DAN’S PAPERS
danshamptons.com
April 12, 2013 Page 23
Western Union Company in Legal Battle About Sent Money That’s Not Picked Up By Dan Rattiner
W
estern Union has a service where you can send cash to someone elsewhere in the world. There are many reasons for such a service. People want to send cash to people in remote areas where there are no banks. People want to send cash to relatives abroad. People want to send funds to others who are disabled, or people who have no credit or bank accounts and can only get money as cash. And people, particularly day laborers from abroad working here, want to send money to their families back home. This is a cash economy, it exists and there is nothing wrong with it. Locally, Western Union operates out of four locations in the Hamptons: Waldbaum’s in East
Hampton, King Kullen in Bridgehampton, and the Rite Aid Pharmacy in both Southampton and Hampton Bays. You will sometimes see lines of people waiting at the counters there to make a transaction. You fill out a form with your name and address to send the cash. You fill out the name of whom you are sending it to. You don’t indicate a town, just the state or country they are in. Western Union takes your cash. They also charge a hefty fee for the service. For example, sending $300 can cost you nearly $20. At the end of the transaction, the Western Union person gives you a receipt with a transaction number on it. At the other end, the receiver of the money either shows ID to prove who they are, or, if they don’t have ID, gives the answer to a test question the sender, having
spoken to the receiver, puts on the form. For many years now, I have been sending money to someone dear to me who needs to receive it in this way. As it happens, sometimes they remember to pick up the money and sometimes they don’t. I figured the transaction was secure. If my receiver didn’t pick it up, after a while Western Union would call or write to me to that effect so they could return my cash. Last fall, I discovered that money I’d sent six months earlier had never been picked up. I called Western Union’s 800 number, told them the transaction number—I no longer had the actual receipt but had written the number down somewhere—and they told me the money would be returned to me. It never was. I thought, well, I have (Cont’d on next page)
Looking Into the Face of the Shinnecock Spirit I
f you’re looking at Shinnecock Reservation from the east, at an altitude of 1,000 feet, you’ll see it a face roaring at the ocean. This is the face of the Shinnecock Spirit. I first noticed it while I was working on a project, compiling maps and photos of the Shinnecock peninsula. I’ve worked on various projects over the years, viewing maps and photos from the late 1700s up to the present day, but it wasn’t until two
years ago that I saw The Face. It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes, or rather, a gift granted. The Spirit’s eyes and mouth are formed by creeks and marsh drains, its hair is marsh grass and woods. Perhaps it’s holding the ocean at bay, or singing back to shore of Shinnecock men who were lost during the Circassian tragedy (Dan Rattiner wrote a wonderful article in the February 9 edition of this paper about that shipwreck).
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The spirit is neither male nor female. I don’t know how many other people have seen it, but you can be sure that once this gets out, tattoos will be showing up on the arms, necks and backsides of those who want to claim its power. But it took me more than 50 years of learning every facet of that countenance before being granted the gift. Fifty-plus years of swimming in its boundary waters and creeks, walking its marshes, crawling through briar patches, learning where the grapes (Continued on page 28)
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By james keith phillips