Dan’s Papers November 19, 2010 danshamptons.com Page 11
What? Drive to the Edwin M. Buzz Schwenk Memorial Hwy, Turn Left By Dan Rattiner There’s a move afoot to change the name of County Road 39 in Southampton. This is a good thing. In a land where you have Gin Lane, Abraham’s Path and Two Holes of Water Road, there should not be an artery, particularly a main artery, with a name as mundane as County Road 39. The plan to change the name of this road is being proposed in the Suffolk County Legislature by our local legislator Jay Schneiderman of Montauk. I was very curious to see what he was going to come up with. I was very disappointed to hear that the new name he plans to propose for this artery is the “Edwin M. ‘Buzz’ Schwenk Memorial Highway.” Now I personally knew Schwenk. He was a very nice man. Part of the family that owned the Schwenk Dairy Farm in Southampton, he went into politics, not as a candidate, but as a behindthe-scenes power broker for the Republican Party. He headed up the Suffolk County Republican Party for awhile as I recall. And after that, he sent out an occasional newsletter, usually gently supporting business and progress and expansion as a way to prosperity for this community. As a newspaper publisher, I didn’t always
renounced his party and ran, successfully, as an Independent that year. After the election, which swept in a lot of Democrats, the Republicans got around to requesting that the late Schwenk be honored in Southampton in one way or another. A school might be named for him. Or perhaps a bridge or a municipal building. His name was proposed. The Democrats blocked every request. Now, with the wind blowing the other way, Schneiderman, perhaps desiring to mend some fences, even though remaining as an Independent, is proposing Schwenk’s name for County Road 39. I do consider myself to be something of an expert in naming some of our local roads. For about 30 years, from 1970 to 2000, this newspaper produced a hand-drawn folding roadmap of the Hamptons. I personally drew it. Endeared by the wonderful road names, I found some dirt roads without names and so gave them names in keeping with the local tradition. Thus you had Lost Cow’s Journey which meandered through the Northwest on a track that had no name. There was another dirt road I named Lois Lane, and still another I named Jeep’s Folly. People enjoyed the rustic names I made up I think, or at least they told me that they did. In the end, as these tracks and dirt roads got developed though, the Town gave them real names and all my made-up names disappeared, except one. Today, you will find a road called Werewolf Path up in Noyac not far from Deerfield Road. I named it that. It stuck. It’s on signs, it’s entered in the town tax rolls and you will find it using GPS. It’s probably the only permanent change I
If the County’s really stuck on the idea of a long multi-syllabled name, I have a few other options to consider.
Dan Rattiner’s second memoir, IN THE HAMPTONS TOO: Further Encounters with Farmers, Fishermen, Artists, Billionaires and Celebrities, is now available in hardcover wherever books are sold. The first memoir, IN THE HAMPTONS, published by Random House, is now available in paperback.
agree with what he wrote. But I did find him amenable to debate about this and that. He was open-minded. As I said, he was personally a very nice guy. But “go up Moses Lane and make a left on the Edwin M. Buzz Schwenk Memorial Highway and you’ll find the Shinnecock Golf Club about two miles down after turning right on St. Andrews Road?” Or “come to the end of the Sunrise Highway and just go straight on the Edwin M. Buzz Schwenk Memorial Highway until the end when you have to turn left so as not to go on Flying Point Road?” Moses, St. Andrews, Sunrise, Flying Point—all are fine, highly treasured names in this community. As nice as Schwenk was, having County Road 39 be replaced by Edwin M. Buzz Schwenk Memorial Highway is not a step in the right direction. I do think there are some politics behind this proposal. Eastern Long Island has been a largely Republican bastion, at least until the Presidential elections of 2008. Jay Schneiderman, who was a Republican legislator right until the run up to the 2008 elections,
(continued on page 16)