Dan’s Papers August 19, 2011 danshamptons.com Page 26
Kite
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at the nearby Peter’s Pond Beach a mile to the east. There were no facilities at Peter’s Pond Beach, no pavilions or bathrooms (people went in the dunes) and no changing rooms. Indeed, there still are none today. There was nothing. Just woods and small wild animals such as snakes and coyotes. On that third Kite Fly we had a big wave come thundering in. Nothing like a big tsunami or anything—we didn’t even know about tsunamis or even how to spell tsunami back then—and this wave, which was maybe five feet high, came thundering in and out it went again taking with it three small kids and a cocker spaniel. But oh well, there were plenty more kids where they came from, and we felt bad about it for awhile and talked about the three that were gone, wishing we had spent more time with them and stuff, but we got over it. The cocker spaniel, “Pudgie,” was a different matter. He was most beloved. We mourned the loss. A rock with his name on it is on that beach to this day. At the fifth Kite Fly in 1980, still at Peter’s Pond Beach, the famous rock band Howie McCone and the Drifters plugged in their electric guitars during the potato fog which had drifted over the dunes and down onto us and, in a flash, Howie McCone and the Drifters were gone, up in smoke, which is why you’ve never heard of them today. It was a bad connection or something. We held the 1986 Kite Fly at the beach right in the middle of Hurricane Diana and its 130 mph winds that blew all the steeples off all the churches in the Hamptons that summer. The crowds were a little thinner than usual there
at the beach, and five people flew away to their deaths when they failed to let go of the kite strings when told to do so, but otherwise it was uneventful. At the eighth Kite Fly in 1987, a giant eel slithered up the beach and, just before the judging was to begin, with one gulp ate a parent, Horace Doomstrong, who had come with his new girlfriend Bubbles and his four kids, which he had that Saturday because he had them every other weekend. Nobody liked him anyway. He beat Brenda, his wife. Everybody knew it and people frowned upon it. And he spanked his kids with a tennis racket, not the flat of his hand, which was the proper way to do it. Using a tennis racket or anything else was just for sissies. We buried what was left of him, just a big ruby encrusted pinky ring, right there on the beach, marked the grave with a tennis racket, and Bubbles cried. There’s no trace of that there now. Good riddance, Horace. As for the big eel, we all stomped him to death. He wouldn’t be doing that again. In 1989, we moved the event off Peter’s Pond Beach after Peter’s Pond, which had always been seen in outline form on maps at the Assessor’s Office, but which nobody had ever seen, suddenly appeared. It had been a very wet spring. Peter’s Pond put almost the entire southern end of Peter’s Pond Road underwater, and since wading through it to get to the beach meant you had to hold your kite up over your head to keep it from getting wet while leaving your kids to either swim or sink, it was decided the pond was an obstacle that might be there
for generations and a beach nearby, Sagg Main, was just as good. Since then, with all the safety stuff at Sagg Main, all has gone without incident. The kids all have to be on bungee cords attached to their parents. Only beach chairs with seat belts are allowed. The old jungle gym there has been torn down and is replaced by a big dumb rubber mat. And if a sea lion shows up he gets herded over by the Sea Mammal Rescue Squad to the place where the other endangered sea lions are kept, at the west end of the beach next to the piping plover nesting area, before he can bite anybody. Oh, we did have a kid break a fingernail at our Kite Fly at Sagg Main in 1997. But he was choppered over to Stony Brook University Hospital for treatment within the eight-minute window allowed. And in 2005 a kid stepped on a seashell and cut his foot, but the ambulance whisked him away to Southampton Hospital— before he could infect anybody else—and he was treated and released. He did sue the town, however, for taking away the fun he would have had had he stayed at the Kite Fly enjoying the competition, the 12 prizes, the band, the magic and the face painting with all his friends. And of course the Town did settle, paying him an undisclosed sum in exchange for the kid signing a document saying he would never again sue the Town for damage to that part of his body should it get injured again within one year. See you at Sagg Main at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 27. It’s gonna be great fun!!
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