The Hamptons Coffee was good at the Potatohampton 5K Sunday, the timing seamless, the organizers affable. The straightaways past the horse pastures and mansions of Bridgehampton were lengthy and sunstruck.
But as to familiar faces of yore, it reminded me of going to a Bridgies basketball game before the big renovation: I think I caught a glimpse of a single former Bridgehampton High classmate from the 1980s, Jennifer Damiecki, as she was known then, a name evoking more bountiful days of tuber harvesting hereabouts.
My own family was farming-adjacent. We rented a farmhouse just east of McCoy Fuel. It was old. An elbow bump against the wall in my upstairs bedroom would send a shower of plaster from between the lath down the in-between space and into the foundation.
We had it for a song. Mid-’70s to mid-’80s, you could do that. It came with acreage, too, an expanse of lawn that took forever to mow, a big circle drive, mature trees. Even a barn out back. And beyond that, yes, potato fields, seemingly stretching to Sagaponack, a stand of woods the only break between.
Nothing against my old school, but I’ve always remembered my mother apologizing for not being able to afford to send me to a private school, where, at least in theory, I’d get a better education. Or, maybe more to the point, have a better chance of meeting a fellow oddball.
Those were different times, as the ever-quotable Lou Reed put it. And hey, the classes were small, it worked out, and I get to bring it up as a cudgel in discussions of who’s local.
The Potatohampton 5K is a Bridgehampton Museum production. It was revived last year, dedicated to Peter Walsh, who was a member of the museum’s board and an owner of Coogan’s, the legendary Washington Heights bar and community hangout. This year it nearly could’ve been run in memory of another charming raconteur, Jean Lindgren, my late mother, who was not a board member but for years a volunteer, back in the days of the puttering, banging engine runs with Cliff Foster from the Foster Farm and Russell Simons, who happened to live across Montauk Highway from our rented farmhouse.
For this, a different kind of run, Jean’s three grandchildren did the 5K, and judging from our final email exchange, dated May 26, she was looking forward to hearing how it went.
Well, they were together, thinking of you. We’ll have to do it again next year.