Yesterday afternoon, my friend the author Jane Stanton Hitchcock (Mortal Friends, Social Crimes, Witches’ Hammer, Trick of the Eye) after reading yesterday’s Diary about Hamptons memories, was inspired to share her recollections of growing up summers in East Hampton ...
Dear David,
Your wonderful article brought back so many memories for me. I wanted to tell you that I started coming to East Hampton as a tiny tot.
My mother went out there in 1945! I grew up there in the summers. My mother, who was working in radio (ed. note: her mother Joan Alexander played Lois Lane on the Superman radio show) at the time, used to drive out every weekend to see me and my Nana. It was a long haul back then, as you point out. It took her nearly four hours each way.
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| The cast of The Adventures of Superman (radio) including Bud Collyer who played Clark Kent, and Joan Alexander who played Lois Lane. |
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Nana and I stayed with a sweet old English couple name Flora and John Darby, after whom Darby Lane is named. Mother would take us to dinner at Spring Close or Out Of This World Inn or Gosman's Dock. When she married my stepfather, they bought a house on Hunting Lane and eventually a house on Hither Lane.
I knew East Hampton when Mr. Marley owned the stationery store on Main Street where I used to buy Esterbrook pens and comic books; when there was a Mr. Edwards, who owned the Edwards Theatre, which had ONE screen; when there were no boutiques, and many fewer traffic lights. Cars automatically stopped if you wanted to cross the street.
I knew and liked Elaine Steinbeck, whom you mention, because my parents were friends with her. Truman Capote, too, was an old friend of my parents. Mom and Dad had taken me to his Black and White Ball, and they were upset when their names were not included on the published guest list. But I remember that ball well.
Truman once took me out for lunch in Southampton and told me how upset he was that a woman named Babe (Paley) didn't speak to him anymore. I didn't know who “Babe” was. I went home and asked my mother and she acted like I'd asked her who George Washington was. Dick Avedon used to photograph our family on the beach every summer and, God, those shots are telling. They predicted the isolation, dysfunction, and craziness that was to become our family.
I remember Bill de Kooning dropping by our house, along with a host of other famous people, including George Plimpton, Art Buchwald, Neil Simon, Betty Bacall, Mike Nichols, Bill and Rose Styron, Tom and Pam Wicker, (Senator) Chuck and Lorraine Percy, Sidney Lumet, and Peter Stone, who wrote 1776 in our house. There was a sign on our tennis court that said, "Oh, Plimp!" because that was what George Plimpton said every time he missed a shot. I used to joke that at my parents' parties, I was the only person there I didn't know!
I remember when Leonard Bernstein was asked to leave the Maidstone Club's tennis court. Oy! It was a world divided into three parts, like Gaul: The clubbies, the artists and writers, and the townfolk (bonnikers, they were called.)
In the '60s, I was in a rock band called The Utopian Carwash with Baird Hersey, John Hersey's son. We actually played at Mitty's and I was offered a contract by a some hippie guy who said he was from Flowerpower Records.
I drove a blue VW Beetle with Porthault towel seat covers made especially for me because my stepfather, Arthur Stanton, was a great friend of the head of the company. Fernanda Niven and I were in a play together at the Guild Theatre: James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks. We were both "Town Fools." To this day, Fernanda and I greet each other, "Hello, Town Fool!"
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| The bar at Sam's. |
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| The "Old Hook Mill" is located in East Hampton, |
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The Hamptons didn't exist, as you say in your piece. There were individual towns, each with its own character. My favorite places to eat back then were Sam's where the pizza was divine (it still is, thank God!), Ridgeley's, which had the greatest steaks and salads in the world (Dick Ridgeley would never divulge his secret formula,) and Gosman's, which had no waiting time. I saw Bo Diddley, Jr. play the guitar with his feet and tongue. We all hung out at the Bull's Head Inn, the Candy Kitchen, and Mitty's.
I also wanted to tell you that LSD was in the ether at that point and I knew of someone who had taken it up at Harvard. He called himself the Ice Cream Christ because he took all the ice cream out of his parents' freezer and walked on it like Christ walked on water, he said. It was legal then. You could send away for the ingredients from Sandoz.
When I go back to East Hampton these days, I'm still struck by the enduring beauty of the place. I think of how much has happened since I was a kid. When I walk along Main Street, I sometimes wonder what dear old Mr. Marley would make of his stationery store now that it's a boutique, or of the world, for that matter.
Gone with the wind is putting it mildly.
Love, Jane
PS. We never used “summer,” we just used to go to the country. |
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