Meg Gage stopped by with a rare artifact this week — a vintage metal license plate with the silhouette of a fisherman pulling a net from a small sharpie below the words “The Springs N.Y.” in two-inch-high, dark-green lettering.
I did not get a chance to get the story from Meg about its provenance, but Russell Bennett, who works in The Star’s front office, said it had turned up in her house during a cleanup. It’s from the late 1950s or early ’60s, by my guess.
There is a long tradition here of people coming by with one kind of interesting curiosity or another. My grandmother Jeannette Edwards Rattray might even have had a bit of a case of sticky fingers — there are some brochures and news clippings left among her files still bearing notations to return them. Grandma died in 1974.
Among my prized possessions is a 1960s plastic bottle of fish emulsion plant food made at the Smith Meal factory at Promised Land, which Mark Crandall gave me. Full and heavy, with collapsed sides from age, I haven’t had the nerve to open it and take a sniff.
The “The Springs” license plate is a nice enough object on its own and will find a place soon amid the other objects in my office windowsill museum. (A door handle from a Jerry Seinfeld car wreck sits in a small bird’s nest there.) But it reminded me of the long-lived squabble over whether it’s just “Springs” or “the Springs.”
Given how deep I have gone down the local history rat hole, you might think I would have as close to an authoritative answer on this age old question as anyone. But try as I might, mine is yet another voice howling in the wilderness.
David Buda, perhaps the leading proponent of the “the Springs” position, would surely mount the plate on his car if Meg had given it to him. I am going to do no such thing and instead inquire if either the East Hampton or Springs Historical Societies might appreciate adding it to their collections. While in no way definitive, as an object it both captures the era in which it was made and a tangle that occupied the minds of many here into the early-21st century.
For the record, there is no definitive way to refer to Springs. East Hampton’s official records, letters, and land transfer papers going back more than 300 years have it both ways. I say Springs. You can say whatever the heck you please.
Thanks, Meg. You’re the best.