There have been enormous changes in this area in the 50 plus
years that I’ve been living here, and there have been many things that I grew
up always expecting to remain that no longer do. Wonderful places that no only remain
in photographs, super 8 movies, paintings and my memory. These losses are
things that pain me deeply.
Georgica Pond used to be covered with lily pads so thick
that you couldn’t see the surface of the water as you pushed softly through a
haze of dragonflies with your rowboat, your oars lifting the flower stems which
slide gently off like the thickest, most elegant green noodles you could ever
imagine. Now the waters are 190 acres of dangerously polluted toxic soup.
I used to celebrate my birthday with Mr. Nichol’s and his
pony rides on the triangle of land where the western end of Georgica Road
bifurcates before joining up with Montauk Highway. I got one free turn for each
year of my age and I remember wishing only to be older so that the ride would
last longer. If only I was twelve! I think there was a house on the property and
a tiny barn where my birthday porters spent shivery winters, but for me it was
a tiny slice of heaven. That property, now complete with house and pool, two
years ago was for sale for $3.55 million. Bye bye ponies, I miss you.
From the time you crossed the Shinnecock Canal until you got
out to Montauk there was only one place where, if you looked south on sunny
days, you could see a stretch of silver shimmering just above the dunes, a
sliver of the sea. That was Sagaponack and that view is long gone, visible only
in the paintings of Barbara Thomas and Sheridan Lord.
The enormous dune that I grew up hiding from the wind behind,
building complicated secret dune grass shelters in which imaginary sand fairies
played, and in whose sheltering shoulders I reveled in the power of teenaged
kiss, was erased by hurricane Sandy, rubbed flat as completely as if it had
never existed.
I used to ride my horse bareback from Patsy And Alvin
Toppings Swan Creek Farm diagonally northeast to get to Carvel where we would
both have soft serve ice cream cones. I had chocolate with chocolate sprinkles
and my horse had vanilla with multicolored sprinkles. Then we would swim, or
rather my horse would swim and I’d clutch his mane, as we ventured into Kellis
Pond to cool off. To get there and back we could have headed straight through
the farm fields, without a single house to block our path, the only structure
being the strange bowling pin shaped structure (later learned to be a radio
transmitter for the East Hampton Airport) that lived in Jack Musnicki’s fields.
We stayed on the roads (most of the time) out of respect for the farmer’s crops,
but there was never a more incredible open sky view then that of laying flat
back on your horse’s wet haunches, reins slack as he walked patiently and
determinedly back to the barns, with nothing surrounding you but fields and
clouds.
There have always been out here places where you can
experience wonder, and when they are gone we mourn their losses deeply. I don’t
think it’s just about growing older and losing the ability to see and be and
experience life as a child, although that change is, in it’s own way, somewhat
devastating, and although I wish I could give the people I love the ability to
see this area through the eyes and the heart of my younger self, I wouldn’t
want them to share the pain.
Last week we gained more pain.
A part of me died when I watched the façade of the Sag
Harbor Movie theatre crumble and fold in upon itself. I know they saved the
sign, and that’s great (although it’s not the original sign – that was removed
in 2004) but for me that building was a lot more than just a sign.
What makes us mourn a structure? Is it the way the building
felt? Or the way we felt when we were within it? Or just the loss of the
familiarity of something that has been with us for a long time?
I love the Sag Harbor movie theater and everything it represents.
It determinedly persisted in being the theater I remember it to be, and wanted
it to stay. A single screen theater, like the one on Southampton once was, with
it’s incredible, and to a child, awe inspiring massive chandelier that I still
miss, the Sag Harbor movie theater has been with me my entire life. I am a
regular now and have always been so. I had planned to see Moonlight there last
week, the previous week I had gone with my father to see Tom Ford’s Nocturnal
Animals. We’ve been sharing movies there together my entire life.
I loved the seats, even though I know they were
uncomfortable. I loved that there were no previews. That the popcorn was not
that great. That if this theater didn’t didn’t exist the only way I’d ever see
the films they showed would be if I rented them at home. But isn’t that the
point of going to the movies? To not be in your home. To step out of your own
world and become engulfed in a new one, to sit in a dark room with no hint
what’s going on outside the walls, no idea if the sky is blue or black, and
just be taken to another place by the way colors and sound have been mixed and
rearranged on a huge screen that fills not just your vision, but your whole
soul?
I have fallen in love in that building and also had my heart
broken. I’m been terrified, overjoyed, disappointed, inspired, agitated, filled
with hope, brought to tears, astonished, awed, devastated and laughed until I
couldn’t breathe. I sobbed there so hard once that the strangers sitting a few
seats over from me offered me not just their tissues, but comfort as well. I’ve
been mesmerized, challenged, transported, staggered, amused, educated, and
totally swept away.
I’ve been blessed, as have we all, but now that cavernous
gaping space on Main Street only reflects the enormous gulf in my chest I feel
knowing that The Sag Harbor movie theater is not there anymore. Luckily I know
that the reason we love Sag Harbor is that I am not the only person here that
relies on these kinds of quirky, non-mainstream, noncommercial stories to keep
her whole. And that as a community we will come together to make sure this part
of the Hamptons is not going to be lost forever.
Paige Patterson mourns the drive-in too, but in a different
way, as that’s where she first saw Dumbo.