November 22, 1963

Man, I just saw on the news this morning, that it's the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. It occurred at 1:30 Eastern standard time, in Dallas, Texas. I remember it was a Friday. I was home watching the Gale Storm Show on Channel 8 from New Haven. Remember - No Cable. The reason I was not in school was because 5th and 6th grades at Pierson were on split sessions due to the high student population and I only had to go to school from 8:30 to 12:30pm whereas another 5th grade took over the room from 12:30 to 4:30pm. I remember that channel 8 was broadcasting the ABC newscast from New York. I also remember that WABC was getting a continuous feed from it's ABC station WFAA in Dallas. I saw two people who were eyewitnesses of the shooting in Dealy Plaza. They were Bill and Gayle Newman giving their story on WFAA. They were young, 23 at time with 2 little children. I happened to see them again this week. I was surprised what 45 years does to you. Back on that weekend in November of 1963, we had off Monday for Kennedy's funeral. Does not seem like 45 years ago, and many of the eyewitness, 1/2 to 3/4 are now dead.
Gayle and Bill Newman, then & now

In Search of a B-52 Bomber

If some of you out there are like me, you hate what the summer brings to Sag Harbor and the rest of the Hamptons. Crowds, rudeness, ripoffs etc. Ten years ago I had enough of this shit and decided to rent a waterfront cottage for the summer on Moosehead Lake, near the Village of Greenville, Maine. I discovered Greenville accidentally a year earlier, after white water rafting one August on the Dead River. Not wanting to spend another night in a tent, I saw on a map, the Village of Greenville was about 40 miles from my campsite. I drove over and rented a room in the one and only motel. The town is like Sag Harbor was 40 years ago. Population about 2500. They still burn garbage at the dump, and the local drug store has a soda fountain. And all summer long the place is mostly devoid of tourists, unlike Bar Harbor, Freeport and other coastal towns in Maine. Now that I have let out the best kept secret, and the town will be invaded like Sag Harbor was about 30 years ago, I will continue with this story.
I always make a point to drive up to Greenville each summer, a day or so before the 4th of July weekend and all hell arrives in the Hamptons. I do the 12 hour drive up I-95 as I got a lot of shit to carry, and although there are a couple of seaplane bases near my cabin, flying would not be practical due to my need for transporting kayaks, mountain bikes, satellite dishes, Labrador retrievers, etc.
Anyway, there is not a whole lot to do in Greenville, so sometimes I watch the guys in the lumberyard move stuff around on their forklifts. During a chat with one of them, during my first summer at Greenville, he wanted to know if I had visited the B-52 crash site nearby on Elephant Mountain. I said I didn't, and he related the following story. In January of 1963 a B-52 with a crew of half a dozen or more were flying in the area on a weather mission, when their vertical stabilizer tore off due to turbulence. Three were able to bail out before the jet crashed into Elephant Mountain . Two survived the night in minus 30 degree weather and were rescued the next day. The lumberyard worker gave me directions to the crash site a few miles outside of town on land owned by the Scott Paper Company. When I checked it out, I found it unusual that while the Air Force removed their secret equipment, I assume a pair of H-Bombs for example, they left the remains of most of the jet. Walking in the woods, I suddenly found myself in a large debris field from a plane crash 45 years ago. Tires, fuselage, even a leather flight jacket still tangled in the wreckage. It was a little weird to say the least. The site is visited each year by about 2500 people. The local mountain club looks after the site. Don't even think of taking anything from the site. They frown upon such actions as it is considered a shrine!
Some of the B-52 Wreckage from 1963 Crash

Bad Economy? For Some At Least

Man, as I write this, the Dow Jones is again down 337 points. Retail sales for October are down 2.8 percent. I guess you've heard the old saying, shop till you drop. Well I guess everyone has just dropped! I've just returned from a local steak house tonight with the old lady. I got there about quarter to six, and by seven the place was filled. Apparently there are still people out there, like me, who don't mind dropping a couple of C notes for a decent steak dinner. A chat with the owner of a local liquor store this afternoon revealed his sales are up 20 percent. He attributes this, to people not going out to restaurants as much, and buying their wine at his store. Although this was not indicated by what I saw tonight, I have noticed weeknights seem slower however. Speaking of restaurants, in the 60's there were not many around Sag Harbor. The Remkus family had the Seaside right next to the North Haven bridge. The late Dr. Harry Diner here in Noyac, bought the place over 20 years ago and called it the Harbor Professional Building. The family sold it last year and soon it will become condo's. There was Alippo's Spaghetti House on lower Main Street, where you would see Mrs. Alippo sitting out in front of her place on a chair at all hours. as well as Race's Drug store a couple of doors up, where the bike shop is now, where you could get fountain service. The original Paradise Restaurant, not the same one as is there now, was on Main St. and was THE local hangout. You had at least a half dozen bars downstreet, but they survived on serving drinks, not food. On the cove, you had Baron's Cove Inn, opened about 1962 by Frank Barry. That place is also in the process of becoming condo's at this time. Right outside town you had Tony's Coffee Shop on the Turnpike, and Lenny's Casino on the corner of Long Beach Road and Noyac Road. And that's about it. Local families did not eat out that much, if at all, so that was the reason for few restaurants. The same was not true for booze. A lot of the population drank, and this supported the many bars around town, along with at least two liquor stores that stayed open till ten on weekends, Christy's and Sag Harbor Liquors.The Paradise Restaurant in 1969

Railroad to Sag Harbor 1870 - 1939

Man, most people don't know there use to be a railroad to Sag Harbor. It was a 4 mile spur from the Bridgehampton train station to where the post office stands today in Sag Harbor on Long Island Ave. Yup, that's why it's called Long Island Ave. Built in 1870, it operated steam trains until the early 1930's, when it converted to a gas powered Toonerville Trolley. The railroad ceased operations in 1939 and the tracks ripped up for steel during WWII.
The last I remembered, the station operated as a scallop house in the early 1960s, and then was abandoned altogether. As kids, we use to play around the station. Unfortunately it was always securely locked, so we could not get inside. Once a nice looking building in it's time, a donation by Mrs. Russel Sage, it was torned down in the spring of 1966 to make room for an ugly drive up bank that still stands today. Something that could never happen in today's time with landmark preservation.
For the full story about the Sag Harbor Railroad branch click here to visit: Arrt's Arrchive who has the complete history of the LIRR.
The old Sag Harbor Train Station as it looked in 1960

Sag Harbor Dairies

Man, I was just in King Kullen buying a quart of milk and it was a buck and a half, or six bucks a gallon, depending how you look at it. Back in the 1960's in Sag Harbor, there were two dairies, Head of the Pond and Cilli's. Head of the Pond was run by Bill Nolan and the Cilli brothers operated the other. Most people bought from the milkman, instead of buying at the A&P or Bohacks in the village. We had Head of the Pond, my next door neighbor on Garden Street had Cilli. Both would operate a pickup truck and deliver quart sized milk bottles to your porch, sometime between 3 am and 6 am. We had one quart delivered daily except Sundays, as there was no delivery that day, and they would bring two bottles on Saturdays.
I don't know what transpired prior to the 60's, but the milk from Cilli's cows were transported to Schwenk's Dairy on Rt 114 in East Hampton, where Riverhead Building Supply is now, where it was processed and bottled and the Cilli's would deliver it to Sag Harbor homes. The glass bottles sometime froze in cold weather and broke on your porch. I remember the cream was always on the top of the bottle. As late as 1965, I can remember seeing the Cilli's at their Glover Street farm, washing the milk bottles on a mechanical machine rack. Many times the cows would get at loose at night and the police would call the Cilli's to, click link: corral them. By 1980, I guess competition from grocery stores drove both milkmen out of business. I always wondered in these times, if I had not already made my millions, I would bring back the milkman service, complete with a step van, selling high quality dairy products such as cheese, butter etc. along with the milk, door to door. It might work!
A Pre 1960 Head of the Pond Bottle

The Night the Lights Went Out, Nov 9, 1965

Man, I was just thinking about the time back in August 2003 when I was almost finished building my new house on Noyac Road. It was hot, so I decided to knock off about three in the afternoon. I was listening to the radio when I heard them announce that there was a massive blackout on the east coast. As the afternoon drew on, I noticed my Nextel walkie-talkie starting to work intermittently and then die out. However, I did have a generator and satellite TV along with a wired telephone, so this blackout had no effect on me.
Not so with the one on November 9, 1965 when I was attending Pierson High School. That night, a Tuesday, I had put off until the last moment doing a social studies report that was due the next day. Around 5:30 just as it was getting dark the light dimmed and went out. We had candles that we lit, and when it became apparent the lights were not coming on for a while, I turned on a handheld transister radio and was able to tuned in WCBS News Radio 88 and learned how extensive the blackout was. Thousands of people trapped in subways and elevators in New York City alone. Oh yes, I did my report that night by candlelight. The next day, the teacher said that because of the blackout he would give us an extra day. So much for being consciencous.
To listen to the actual aircheck of ABC's flagship New York station that night, click here77 WABC and listen to Dan Ingram as the blackout was about to happen! WABC's 50KW transmitter in Lodi, N.J. still operated, but their studios in Mahattan were fading fast man!

The Big Northeast Blackout

Mid-Air Collision Over Sag Harbor, Part 1

Man, this is an unusual story that my mother use to relate to me years ago when I was growing up in Sag Harbor. The story goes like this. One morning while she was doing her household chores, she heard a tremendous boom, and ran out of the house. In the sky overhead she could see pieces of planes coming down and dudes in parachutes. She said it happened sometime in the 1940's but couldn't remember exactly when. She said some Air force guys were killed. Oddly I never heard mention of this accident from anyone else in Sag Harbor.
So in the late 1980s I decided to do some research to see when and what exactly happened. My first stop was the local library on a Thursday evening. Ms. Dorothy Ingersoll Zaykowski, an expert on local history let me go into the library basement where they had every Sag Harbor Express dating from about 1850 to present. Sad to say, I visited the John Jermain library this past summer and was told they got rid of all the old newspapers. The library worker did not know where they ended up, but I hope it wasn't the dumpster. Talk about stupid, a week to week history of Sag Harbor down the drain for research purposes. I could ask Bryan Boyhan, who runs the Express, and he would probably be kind enough to look up something from his archives, but he's a busy man and I don't want to really bother him. I do know the East Hampton library has a lot of Sag Harbor Expresses on microfilm, so I will have to look into if I need to so more research, Anyway, back to the story.
Sitting in the library's basement with a single bare lit bulb, I skimmed through some boxes of papers for a while, looking at the front pages only of each one. Finally on the Thursday, August 18, 1949 issue I found the story. Two Army Air Force F-82 Mustangs had indeed collided over Sag Harbor that very same day. The fighters were twin engined with a crew of two each, and were on a weather mission, departing out of Mitchell Field at 9am. At about 10:40 am the aircraft were seen flying southwest over Sag Harbor at about 8000 feet. One person who witnessed the crash stated one of the planes appeared to be in trouble, as it was flying unevenly and the engines seem to be backfiring. The noise from the impact drew the attention of hundreds of Sag Harbor and North Haven residents instantly. Firemen rushed to the scene, even as debris was still falling from the sky. Many Sag Harbor residents rushed to the foot of the North Haven bridge on foot and in cars, and stood aghast at what they were seeing. William Miller, working in the yard of Mrs Marie Hodenpyle on North Haven, was one of the closest eyewitnesses. Mr. Miller stated, "I heard the backfiring of an engine and looked up to see an airplane disintegrating right over my head. There were pieces of aircraft scattered everywhere in the sky, and it started falling all around our place and Maycroft. An engine or something fell into the bay with a terrific splash, Then I saw parachutes coming down. I thought there was only one plane and that it had exploded, but they told me later there were two." Part 2 tomorrow
An F-82 twin Mustang in the foreground

Mid-Air Collision over Sag Harbor, Part 2

Continued.......Much of the debris from the planes fell on Maycroft, a 43 acre estate owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island for a school and summer camp for children. At the time of the accident, there were about 90 children vacationing there, who were on the grounds of this bay camp, but other than being splashed with hot engine oil, no injuries were reported. Witnesses agreed that 3 men were clearly visible floating to earth with parachutes even before the planes had a chance to break up. The body of the fourth flier, whose chute didn't open, was believed to have been instantly killed in the crash and thrown free by the force of the impact. His body was found a short time later on Short Beach, having plummeted to earth. Of the three remaining fliers, one was found dead in the marsh behind what is now the Peerless Marine Center on Ferry Road. Those on the scene said he had suffered severe head injuries, as if he had been struck by debris while floating to the ground. The two fliers who escaped death, dropped into a field on the south side of Ferry Road. They were dazed and shock-ridden, and driven by passers-by in a station wagon to the Municipal Building on Main Street. Once inside Police Headquarters, they established communications with Mitchell Field, but refused to give any information locally on the cause of the accident. Mr. Mel Lamb, who at the time operated the East Hampton Airport, was just landing after a flight from Gardiner's Island, when he saw the tragedy taking place from the air. Capt. Lamb immediately took off from East Hampton Airport and reported seeing an engine buried in the main driveway leading to Maycroft, and the grounds strewn with debris. Across the road lay the body of a dead flier. A police guard was set up to keep people away until the arrival of Air Force authorities. Wreckage of the second plane was seen by numerous residents to fall into the lower cove of Sag Harbor. At about 12:30pm, three local residents, Mrs. Madeline McPartlin, Bill Brewer and Henry Brewer who were in a rowboat, located the engine of one of the Mustangs in about six feet of water, and notified the Coast Guard. In the days that followed, debris was loaded onto Air Force trucks and transported away. Oddly, even though local newspapers noted the incident at the time, no followup was ever published as to the cause. That was, until about 1998 when I got a copy of the 50 page official Air Force report on the accident. There were a lot more details with names, mission purposes, times, etc. but in the end it was attributed to pilot error. One of the two pilots who died on one of the planes may have been practicing instrument flying wearing a hood to black out the surroundings and collided with the other plane.
So man, that's where it stands except for what could be termed a strange coincidence on that same Thursday as the mid-air collision over Sag Harbor.This time at about 7 pm that evening, Mrs. William Benbenik, who, with her husband and brother were fishing at Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village, noticed a puff of smoke about two miles westward. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, Mrs. Benbenik observed what she believed to be a small plane coming toward her, dipping up and down. Suddenly it veered offshore, dipped into the ocean and disappeared. She reported the incident , which she described mostly as a white ball, to East Hampton Village police officer Dick Steele, who was patrolling nearby. Mel Lamb, of the East Hampton Airport was contacted and flew out with another pilot. He observed an oil slick and what appeared to be some wreckage, about 5 miles offshore. Mr. Lamb notified the New York Air Sea Rescue, just before dark. An extensive search was conducted, but no aircraft wreckage was ever found, nor was a plane ever reported missing in the vicinity of the New York or New England area! (Copyright 2008 BVB)
MP looks at plane engine in Maycroft's driveway

Harvesting Long Island Potatoes

Man, I was buying a 50 pound sack of potatoes today at the Country Stand on Scuttle Hole Road. You can keep potatoes in a dark place at 40-45 degrees, say a cellar, and they will last a long time. So for sixteen bucks it's a bargain. It got me thinking that as late as the 1980's I use to see black migrant workers from the south picking potatoes in the fields. What they actually did was place these potatoes in a sack. The farmer's tractor would pull the potatoes out of the earth and deposit them on the ground. Backbreaking work. The migrant workers were housed in labor camps such as Sack's where the Bridgehampton National Bank is today. Usually on Saturday nights after these men were paid, they would drink at Pickney's or another bar on the Turnpike. Man, if one was driving from Sag Harbor to Bridgehampton on a Saturday night in the 60's you would have to be careful. Men stumbling along the side of the road, etc. More than one passed out on the railroad tracks and were run over by a train. Fights and knifings were common. Most housing were slums and at least one pig farm was on the turnpike where the GFSF museum is today. The local fire department burned down many of these shacks. Oddly a lot of people living in these shacks drove Cadillacs. Blacks rarely drank in a couple of white bars on the turnpike, such as Gordons, as well as you would never see a white man in Pickney's, although I knew a couple of cops who would once in a while, just to piss off the blacks. Today all but a few of the potato farms are gone, and what are left employ mostly Latinos in their grading houses. A down and out friend of mine took a job for a week in a local grading house around 1975, and said the conditions were the worse he'd ever seen. Old black men drinking bottles of booze for lunch, etc. just to cope with that shit.

50 cents an hour for this shit?

Big Fire at the Harborside

Man, just what you need, another fire story. This time, I was headed downstreet for a night of drinking at the Black Buoy in mid May 1977. I parked my Ford Maverick in front of the 5&10, about 10 o'clock, and by chance ran into a friend of mine. He was headed to the Buoy also, so we walked down the sidewalk and past the Harborside Restaurant, owned by Eddie Ryder. Thats when I noticed a weird grease odor which seem to coming from the restaurant. The place was lit up, looked kinda open with two or three guys hanging out inside. I remember remarking to my friend about the smell as we walked pass the restaurant, and then thought no more about it. After downing some shots and beers for about an hour, the fire whistle went off on the roof of the Municipal Building. We noticed some activity around Main Street and some dude came in and mentioned a fire inside the Harborside. After about a half hour the smoke from the fire got kinda heavy inside the Buoy, so we and about a half dozen others stumbled across the street to watch the fire. The restaurant, a bakery and Montgomery Wards were all on fire. We watched from the sidewalk across the street for about an hour. Then my friend remembered he had left his hat in the Black Buoy, I don't know why the fuck he was wearing a hat for in May, but we walked back, but by this time the bar was full of smoke and closed up for the night. So we had to finish drinking at the Sandbar that night. The big Easter Sunday fire would follow in almost the exact same place in 1994 and take out the hardware store among others, but man, that's another story.
Harborside was on the right by the two men

Non-Violent Revolution

Man, it's 11:01 PM and the results are in. Barack Obama is the President elect. Extraordinary victory for blacks. First African-American to hold this post. I remember back in the 60's when I was on trips down south. I saw first hand how blacks were not allowed in restaurants. They would have to eat at hot dog stands while whites ate inside the restaurant. Totally fucked up situation. In the 1960's, blacks accounted for about 2 percent of the Pierson High School student population. They were sons and daughters of mostly doctors and lawyers who comprised Azurest and other black neighborhoods in Sag Harbor. Most were at the top of their class and have made valuable contributions to society. Now man, you've got to try to cut back on those Marlboro's. Those outside porches at the White House get cold during winter for cigarette breaks!

It's about change.

Farm Stands

Man, nowadays you see farm stands on nearly any road you travel on. Back in the 1960's in Sag Harbor there were only three. Bee's on Noyac Rd near Brick Kiln. Soah's on the sharp corner of Noyac Road, and the third, Bildzis, at the intersection of Noyac Road and Stony Hill Road. A fourth stand, called the Other Stand did not appear until the late 70's. Noyac Road was still partly undeveloped and there were several hundred acres of corn fields. Slowly houses appeared and by the 1980's all fields were gone. By the later 1990's all the farm stands on Noyac Road had disappeared with the exception of the Noyac Rd. and Stony Hill Road stand. The stand has not been actually used in decades, and is about to fall down, but the owner sells products out of it a few times a year to keep it's status up. A late 1950's shot of the Bildzis stand you can still see standing on Noyac Road and Stony Hill Road intersection is seen below.

Note the now long gone corn field behind the stand

Sag Harbor and Man on the Moon

Man, in the mid to late 60's there were several factories operating in Sag Harbor. One was Grumman, which operated out of the plant vacated by Agawam Aircraft Products earlier in the decade, and where the Bay Street Theatre is today, next to Long Wharf. I remember a guard always sitting on the porch of the 3 story brick building which was once a old grain mill. Anyway, what they built there were the throttle handles for the lunar module used on the Apollo moon landings. The factory closed down about 1970 and was sold to Malloy Enterprises. Unfortunately Sag Harbor village could not afford, or did not have the foresight to buy this valuable piece of property and it evolved into what it is today, a marina, restaurant and several shops.

Old Grumman plant a few years after it closed