Beyond Good Ground
Most of us have heard, tell of "The Hamptons," that vaguely defined resort of pleasure seekers that lies east of New York on "The Island." where life in summer reaches a frenzy that would shiver the timbers of the Ayatollah Solzhenitsyn and his like. This land of Hedonia, however, is not the place described by Everett Rattray. His land is co-existent with it but .often invisible to the careless observer. If one thinks of Long Island as a whale nuzzling up to Manhattan, the flukes of this fanciful cetacean are what are called the North and South Forks, what natives also call the East End, never the Hamptons. To strike a parallel with my near-native North Country, everyone there knows that Beaver Meadow and West Norwich are two quite distinct concepts meant to describe the same thing, as Al Foley would remind us. Rattray's book is in the spirit of Beaver Meadow.
My own vantage point is that of a somewhat knowledgeable and literally detached observer on the outside, as I miss the South Fork by a mile. The accepted western limit is the Shinnecock Canal, and we can only look at the South Fork in the distance as we gaze out over Squires Pond and Great Peconic Bay in what used to be called Good Ground, a fine old Indian name changed to Hampton Bays in order to get in the magical name. In light of the rapacity with which the developers have slashed and burned and paved, they might better have called it Wolverhampton.
Rattray speaks of the origins of these communities, reminding us that the East End was not settled from New York (then Nieuw Amsterdam), but by Pilgrims from Massachusetts who landed on the Peconic side of Southampton in 1640. A great many aspects of life in the region are still reminiscent of New England, even the speech where it has survived the intrusion of outer-borough cockney. In his exceptionally well-written narrative, which will not surprise those familiar with his newspaper, the East Hampton Star, Rattray instructs us on the life of the region with the tales of famous folk who came and went, as well as the story of his own forebears, who go back to the earliest days.
Captain Kidd sailed the waters of the area and had dealings with the Gardiner family, still owners of the island between the two Forks that bears their name. It was Wyandanch, sachem of the Montauks, who helped establish the family fortune by awarding the first lord of the manor certain lands to the west that were to become first potato farms and then suburbia. Cinque and his fellow mutinous salves on the A mis tad foundered off Sag Harbor, where the whalers were, and moved the cause of abolition along. Although the Beechers had lived in East Hampton (there is no explanation as to why South and West are single words and East is two), there was a great deal of sympathy for the South in the East End. Regardless of what today's newspapers say about the "rock- ribbed" Republicanism of the area, the political tradition had been Democratic, which might help to explain in part Otis Pike's long tenure in the Congress as representative of the district.
The amount of historical information notwithstanding, one gets the sharpest impression of the Geist of native life out here, as it was and as it still is beyond the sound and the fury, from Rattray's recounting of tales and episodes drawn from his own experiences with family and friends. This is where we get the essence of the land and the people, even more so than with such eminences as James Truslow Adams, who wrote about Southampton and Bridgehampton. But there is a sad nostalgia about this book as we realize that something is fading away as Archie Bunker advances out to meld with Billy Carter. Mercifully, the "Beautiful People" receive short shrift here; there isn't even a mention of Bobby Van's. We are disabused of many niyths and many questions answered, but one mystery still remains unsolved: Why did so many of our blue jays desert us last year?
THE SOUTH FORKBy Everett T. Rattray '54Random House, 1979. 228 pp. $10
As well as being a near-neighbor of the SouthFork, Gregory Rabassa is a professor ofRomance Languages at Queens College and arenowned translator of Iberian literature.
