125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, May 4
The new cycle path on the Sag Harbor turnpike is about finished, but is in very poor condition for wheeling. The Shinnecock Hills path is also completed and reported to be in fine shape.
Joseph Classon, an insurance agent, was arrested in Riverhead Friday for riding on a cycle path without having a license tag. Commissioner Fishel warned the man and advised him to purchase a tag but he refused. He was fined $5 by Justice Buckingham. After paying the fine he bought a tag.
—
There was another jump of 9 percent in Long Island Railroad stock Wednesday, making nearly 20 percent in two days, and Manhattan Beach stock in sympathy advanced over 4 percent. The rise in Long Island is due to reports that the road will be absorbed by the New York Central.
A report that Governor Roosevelt had said that he would sign the New York Connecting Railroad bill, permitting the construction of a bridge and an elevated railway across the East River, started the boom for Long Island Railroad shares in the Stock Exchange.
On the assumption that the construction of the new bridge was destined to bring the Long Island road into very close connection with the New York Central, the brokers sent the price of Long Island shares up to 87, the stock closing at its highest figure.
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, May 1
The citizens of Suffolk County were not surprised in the least Monday when District Attorney Hildreth, who had promised a sweeping investigation into the Long Island rum scandal, had only one witness to testify at the hearing at Riverhead Monday.
It was not Frank Dickinson, caretaker of the Third House on the Benson estate, where nearly 3,000 cases of liquor were found. The witness was Julius Seegall, who for eight months was the executive officer of the Coast Guard station at Greenport.
Seegall charged that the bootleggers are so influential that they were able to bring about his removal because they could not bribe him and he was making too many seizures. Asked if he had ever been offered a bribe, he replied: “Yes.” District Attorney Hildreth was careful to bring out the fact that the bribe was offered on the high sea and therefore out of jurisdiction.
—
Governor Smith has signed the bill of Senator Truman, which provides for a joint trapping, hunting, and angling license, to take the place of the present hunting and trapping license.
The new law places all who participate in these three sports on an equal footing by having all contribute toward reimbursing the State for its expenditures in stocking the covers and streams with game and fish, in the benefits of which all share, and was advocated by sportsmen generally.
The law makes no increase in the cost of licenses, the price of the combination license being $1.25.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, May 4
Considerable excitement was occasioned at Montauk last week when four good-sized submarines entered Fort Pond Bay in a fog and stayed overnight. No crew members went ashore.
It turns out, upon consultation of a flag-book, that the submarines were Peruvian, probably American-built. Peru has quite a Navy. Each sub carries a flag, with three broad stripes in red white and red; on the center white stripe was some insignia. The flags were flown on the starboard side, astern of the conning tower.
The boats entered the Bay late Thursday afternoon and left at nine Friday morning. Quite a relief, to know they belong to a friendly nation.
—
A British Austin A40 sedan, after nineteen hours of a twenty-four-hour speed and endurance run on a concrete track at Suffolk County Airport, Westhampton, last Friday, ran head-on into a deer hidden by an early morning fog that closed in the airport. The deer was killed, the front end of the car was smashed, and the driver, Lieutenant Colonel A.T. “Goldie” Gardner, was uninjured, but not unruffled.
When the accident occurred, Colonel Gardner was traveling at sixty-five miles an hour around a track lighted by flares. He struck the deer with a thud that was heard all over the field, but, when the car returned to its pit, Colonel Gardner wasn’t even stunned — just mumbling something about “never expected deers on a race course.”
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, May 1
Local haulseiners and an organization of sportfishermen enamored of striped bass may be working warily toward a form of detente that would make local ocean beaches, in effect, a demilitarized zone for fishermen. But then again it may not.
In any case, the haulseiners have pulled aboard a major catch in getting Assemblyman I. William Bianchi, a Bellport Democrat, to tentatively withdraw his bill to bar commercial fishing of any kind for striped bass, the prime source of the haulseiners’ livelihood — and also the prime source of the sportfishermen’s ire.
The details of the compromise are murky. By one account, the compromise would make commercial fishermen give “priority rights” on the beaches to sportfishermen on weekends and holidays.
—
Bonacker Rouge? Bonacker Blanc? Hampton Bubbles? Will South Fork wines one day be a match for those of California and Bordeaux?
William E. Massee, who has written extensively on wines, and Raymond Sanchez, a former commercial airline pilot, both residents of East Hampton, think so. Mr. Massee’s advice to one and all is to get out of potatoes and “Plant Chardonnay!”
Their theory that the conditions here are ideal for growing the noble vines of the Bordeaux and Burgundy regions in France is being put to the test, and in two years’ time they, and we, will know the outcome when cuttings in the ground now bear their first fruits.
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, May 4
In the face of growing evidence of groundwater contamination from a number of pollutants, the Suffolk County Health Department is pushing for as many people as possible to hook up to public water.
Officials are concerned that there may be a connection between reports of disease, including cancer, on eastern Long Island and water containing pesticides or other contaminants. Many local residents, however, prefer to get their water from private wells, as they have since the area was settled. They claim well water may be better than public water, in part because it contains no chlorine.
—
“If you build it they will come,” a member of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee said after East Hampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman outlined his “dream” of a marine park — complete with a 1,000-seat amphitheater — on the shore of Montauk’s Fort Pond Bay.
Committee members were surprised to be greeted by Mr. Schneiderman when they arrived at the meeting at the Montauk School. He was ready for them, however, having set up maps, diagrams, and aerial photographs.
What he wasn’t ready for was their negative reaction and was clearly taken aback. Toward the end of the session, the supervisor asked for a show of hands in favor of the proposal. In a room of about 30 people three hands were raised.
