One of the recurring themes of this column that I keep returning to — like a dog that annoys its master by wearing holes in the living room rug by habitually turning circles and clawing at the carpet with its paws before lying down — is the incontrovertible truth that people used to have more fun.
This backward-looking insistence that things used to be better in the old days is, I know, one of the most obvious symptoms of chronic curmudgeonism. (While acute in my case, I’d argue that my illness is a reverse form of curmudgeonism, and therefore the less pernicious form. I’m advocating on behalf of delinquent behavior, for more — rather than less — unruliness, and not waving the rake at the neighborhood children and shouting demands for conformity and order.)
Under the rubric of “more fun” I would count the copious drinking of martinis, Tom Collinses, cognacs, Burgundys, and single-malt Scotches that the three generations preceding mine indulged in, during the tumult of the 20th century; they drank out of goblets and they drank out of galoshes, tipping the heel skyward and tumbling down the stairs into underground speakeasies. Even though I am really not a drinker myself, I raise a glass to the Boomers, the Greatest Generation, and the Lost Generation and their remarkable fortitude in drinking so long into adulthood and so late into the night.
Also under “more fun” I catalog these previous generations’ regular hosting of or attendance at dinner parties, as well as poker and bridge parties, mah-jongg parties, and all the assorted potlucks, barn dances, ladies’ tea luncheons, and other festive conclaves that have fallen out of fashion as we turn our faces toward our streaming devices like so many sunflowers turning toward the August sun. Also, participation in social orders, clubs, and fraternal organizations, like the Shriners or the Odd Fellows; I mean, I have no idea what my grandfather did with the Masons, other than wearing an apron and being gifted with the Masonic brass bookend I keep on my bedroom dresser, but I’m assuming it was fun. Also, sporty communal pursuits like bowling leagues or, depending on your place in the socioeconomic order, sailing regattas and races.
Because my grandmother, like my mother also before me, was a columnist for this newspaper, and, like me, rawther chatty, I have from time to time had the opportunity to read up on how she kept herself occupied in the whirlwind of entertainments, parties, edifying lectures, and social engagements that went on in the Village of East Hampton in the last, late (blighted but lamented) century. Her life was only long-ish; she died at 8o, after a stroke. But she left a written record of seven decades of “more fun” that stretched from around the end of the First World War, when she steamed off across the Atlantic to party in Constantinople, up until her death in 1974, the year of Watergate and the Ali-Foreman Rumble in the Jungle. The action after dark on Main Street was, according to Jeannette Edwards Rattray, poppin’.
And here is where your columnist annoys the newspaper reader by once again — like the cat who irks his exasperated owner by perpetually sharpening his claws on the same side corner of the white leather couch from Ikea, leaving the once-smooth and creamy surface in unsightly frays — complaining that, despite all the traffic passing through and the difficulty of navigating the Reutershan parking lot on a Saturday in summer, the village has become a ghost town. Emptied out. House windows dark. Absentee homeowners, weekenders, no one home. Hardly any friendly doors for trick-or-treaters to knock on. Boo!
And all this complaining is why I was so charmed on Saturday to be the guest of the new owners of the Hedges Inn, on the far side of Town Pond, who invited in various representatives of local, neighboring nonprofits and arts organizations — and, I think, just neighbors — for a dinner at Swifty’s, the second resurrection of the famous Upper East Side watering hole. (The first resurrection is down in Palm Beach at the Colony Hotel, which is owned by the same hoteliers who now own the Hedges and who, I am informed, used to live here on Toilsome Lane.) Yes, this columnist accepted a free dinner from the innkeepers.
My father, the late Star editor and an extremely rigorous upholder of the rules of journalistic integrity — which, among other strictures, decree that newspaper people must never accept gifts from businesses, governments, or any other subjects of reporting — surely had to try to put the kibosh on any exchange of free oysters or coq au vin for coverage, which my less-strict grandmother, his mother, may have been tempted to indulge in, but even he would probably have said it was all right that I had a free supper at Swifty’s, I think: I was invited as a representative of the Anchor Society, not as a journalist.
My pal Susan and I really did think the meal was excellent. She had filet mignon and I had monkfish, and we had fluke crudo to start, as well as (for her) an extra-dirty martini and (for me) a fancy strawberry cocktail, very refreshing and not too sweet. It was a convivial scene, with familiar faces from about the village lighted up by the torch light of the propane space heaters placed at intervals between the patio and the green and manicured garden, where there were white geraniums in pots and white upholstered lawn furnishings piped with black.
I thought of how my grandmother used to galivant up and down Main Street, several nights a week, in fair weather and foul, in spring, summer, fall, and winter, stopping at the Maidstone Arms with Craig Claiborne, supping at the 1770 House, dropping by the Hedges Inn for lobster a l’Americaine and fillet de sole Marguery. (Did you know that Henri Soulé of Le Pavillon and La Cote Basque, operated the Hedges from 1954 to 1964, those go-go years of rock-and-roll and Pall Malls?) I emphatically support the idea that we, the neighbors — those of us still standing — can gather at a good restaurant at the Hedges Inn.
Now, it’s not likely I’ll be dining at Swifty’s weekly. No. Because, you know. . . . Indeed, I cannot even reveal to you the menu prices, because the printed menu showed none on the night of the inn’s invited-guest grand opening. But I’m fairly certain I’ll be back with my daughter, Nettie, in July for her birthday, for brunch. Swifty’s is known for eggs Benedict and for popovers. I do like a good popover, served with honey butter. Nettie is named after her great-grandmother Jeannette and is a budding bonne vivante herself. She’s only turning 18, so I cannot let her order a champagne cocktail — the old-fashioned kind with the sugar cube and the bitters — or that one with the crushed strawberries, but maybe just a sip from my glass.