Columnists

    Walking into the Seafood Shop in Wainscott, for a moderately obsessed recreational fisherman like me, brings to mind the fans of the New Orleans Saints in the bad old days, when the team stank so much people in the stands took to wearing paper bags over their heads to avoid embarrassment.

    The Suffolk County Legislature is getting in on the nationwide campaign to get consumers to take along reusable bags when they go shopping (which is even touted on posters in post offices). A hearing is to be held today on a proposal to impose a five-cent surcharge on every plastic or paper bag distributed by a retailer in the county.

    The story was supposed to begin here at an illegal poker hall in Hicksville called the River, but the River ran dry and I was left staring at a blackened door with a mailbox next to it that said Fish. It must have been a marker or tag for new players to locate the building. Fish swam in the river, right? More than likely, the River was flowing somewhere else, but I had no idea where to find it.

    There is a fellow who often has his hand out for a ride from Damark’s to the village on Thursday morning at the time I go to work, and perhaps he’s begun dreading the sight of me pulling over to give him a lift, for it gives me a chance to practice my Spanish.

    “Ah! Ahora puedo practicar mi espanol!” I said in opening the passenger side door for him this morning.

The city was killing me. I had lived in five suspended-in-the-sky Brooklyn boxes in five years. And had commuted through Grand Central Station for three of those years, navigating the sweltering shuffle of feet in a kind of fish-feeding frenzy, darting between sharp elbows and swinging suitcases, muttering halfhearted “Sorry”s as I stuffed myself into the subway car before the doors slid shut with that metallic bing bong.

    The miracle that is September after Labor Day is upon us, and what might have seemed impossible a few weeks ago is now within the realm of possibility.

    A week ago Friday, I had Ellis, our nearly 20-month-old, in the truck, going along on North Main Street in East Hampton. Noticing that the farmers market in the lot next to Nick and Toni’s was open and that there was a parking spot directly across the street, I pulled over.

    It was a late-summer morning as I sat facing the bay in an Adirondack chair, drinking my first cup of Barry’s Irish tea. I was at our summer rental cottage. It was the beginning of the hurricane season. The temperature ominously dropped 10 degrees and the wind picked up, indicating an approaching storm. I could see what looked like a tornado enveloping me in its dark fury, its funnel shape passing directly overhead.

    I have in hand the LIPA newsletter that accompanied this month’s bill, and I want to share some of it with you (especially you who have been without power these last six days, as has been the case with me and, from what I can gather, numerous other working stiffs in Springs).

    Interestingly, the newsletter has as its heading, “LIPA Is Prepared for Hurricane Season, Are You?”

    It is hard to believe that a decade has passed since I was running down the street with a building chasing me. Ten years. While it feels like a long time ago, I can close my eyes, and it all comes roaring back in a second.

    On Sept. 11, 2001, I was teaching high school 100 feet away from the World Trade Center. Conjuring that day — the sounds, the smells, the taste, the feeling of time suspended, the homeless man covered in ash pantomiming something on a park bench — is a blurred rush, but it is the fear that I carry with me the most.

    The tussle over language and local place names has entered my own house, with my elder daughter announcing this week that she had taken a singing lesson in the Springs. I shuddered. As anyone who grew up here can tell you, it’s Springs, not “the” Springs, but my daughter doesn’t believe me.

    At some point in the run-up to Irene we thought the hurricane might make landfall here in the small hours of the morning, and I was quite worried about what might happen — while we were sleeping — to the huge, old tulip tree in our side yard. In 2007, our favorite tree was estimated as 104 feet tall and as having a spread of about 70 feet. At the time, we also learned it was already in decline, or “overmature.”

    “The end is near, the end is near!” I said, running through the village last Thursday afternoon on the way to East Hampton Wines to buy a three-day supply of Mudhouse’s sauvignon blanc.

    What else? A whistle. Newsday said in its preparedness list that I should have one. It’s more impressive if you have a whistle when you run through the village shouting “The end is near (Tweet)! The end is near (Tweet)!”

    What else? It’s time to think of final things, Jack, such as taking a remedial course in math.

    All I want for Labor Day is for my power to come back on. It’s my turn this week to write this column and though I have several columns waiting to be published, how could I not write about the hurricane? I’m told we could be without power for 6 to 10 days!

    Monday morning’s helicopter traffic at East Hampton Airport began at about 6:12, at least according to the clock on my computer screen.

    Because of the hurricane, Lisa and I had evacuated the dogs and the children to her parents’ house on high ground off Route 114, about two-thirds of the way from East Hampton to Sag Harbor. I was up before the sun on Monday, trying to post updates on the storm on The Star’s Web site. The door to the back deck was open, so the dogs, confused about being in the wrong house, could go in and out.

      The grandfather clock is ticking again. A clock expert, an East Hampton summer resident, cleaned and adjusted it this week and set it going for the first time in three years.

    It had stood with its pretty old face askew all that time after some hapless housepainters, clearing the furniture before setting to work on the living room, had laid it down, flat, on the floor. We were dismayed that it had been damaged, but hadn’t acted to get it fixed till now.

    I never played with my children. I took them to museums, plays, puppet shows, movies, and bowling and I read to them, but I never just sat down and played with them. My energy level fell to zero handling the everyday tasks of raising four kids after a long day in the office. I just couldn’t motivate myself to make forts with them out of Legos.

On Channel 13 the other night the economics reporter, Paul Solman, was standing outside a theater in New York City showing people pie charts of three countries’ economies and asking them to pick America’s.

    In the top one (which didn’t exist), there were five equal slices. In the middle one, the top 20 percent had 36 percent of the wealth. In the bottom one, the top fifth controlled 84 percent.

It was only last Thursday that Barbara Strong Borsack, deputy mayor of East Hampton Village and a recent addition to Southampton Hospital’s board of directors, set her eagle eye on me as I sat waiting to scribble my notes just prior to the East Hampton Village Board meeting.

    I noticed, as a few people came into the room, that Ms. Borsack was handing out pretty blue T-shirts. I wanted one, and let my wishes be known.

    “They’re for my Ellen’s Run team,” she said. “If you want one, you have to join my team.”

    My family had a chance to see the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaleship in existence, at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut last weekend. We had been to New Hampshire to pick up Adelia, our oldest child, at camp, and made our way back to the New London ferry by way of a water park, a visit to the college I went to, an amusement park, the Mystic Aquarium, and the Seaport.

    Our house has been full of kids this summer, or at least it feels full when, say, three grandchildren are around.

    “Three?” a friend asked with what sounded almost like a snicker. “All 11 grandchildren were here,” she said. “We’ve got a big house, but you have no idea what shopping for food, which we did every day, was like.”

    “Welcome. You have reached the customer assistance center for National Grid. . . . The estimated wait time to speak to a representative is 10 minutes or less. . . . At the end of this call, your representative may ask you to provide the answers to two short questions about the service we provided you.”

    Seven minutes, 15 seconds later:

    “Can I have your account number?”

    “I don’t have my account number with me. I’m returning your call.”

    “Without your account number, I cannot talk to you about your account.”

    Having taken a peek at Geoff Gehman’s memoir before it went to press, before it went to print last week, I ran through the office saying I had been canonized.

    But, as Geoff later correctly said in an e-mail, in order to be canonized you’ve got to be dead.

    I had to go to the post office two Tuesdays ago to get the mail for the office. Russell Bennett usually goes but had no car, so I offered. I opened our box, extracted all of the mail, and was headed to the mail counter to pay for some postage-due receipts. The gentleman who was also headed to the counter held the door open for me. It was Eli Wallach!

    When the thought crossed my mind well before my family headed out to the Sag Harbor carnival last week to get a fishbowl ready, I should have acted on the impulse. Instead, we returned with a bag of three goldfish from one of the games of chance and had no place to put them.

    My wife got up to take communion at Tom Bergmann’s funeral at Most Holy Trinity Church the other day, and I must admit I, unshriven as usual, was a bit surprised.

    But she reminded me later that she thought of the rite differently, that it had to do for her with bounteous nature and our humble place in it rather than with any pastoral proscriptions or learned behavior.

One of the surprises in growing older, at least for me, is that you have trouble recognizing people you’ve known for ages. It’s not that you start forgetting who your friends are — again, at least in my case — but that they no longer look like the person who is lodged in your visual memory. Only after a double take do you realize who it is, and only after the encounter is over does it occur to you to wonder if you have become unrecognizable, too.

    On a brilliant afternoon at Mecox Bay, while one of our friends made lunch, the other offered to take my husband and me for a spin in their Boston Whaler. We three walked barefoot to the end of the dock for a short, unserious outing.

    Feeling like 12-year-olds on the lake at camp, we shed our septuagenarian identities. We were practically singing, we were so happy. For about 15 minutes, we followed a flotilla of swans — equal in elegance to the estates along the bay.

Birthdays come but once a year, which is a drag because on that one day I’m treated like a queen and even get away with not having to cook dinner. Mine was yesterday, and I’m sure by the time this is published I will be basking in the afterglow of a wonderful day. Do not fret, however, if you missed it, because in my house we have birthday week, which allows me to get away with a lot for the week, except preparing dinner. I will graciously continue to accept gifts, and if you need a hint, I’m still waiting for my Rolex watch, preferably in rose gold.