Guest Diary• BY:
Jill Krementz
The days are getting shorter and Labor Day is upon us. I’ve been reminiscing about summers, back when the living was easy, the fish were jumping, and our pleasures were simple.
My husband Kurt Vonnegut and I dipped our toes in the water, so to speak, by initially being serial renters of three summer getaways on Long Island’s East End. In 1979 we bit the bullet and purchased our shingled house in Sagaponack.
Our pleasures were simple ones — tennis, biking, swimming, picnics on the beach, the annual Writers and Artists baseball game, and George Plimpton’s annual fireworks. The fanciest event by far was an annual luncheon celebrating Bastille Day hosted by Liz Fondaras. By fancy I mean she had a bartender, real China, and she shared her collection of hats with guests who had neglected to wear their own.
I’m hearing that life out there has changed. The COVID refugees, fleeing their city dwellings, have decamped to the East End of Long Island in droves. Now it’s gridlock traffic everywhere, fancy catered dinner parties with place cards, jammed parking lots, home visits by masseurs, hair stylists, cosmeticians, private tutors, curated family pods, and often times a medical concierge to administer swab tests while guests wait in the white pebbled driveway for results. Lobster salad has occasionally been rationed.
I feel fortunate to have stuck it out this summer in New York City — shuttered stores notwithstanding. When I’m looking for company I dig into my archives. My friends are here.
George and his wife Freddy provided beer and hot dogs.
As soon as it started to get dark, George and his friends the Grucci brothers (known as the First Family of Fireworks) set off one spectacular display after another from a floating dock.
Most of us were summer residents so this party was our biggest get together — a time to catch up. Looking back I can’t recall that any of us lived there year-around as we all had busy working lives — mostly in NYC save for Joe and Polly Kraft in Washington D.C. and Irwin Shaw, who devoted his winters to skiing in Klosters, Switzerland.
Right: Adolph Green and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Right: Elliott Erwitt.
Saul is seated at table on far left with Miriam Ungerer.
“I’m not really in the literary swim.”
In case you’re counting, only one of these six feet is touching the ground.
The playwright bought the house overlooking the Atlantic for $40,000 which “I could not afford but I could not afford not to have it. I am, however, a Pisces — a water sign — and I am unhappy when I am land-bound. Mountains and deserts are all very well, and I have enjoyed them both, but unless they abut an ocean I become impatient. Simply, I must be either near or by (or on!) large bodies of water most of the time to be a happy man.”
Seated l. to r. are Irwin Shaw, KV, George Plimpton, Swifty Lazar, and Gene Young.
Right: Jean Stafford lived year-around in the Springs.
Shown here, The Writers Team, with Lynn Sherr as the lone female player, and Adam Shaw going half Monty.
Right: Umpire Bobby Van.
The Wickers and the Updikes were our houseguests.
Later, they became strong supporters of the Bay Street Theater, with the organization naming its second theater space after them.
That’s where we went for the morning papers, Mary’s chicken pot pie, and our mail.
I’m told that post-COVID outbreak there are hour-long lines waiting outside the PO, that packages are piled up in an outside trailer, AND that there’s a wait list of more than 300 “new residents” needing a mailbox.
His love of the water came from growing up in Brooklyn and riding his bike to Sheepshead Bay as a young boy.
Right: Craig Claiborne.
Left: Patricia O’Donahue and Bruce Jay Friedman invited all their best friends to the celebration of their marriage in Wainscott.
Right: Susan Foristal with Lorne Michaels, who is still producing “Saturday Night Live.”
William de Kooning (snapshot on the wall), Jackson Pollock, Jane Freilicher, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns, and Fairfield Porter were among her close friends who would convene and picnic on Flying Point Beach in Montauk.
Her landscapes were inspired by the meeting of the sky, the sea, and the potato fields that she found in what she described as “Her heart’s home.”
Wilson’s work is currently on exhibit at the D.C. Moore Gallery (535 West 22 St., NYC).
Walter’s upside-down tree sculpture is in the background.
Front row: George Plimpton. Second row: John Ashbery, Ed Doctorow, Bill Styron. Back row: Willie Morris, Peter Matthiessen, Rose Styron, John Train, and James Salter.
Right: Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers were among the invitees.
It was on this occasion that Terrence would meet Tom Kirdahy. They fell in love and married.
I urge you to watch the Emmy-nominated documentary about Terrence — “Every Act of Life” — now airing on American Masters.
Center: Annie Leibovitz and the guest of honor, Salmon Rushdie.
Right: Richard Price.
In Kurt’s words: ”When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’”
