125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, May 11
The champions of "good roads" down in Suffolk County are perplexed by a new problem. They are anxious to make their section attractive to city people who seek summer resorts, and good roads are in their scheme for promoting that objective. Undoubtedly most country roads are not favorable to heavy vehicles. But our rural friends find there are two sides to the question. They find that many city people do not like to find their summer resorts too "citified." Many men who have encountered the stone walks and pavements of a city for eight or nine months are glad to put their feet upon the grass and drive over plain dirt roads. There is something in the change that is agreeable in many ways.
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Spring Body Cleaning
Every spring you clean the house you live in, to get rid of the dust and dirt which collected in the winter. Your body, the house your soul lives in, also becomes filled up during the winter with all manner of filth, which should have been removed from day to day, but was not. Your body needs cleaning inside. If your bowels, your liver, your kidneys are full of putrid filth, and you don't clean them out in the spring, you'll be in bad odor with yourself and everybody else all summer. Don't use a hose to clean your body inside, but sweet, fragrant, mild but positive and forceful CASCARETS, that work while you sleep. — Advertisement
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, May 8
Sag Harbor village is faced with the necessity of making provision for sewage disposal so there will be no possibility of contamination of waters of the bay into which sewage is drained. An act passed in the last legislature and sponsored by Senator Thompson makes easy accomplishment of the requirements of the State Sanitation Commission. Under it, upon petition of fifty percent of property owners of a given district a sewer district may be formed and bonds issued against such taxable property to pay for establishment of a sewer system to serve such district, or to extend such sewer systems as may at present serve a stated area.
The project is not introduced by the village board of trustees. They are compelled to meet the requirements of the Sanitation Commission, and have received a letter from Albany inquiring as to what movement they have made to meet the confronting situation.
Sag Harbor, for a great part of its most compactly settled section, has a natural gravity flow for sewage that may be discharged in the bay. It already has a sewer on its Main street. Both sewers discharge into Shelter Island Sound.
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The Star press has installed a new Huber seven-column quarto cylinder press and folder for printing its weekly edition. The press and folder are driven by individual motors and will greatly facilitate the publication every week of the Star. The constant growth of the paper in size and number of pages necessitated the change. With the new press the presswork is cut in half.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, May 11
At a special meeting called for this Friday at Riverhead, the Board of Supervisors will again seek an answer for the new perennial question of what to do with the Suffolk County Airport. The effort to shape a plan of action will be aided by the recommendations of the airports committee and County Highway Superintendent Harry Tuthill.
Riverhead Supervisor Joseph Kelly, chairman, declined advance comment on the board's recommendations but it is anticipated that the growing dissatisfaction with the National Aircraft Maintenance Corporation's management of the former Army air base will come to a head at the session.
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Since the war's end about 50,000 telephones have been added by the New York Telephone Company in rural areas of New York State, according to a recent report. This record gain of 45 percent, which includes 19,000 telephones added in 1947, brings the total to 148,000 in rural areas, providing service to two-thirds of habitable establishments in these areas.
In extending this service to the rural people in the past two and half years, the company has added about 65,000 poles, and 16,000 miles of wire.
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, May 8
Sag Harbor should have its new sewage treatment system within eight months, but in the meantime, the Suffolk County Health Department may close down a number of Sag Harbor restaurants on the verge of their crucial summer season because they still discharge sewage into salt water.
Inspectors from the Department have been dropping colored dye into toilets of commercial establishments around town to check on whether they actually discharge sewage directly into the Harbor, which leads to Gardiner's Bay. Sag Harbor has gotten by discharging raw sewage from Main and Division Streets directly into its Harbor for decades, and most restaurants apparently still do. One such establishment is the American Hotel.
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The State Department of Environmental Conservation believes that there won't be enough gypsy moth caterpillars in East Hampton Town this year to justify the effort of spraying them. Last year, it had over 2,000 acres marked for spraying here. Throughout Suffolk County, it plans to spray fewer than 3,000 acres. Last year, it sprayed 15,071 acres.
Gypsy moth populations explode and collapse cyclically. Once the caterpillars have attained the extreme abundance evident here several years ago, the population's predators — certain beetles and viruses — explode too, destroying most of a generation before it can spawn the next.
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, May 11
Montauk commercial fishermen are alleging harassment by state officials following a series of unprecedented boardings, vehicle stops, and searches that began when the tires on nine police vehicles were slashed at the Montauk Yacht Club sometime during the night of May 1.
The fishermen say their boats have been boarded repeatedly and their cars pulled over again and again. On Sunday, their New York City-bound catch was delayed until after the Fulton Fish Market closed. They claim the actions are payback for the incident in the parking lot of the club, where marine law enforcement officials had gathered for a weeklong training course.
Fishermen are no strangers to inspections, either at sea or at the dock, which can be done without a warrant. But the scrutiny undertaken this week, which appeared to include an increase in traffic stops by state troopers, went beyond anything seen here since Prohibition, fishermen said.
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The question of whether East Hampton Airport will gain an increased capacity for flights took center stage at Friday's public hearing on proposed changes to the facility. Neighbors of the airport flung resentment at local pilots one moment, and the next, a hangar owner from UpIsland sternly fended off a demand from someone in the room for him to state where he lives before speaking.
"We want to be good neighbors," said Tom Hensler of Springs, a pilot. "We don't want to have people ticked off."
"That's what we are, ticked off," said an audience member.
