125 Years Ago 1897
From The East Hampton Star, February 26
It was a fashionable ball given by the Social Seniors in Clinton Hall Monday evening. There were about thirty couples present, and it was one of the most enjoyable affairs of the season. The supper served in the annex was one of the best ever spread in the hall.
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Numerous complaints have been received concerning the impassable conditions of the town highways on the outskirts of our village. One of our citizens had occasion to go to East Side from Amagansett and found the main highway between those two points had not been opened since the heavy snow storms. He made complaint to the highway commissioner and was promised that the road would be opened the next day. The promise was broken but the road was not.
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A flock of wild geese, numbering about sixty, has been reported on Great pond, Montauk. It is about time for many geese to be there and no doubt in a little while there will be hunting galore.
100 Years Ago 1922
From The East Hampton Star, February 24
At the Town Board meeting in Southampton last week authority was given Highway Superintendent Frank Downs to purchase a “Best caterpillar tractor,” a “Killefer” scarifier, and a “Champion” oil tank, which will be installed on the new Liberty automobile truck recently procured without cost from the State Highway Department.
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Drawing conclusion from a recent letter from Congressman F.C. Hicks, it is possible there will be no army camp at Montauk this year. Last year several thousand regulars and state militia were in camp at Camp Welsh, Montauk, and spent the summer there in training and artillery practice. There was some objection by a few residents of Montauk to having the camp, but there were also many residents, especially those in business there and in the villages of Sag Harbor, East Hampton and Amagansett, who were delighted, for business reasons.
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The Suffolk County Fair will be held in Riverhead this year September 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23. The experiment of holding the fair five days last year proved so popular and successful that the officers and directors of the Suffolk County Agricultural Society at their annual meeting last week decided to have it the same number of days this year.
75 Years Ago 1947
From The East Hampton Star, February 27
Two walnut plaques — the Honor Roll — containing 231 names of Amagansett veterans of World Wars I and II, were dedicated and placed in the front hall of the Amagansett public school at 8:30 on Wednesday evening, February 19. The dedication ceremonies were impressive.
The program opened with a march played by the East Hampton High School band. The National Anthem was played, while there was a massing of the colors by Everit Albert Herter Post, No. 550, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the East Hampton Town American Legion Post, No. 419.
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New York State’s battle to protect the beaches of Long Island from encroachment by the sea is outlined in a report submitted to the Legislature yesterday by Assemblyman Edmund R. Lupton, chairman of a joint legislative committee. The committee was appointed in 1944 to investigate means of checking erosion.
Unless protected, many miles of valuable recreational beach front will be washed into the sea, it was pointed out.
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Nothing was said in East Hampton last weekend about the shifting of the Gulf Stream, and no nostalgic remarks were made about Those Old-Fashioned Winters. The snowstorm was the real old-fashioned variety, drifting above the tops of Main Street picket fences in a good many places. As this is written, on Wednesday, the sidewalks are still impassable except in front of the stores; all travel is in the middle of the streets, which are now well cleared.
50 Years Ago 1972
From The East Hampton Star, February 24
As W.C. Fields was wont to remark, ’twarnt fit for man nor beast. The weather last Saturday, and Sunday too, might best be characterized as abominable.
Police Chief John Henry Doyle put the situation this way:
“A rainstorm dumped several inches of rain and assorted troubles on the East Hampton Town Police Department all day Saturday. At 11 a.m. Patrolman John Claflin found one Jason Epstein, 33 West 67th Street, New York City, had been driving his 1971 Volvo on Route 114, observed road barriers and flares warning the public of the flooded area under the railroad bridge, but thought that if he went fast enough the Volvo might float over the flooded area.”
“It didn’t.”
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At Friday’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Board, a public hearing was scheduled for next month on a proposal to control group renting; an amendment to the shellfish ordinance was passed to streamline the process of opening and closing Town waters for “powering” soft clams; and a group of Amagansett School students asked for donations of beach grass and pine tree seedlings to plant on dunes near the Amagansett Coast Guard Beach.
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Ralph Maloney, once of Three Mile Harbor, will be remembered as the discoverer of the green-pickup-truck syndrome (the mark of the true Bonacker) and the author of “The Great Bonacker Whisky War.” He is gone from these parts, but not forgotten.
In his absence, in New England, he has not been idle. Mr. Maloney has had a number of magazine articles published and now, in the novel “The Nixon Recession Caper,” he seems to have hit a jackpot of sorts.
25 Years Ago 1997
From The East Hampton Star, February 27
MOSCOW, Feb. 24:
Det. Lieut. James Maher stepped delicately up the stairs in his shiny black patent-leather shoes, careful not to scuff the heels of Lieut. Col. Vitaly Kiiko’s dusty combat boots.
Detective Maher, of the Suffolk County Police Department, was about to conduct the final session of a weeklong seminar to teach Russian police the crime-stopping methods of America’s finest.
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Motorists traveling along Route 27 in East Hampton Town and beyond will be negotiating an obstacle course for some time yet — sideswiping cavernous potholes while trying not to get stuck in muck on the shoulders. If the State Department of Transportation sticks to its present work schedule, that is.
First proposed in 1993 with the understanding that the work would start in 1997, a major resurfacing of Route 27 here will not take place until at least 1999 or 2000, according to D.O.T. officials. When their time does come, the improvements will come in two parts: a 10.5-mile stretch from Norris Avenue just east of the Sag Harbor-Bridgehampton Turnpike in Bridgehampton to Cranberry Hole Road, Amagansett, and from Cranberry Hole to Montauk Point.
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The one-woman corporate phenomenon that is Martha Stewart rented Guild Hall one morning last week to introduce a new line of bed and bath furnishings to representatives of the metropolitan media, some of whom turned around the next morning and bit the hand that also fed them a lavish buffet lunch.
Why hold the briefing in East Hampton? Because, Ms. Stewart told her guests as they arrived at her Lily Pond Lane house afterward, “I have 13 bedrooms!”
