DAN’S PAPERS
danspapers.com
September 20, 2013 Page 21
Top: Driver Rene Leonard and Tour Guide Dan Rattiner. Bottom: John and Libby Mann. Right: The Bus
“And on Your Right...”
The Diary of a Bus Tour Guide on a Ride Through the Hamptons By Dan Rattiner
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n mid-August, I got an email from a person I did not know, John Mann, telling me he was getting married to his girlfriend Libby in Montauk on September 7 and wanted to hire a bus and a tour guide to drive about 30 people around the Hamptons for the day. “I was recently in the Montauk Bookshop,” he wrote “and the owner suggested that I should reach out to you as you are the ‘be all and end all when it comes to Hamptons local knowledge.’ Do you know of anyone or could you suggest anyone that might be able to help us?” It’s hard to pass up that kind of flattery. Also, 10 years ago, I gave tours for members of the 92nd Street Y. They’d come out in a full-size, regular bus and I’d tour from Westhampton to Amagansett with a microphone in the front seat. I did that one day in the spring every year for three years. My tour was a listed thing to do in their catalogue. The bus rented for this wedding was a fabulous all-white rock-star bus, fitted out in mahogany and leather with 32 captain’s chairs, a cocktail table toward the front and a curving leather couch at the back. In front of a panel, there was the driver and tour guide seat of less luxurious material and 5/18/12 9:44 AM Page 1
importance. I’d be on the microphone in the front. This was not like the 92nd Street Y bus where I stood at the open front of the bus with a microphone and faced the occupants. Also, when I came into the beautiful back to introduce myself, I saw this was a whole different crowd on this bus. For the 92nd Street Y it was mostly retired people who didn’t know one another. This crowd was family and friends, old and young, very happy and chattering away. I tipped my hat, introduced myself, welcomed them, and went out the passenger door and came back in by climbing up the three steps into the front across from the driver, a black man with what I thought was a Jamaican accent. I introduced myself. His name was Rene Leonard. I was mistaken about his accent as it later turned out. The plan was to give a morning tour in Napeague and Amagansett, then go to Sag Harbor, break for an hour and a half so they could walk around town and shop and eat, then at 1 p.m. head over to East Hampton, let them do a little shopping there, then head back to Sole East, where they were staying. Heading west out of Montauk, I had the bus turn off to the right at Napeague Meadow Road, cross the tracks and come to a halt a few hundred yards beyond them where you could see the Napeague Art (Cont’d on next page)
Dan Rattiner’s third memoir, Still in the Hamptons is now online and at all bookstores. His first two memoirs, In the Hamptons and In the Hamptons, TOO, are also available online and in bookstores.
For The BesT oF Times RIDE THE LEGEND
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