3 Days in Montauk

How fitting it is that we should choose the rainiest weekend of the month to go on an extended weekend vacation to..

a Hamptons beach.

That’s just like us.

Somehow, though, it always turns out to be the most memorable trip. Snug Harbor Motel was as simple as they come, cheap so we had to share the room with an army of ants. But really the ants made us feel right at home. It was a little distance from town (commonly known as ‘The Plaza’) so we waited for a bus but Bob came along first and picked us up in his pickup (thank you Bob!).

Rich in local information about everything from pancake houses to Itzak Perlman, Bob told us about a huge estate built by a rich mogul in the 20’s that had immense fireplaces now being converted into a library.

The irony hadn’t escaped us

I suppose each of us was trying to guess which books they would use to put out the fires.

Moby Dick?

Or maybe Mein Kampf?

At the Chowder House that night, Piccolina was getting antsy from the heat and the noise and we had to take her outside in turns to chill her out and sing her some songs from the Beatles Solo Years catalog. As I was gearing up on an early McCartney two local old timers passed me by and one of them threw me his learned and eloquently stated solution to her distress,

 ‘Little feller needs a hat!’.

I think even Emmanuelle was left speechless at this acute observation. Then I realized this may not be an entirely innocent remark (read it again!), but by the time I recovered they were both out of hearing-aid-shot.

So we went for a hike.

Over breakfast we talked a little bit about the parallels between pre- and post- nationalized socialism and Zionism. Little Juanita was beginning to lose the thread, and anyway by then we had agreed that if Marx were a zionist and Herzl a Socialist everything would be exactly the same except Golda Meir would have a moustache. That was as clear a cue as can be expected that we should both start seriously thinking about lunch.

We bought some cold cuts at the deli. They had a sign over the cold cut counter,

 ‘old fishermen don’t die, they just smell that way’

and the girl at the register thought Kneidel was a weird shirt. Not without her own brand of weirdness, she quickly got to the point: she was getting hitched next week. She also wanted to strangle her man sometimes. We wished her success.

Finding our way to Theodore Roosevelt Park was no picnic: the cab driver never heard of him. After some navigation we pulled up in front of an old, old house with a sign that said Office and an old old man sitting outside the Office. The old old man who was not in Office had a chewed cigar in his mouth, and he seemed to have been waiting for quite some time. Office was just one room, yellow with age, and on display was a newspaper clipping of Teddy Roosevelt in office.

Back outside the Office the old old man said he didn’t think there’s a trail where we were going, but we can go on ahead if we close the gate behind us so the cows don’t make a break for it. With 1910 behind us and uncharted land ahead, we followed the direction of the white paint stripes that miraculously grow on tree trunks leading us through the road less traveled by.

The hike turned out to be the most delicious part of our trip! The weather was damp and a bit cool but just perfect for walking as we hacked our way through thickets and forests (using the dull side of our bare skin) the trail was sprinkled with occasional clearings that revealed an ocean sparkling in majesty and glory, Piccolina was awake through most of it and even helped me read the map sometimes.

The pink tuna taxi man who picked us up in his pink tuna taxi cab was as nice as Bob except we had to pay him for being so kind. We didn’t have any pink money with us but he said he’d take twelve of whatever we got. Green pieces of paper exchanged hands, and then I paid him 12 bucks.

Back in the room we drained a bottle of Walla Walla red (excellent!) and ‘300’ was on cable. I’ll just say this: Impeccable moral standards in writing screenplays are necessary not only to protect the helpless, innocent viewer but also to maintain the desirably tasty effect of completely random death.

Day three.

The beach.

I have no recollection. It must have been a dream.