10 YEARS LATER AT THE HAMPTONS

We rented a house in the Hamptons for 10 years and with almost the same group of guys.  Only 2 guys got married during the 10 year period and they were replaced by 2 others who wanted in on the fun.    

Every year the rent was going up so we needed to make some money to offset our expenses.  I made a deal with a beer distributor near the Firehouse where I worked.  We would buy 10 cases of beer every Friday night all summer if he would give us a discount.  When we got to the beach, we would put 3 cases in each of 3 garbage cans along with some ice.  We would spend most of Saturday on the beach telling girls that we were having a party with a band and beer -- $3 to get in, $2 for the band and $1 for the beer.  We would start the night with one full garbage can of cold beer in the kitchen.  When the beer got low, we collected another dollar for more beer.  In came the second can full of ice and beer.  And so it went.  

We started to have cookouts on Sundays.  In those days, there were lots of farms out on

Long Island.  They’re now mostly vineyards and wineries.   We would buy 200 lbs. of potatoes, 2-3 bushels of corn, and a front quarter of beef.  We told everyone it was a YAK roast.  We would dig a large hole on the beach above the high water mark so it was on our property.  We would line the hole with bricks or cement blocks and add 8 bags of charcoal.  We drove 2 pipes through the beef to form an X.  Four guys would  pick up the beef and place it on the fire.  A front quarter of beef has lots of fat on it so, when we placed it over the fire, flames shot up about 10 feet.  Everyone on the beach would come over to see what we were doing.  We’d invite everyone to the cookout at 5PM.  We would soak the corn and potatoes in salt water for a few hours, then wrap them in aluminum foil and toss them into the coals.  The Irish used to call the potatoes done this way “Mickeys”.   Some people liked their “Mickeys” and corn really charred so they would leave them on the fire until the foil was black.  We charged $5 a head for food and all the beer you wanted.  This helped out a lot with the rent. 

As a firefighter, I was often off during the week so I would go fishing.  If I caught a lot of fish, I would clean and filet them and they would be on that weekend’s menu.  Wrapped in foil with butter, onions, lemon slices, salt and pepper and cooked over the charcoal – they were great.  Plus we used much less charcoal on the fish. 

There were lots of new guys renting on the beach so we organized a softball league.  One house would play against another house on Saturday mornings with a barrel of beer on third base.  Losers paid for the beer.  It was a good deal if you had a good team – if not...

We knew there was a noise ordinance in the village of Hampton Bays and that the local police would show up about 1 AM to close our party down.  We would make another beer collection just after midnight and when the party was over we had lots of beer and money left over for Sunday’s cookout.   

Most people started back to NYC about 9 PM on Sunday night.  They would hit bumper to bumper traffic on the Long Island Expressway and it would take them 3 -4 hours to get home.  Us “old timers” would go to bed at 9 PM, set the alarm for 2 AM (so we’d get 5 hours of sleep).  A Shower and a shave and we’d start back around 3AM.  In the 60’s the Long Island Expressway was only finished to Riverhead, Long Island.  From there we took Rte. 27, a 2 lane road across Long Island to the ocean and north to the Hamptons.  At 3 AM no one was out on Rte. 27 so we made great time.  The Expressway still had lots of traffic at 3AM but at least it was usually still moving so we would make it home under 2 hours.  We’d get another 2 hours of sleep and then go to work.  We couldn’t wait to do it all over again the next weekend.