Where do you call home?
Is it the place where you pay your mortgage? Spend your weekends? Raise your kids? Or is it the place where you were born…grew up…or grew out of?
A couple of weeks ago, I paid a visit to the place I still call home, even though I haven’t lived there for decades, and barely a soul known to me abides there still.
Shelter Island, it’s accurately called, hidden as it is between the higher-profile North and South Forks of eastern Long Island, and accessible only by ferry. There, I spent fourteen summers (and one winter) immersed in an idyllic cocktail mixed of 1 part natural splendor, 3 parts alcohol and drugs, and not-nearly-enough-parts teenage sex.
Even as a matter of history, Shelter Island was a place apart from the trendy Hamptons and the horsy North Fork.
As far back as the 1830’s – at a time when the Hamptons’ glitterati were mostly growing potatoes – Shelter Island was home to one of the nation’s first planned resort communities. Just a few decades later, in the 1870’s, early developers were transporting eager Manhattanites to the island via luxury steamer to participate in auctions for waterfront lots.With the advent of the Gilded Age, however, abstemious Shelter Island lost much of its appeal to New York’s taste-makers. Better known for the waves of Methodists who summered at its revival campground, the island was largely overlooked by the wealthy elites who now flocked to trendier neighboring communities.
And so it remained…as late as 1973, my first summer on the island. No record mogul or investment banker worth his gourmet sea salt would be caught dead on Shelter Island, and so left it alone. As a result, it was – and to some extent still remains – a real community. A place where the leading politician had his office in a trailer at the town dump, and the names you’d find listed in the phone book pretty well matched the names listed on a 1870’s property-map.
It was a place where you could quite easily know everyone, and everyone could easily know you. A place with four policeman, 8 bars and endless potential for an eager – oh, so eager – young man with trouble on his mind.And that’s where my story begins…
4 comments:
I am interested in comparing your 70's experiences to a certain July 4th weekend in Bridgehampton during the eighties...
I spent a couple of those, as well. Jog my memory...
This one involved a crazed boston-based religion graduate student who indiscriminately set off fireworks in '86...
Must have been externalizing the whole "crisis of belief" thing...
Each 4th of July, for many years in the late '70s, my friends and I would try to sneak into George Plimpton's party in East Hampton. We'd slyly find our way to the beach, with the thought that we'd simply wend our way onto his property from the ocean side, with no one the wiser.
Needless to say, hundreds of people had the same idea and there would be a small security detail to prevent our entry. But they did allow us to stay and watch the incredible fireworks from just outside the property line.
One year, my older brother had a job selling Rolls Royces for a Southampton car dealer, and together, we tried a new approach. We drove right up to the gate, gave the guard a made-up name, and waited while -- not seeing our "name" on his printed list -- he called in on his walkie-talkie, looking us over carefully as he did.
Sure enough, the car did the trick. That year, we saw the fireworks from the inside, drinking George's beer, bumming cigarettes from Terry Southern.
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