeeded Joe DiMaggio in the Seals’ outfield, had a talent for hitting stratospheric pop-ups that I believed could bring rain.

    Dick and I illusioned ourselves into believing that we had christened Beck Boom-Boom from our appreciation of the resounding sound that line drives hit off him would make smashing into Seals Stadium’s wooden fence. But now I learn the moniker preceded us.

    Here’s how it really happened. On July 4, 1934, Beck was pitching for the Brooklyn Dodgers and leading in a game against the Philadelphia Phillies when the Philadelphia batters started to blast him. The Dodgers’ manager, Casey Stengel, went to the mound to remove him and asked him for the ball. Beck said he still had good stuff and refused. Stengel demanded the ball. Furious, Beck fired the ball from the pitching mound all the way to the tin-plated right-field fence, where it boomed hugely and caromed back toward Hack Wilson, the Brooklyn right fielder.

    Wilson, a prodigious hitter and drink­er, was hung over, and more than somewhat abstracted from events on the field. Assuming the boom was yet another long line drive off Beck, Wilson sprung awake, chased down the ball, and fired a perfect throw to second base. Beck left the game and, at the end of the year, with a two-win, six-loss record, left the majors for the Missions, where he entered our lives.

    To our astonishment, Boom-Boom actually returned to the major leagues in 1939, where, appropriately, he pitched during World War II for the Phillies, who, probably the most inept team in major league history, lost more than 70 percent of their games over the next four years. Beck did little to lift them, losing about 75 percent of his games. He returned to the minors and pitched his last game, for the Toledo Mud Hens of the American Association, in 1951 at the age of 46, and won it 10 to 2. He died in 1987 in Illinois.

    Dick and I went off to war. I was lucky and made it back okay, but Dick was killed in 1945, in the Huertgen Forest. We’d have done a lot of things together if he’d lived, but we’d never have spent any time in $55 bleacher seats with no access to a bullpen.

Richard Rosenthal is the author of “The Dandelion War,” a humorous novel about class warfare in the Hamptons, and the host of “Access,” which won an award from the Alliance for Community Media in 2010 for the quality of its non-mainstream broadcasting. He lives in East Hampton.

    Here are some very important tips to optimize your Hamptons summer shopping experience:

    When a salesperson greets you, don’t be afraid to smile and respond. She is just being friendly — it’s an odd local custom. You’ll get used to it, and you can always ignore her if she tries to bother you again.

    If you are a bright star in the human galaxy, the Hamptons retail clerk will assume you desire anonymity and pretend not to recognize you. If you are a not-so-bright star you may get the same treatment. Don’t get all huffy; it could be a compliment. Keep in mind, though, you lesser stars, if you don’t get the service you desire, don’t ask, “Do you know who I am?” You may be disappointed.

    Make sure to complain to the salesperson about the traffic, the parking, and the ticket you just got. It’s all obviously her fault. The weather, especially if it is bad during your vacation, is also her problem. In fact, if you take out all of your summer frustrations on the sales clerk, you’ll feel so much better.

    Ignore all posted signs. “Returns — Store Credit Only” does not apply to you. You deserve a full refund. Neither does the “No Food or Drinks” sign. You would never spill your iced mocha latte on their precious merchandise. The “Employees Only” sign on the bathroom is just preposterous. Why should you use the public restroom? “Shirts and Shoes Required” is only for people with flabby abs or no pedicure. “No Dogs Allowed” doesn’t mean Pookie; she’s part of the family. And the posted store hours are always flexible. If you need something before they open, just bang on the door until someone comes. If you are still in the store at closing time, simply stay until you are good and ready to leave. Don’t feel rushed, even if the sales clerk looks tired and unhappy. Another half-hour won’t kill her.

    Lament the high prices and how everything is cheaper in the city or New Jersey or online. With those prices, the store should have exactly what you want. But if they don’t, order the item anyway, then buy it somewhere else. Remember, it is always worth badgering the salesperson for a special price or discount, especially when she is very busy.

    Don’t ever wait in line. Just push up to the counter and demand immediate service. If the clerk is on the phone, talk over her. If she is waiting on someone else, interrupt them. Become irate if your credit card is declined or your wallet is in the car. Someone else is surely responsible. Wet or sweaty bills pulled directly from your swimsuit or biking shorts are perfectly acceptable. Don’t apologize. Last-minute purchases before you catch the Hampton Luxury Liner? Leave your luggage where everyone will trip over it and make the clerk gift wrap everything while you loom over her and fidget.

    Expect your salesperson to know the exact location of every store, restaurant, and road in every town in the Hamptons and be able to answer every question pertaining to all of them. If she doesn’t answer to your satisfaction, try speaking VERY LOUDLY or veeery slooowly and always E-NUN-CI-ATE.

    When checking out, make sure to comment on deforestation if the store has paper bags, and landfills if they use plastic. If they have both options, complain about how many bags you already have at home. Never bring your own. And if the salesperson actually asks if you’d like a bag, you should reply disdainfully either “Of course” or “Of course not,” depending on your mood.

    Shop with your kids! If they are restless and bored or have dripping ice cream cones and chocolate-covered fingers, allow them to run freely in the store and redecorate while you shop. They can climb stairs and jump from step stools, pull items from shelves, and explore areas marked “No Admittance.” If they are screaming and yelling with excitement or rage, don’t bother quieting them or feel you need to leave the store. Make sure to park all strollers in the middle of the store or in narrow aisles. Never clean up anything.

    No kids? Shop with your dog! Does Lulu bark, growl, and like to bite people? Bring her along when you shop. Is Thor a great fighter? Bring him too. Friendly Rufus should have a long leash so he can drool, shed, and jump on everybody. And don’t worry if your best friend has a little accident. Just ignore any puddles. Why should you have to mop up?

    Please speak extra loudly on your cellphone so that the customers in the back can hear. Better yet, walk around the entire store while you argue with your lawyer, broker, contractor, or spouse. Don’t hang up when you are checking out. You don’t really need to talk to the salesperson anyway; rudimentary sign language and exaggerated facial expressions should be sufficient.

    Remember, the customer is always right, especially in the Hamptons.

    L.J. Gurney has lived and worked on both sides of the retail counter in the Hamptons.

   Sunday morning’s 11:30 Mass at Most Holy Trinity Church in East Hampton should have been like a hundred other Masses I’ve attended since my first holy communion at Immaculate Conception Church in Astoria many springtimes ago. Mass is usually enlightening, uplifting, rewarding, but this day’s Mass left me depressed, withdrawn, withered, humiliated. No other Sunday service will remain with me for life other than the one when I nearly choked on the wafer at my first holy communion, approached Mother Superior so say that I couldn’t swallow the half dollar-size host, and they stopped the communion service.

    “Sister, I can’t swallow the host, I’m choking,” I mumbled.

    I clearly remember her scolding an 8-year-old little Frankie at the back of the church for speaking with his mouth filled with his first holy communion wafer. Nevertheless, all of Immaculate Conception’s congregation knew the name Frankie Vespe in May 1963 . . .

    Normally I attend the 11:30 Mass with my wife and one of my four children, but my wife was busy applying her third coat of Bain de Soleil for her sojourn to Main Beach, my 16-year-old daughter was straightening her long blond hair for her job at Dylan’s Candy Bar, my 12-year-old son focused on his “25-cent Lemonade” lettering for his lemonade stand, one son shot hoops in the backyard, and another son screamed at a virtual enemy in Call of Duty on his Xbox in the basement.

    On Sunday, I was alone in my quest to spend time with my maker.

    The Mass was overloaded with visitors when I arrived 20 minutes into the service, so I stood in the foyer at the back of the church, sometimes leaning on the marble holy water podium, smiling broadly to a handful of people near me. As soon as I arrived, Monsignor Hanson began the Lord’s Prayer, or the Our Father, as I have called it for 40 years.

    At the end of the prayer, the monsignor asked visitors to show a sign of peace to one of their closest congregants, such as a kiss to my wife and daughter, or a peck on my sons’ heads, but I was caught off guard and forced to adjust to a new strategy and quickly shook hands with three male ushers, then turned to my right and extended my hand to a striking 30-something strawberry blonde with beautiful green eyes wearing a pink, well-fitting blouse and an above-the-knee black skirt, Sofia Vergara earrings, and sandals with three-inch heels. Her very proper mother stood alongside, and I shook her hand in peace as well.

    As the monsignor continued his sermon for holy communion, the strawberry blonde walked behind me and over to a GOJO, a hand sanitizer hanging on the left wall of the entranceway foyer of the church, a few feet from where I was standing, and pushed three times to dispense a huge amount of sanitizer into her hands. A minute later, her mother walked over to the GOJO and did the same thing, right after they’d shaken my hand! “That was odd,” I thought.

    Attending Sunday service has always meant a day of respect for the church, and so I make an effort to dress properly: slacks, dress shirt, and shoes, always black shoes.

    “You live in a resort community,” my wife would always blast me. “Some of the community’s most famous residents come to church in T-shirts, shorts, and sandals,” she’d always say, and so I followed her advice and wore a dress shirt, shorts, and sandals this particular morning, but somehow the look was seen as inappropriate, as evidenced by the two women sanitizing their hands after shaking mine.

    “Do I appear unhealthy, seedy, unkempt?” I kept asking myself for the remainder of the service.

    When the service ended, I sat immobile in a rear seat I grabbed after holy communion and stared at the ceiling, the stained glass, until the monsignor exited the rear of the church. “If hand sanitizers had been available when Jesus walked,” I thought, “would he have used one, especially with the amount of healing and prayer he gave to many ill and impoverished people? Or is this really a sign of the times as more and more people become reclusive and fear the closeness of others? What kind of message is the church trying to convey with hand sanitizers hanging throughout when the church setting is one of love, closeness, togetherness?” I pondered these questions long after the monsignor left the foyer and began pressing flesh with his congregants.

    Perhaps the message is not one of epiphany or mystery, but one of not staring at a striking strawberry blond 30-something woman with green eyes wearing a well-fitting pink blouse, Sofia Vergara earrings, and three-inch heels in church when your wife of 25 years is sunning herself at Main Beach.

Frank Vespe is sales manager at 94.9 News Now, WJJF, and a video producer. He lives in Springs.