Dan's Papers - April 17, 2009 - No Interviews Please

About 15 years ago, several sports car racing enthusiasts in the Hamptons decided they wanted to organize a car race through the streets of Bridgehampton in the summertime. Long before, when the Hamptons was all farming and fishing, some earlier race car enthusiasts - well motor car enthusiasts - had done just that. Speeds had exceeded 100 miles an hour in that earlier time (the 1930s) and it ended when a couple of people watching a race got killed on Sagaponack Road, but why not bring it back?

"We'd have to do it a lot differently," architect Guy Frost said. "We could just do it as a rally. Get antique cars, classic cars from that era and have them motor around for half a day amidst the heavy summer traffic. It could be a timed event. Not for speed, but for accuracy."

And so, the word went out. Posters were put up, ads were placed in newspapers, anyone with an antique car - pre 1950 - was called.

"Shall we call Paul Sidney?" antique car enthusiast, Peter Mole, asked at one of the pre-event meetings. He was referring to the chief disk jockey, president and chairman of the local oldies station.

"You don't have to call him," came the reply.

This reporter covered that event 15 years ago for this newspaper. I had a pad and pencil and a camera around my neck and I wandered around. About 40 automobiles were entered, and they were all shined and polished and waiting for inspection in rows in the field behind the Bridgehampton Historical Museum. They sparkled in the morning sun. There were Bugattis from the 1920s, Packards from the 1930s, Austin Healeys from the late 1940s.

In a tent next to the museum there was a registration table, coffee and donuts and people selling racing books and other paraphernalia. A few hundred spectators milled around. There were drivers and navigators, some of them in leather helmets with antique goggles pulled up. You couldn't miss them.

And of course, there was Paul Sidney. Sidney sat, that fine July day, in a lawn chair under the maple trees on the grass next to the sidewalk in front of the museum. He was a bit overweight, had black hair that fell over his forehead, white teeth, a potato nose and a showman's smile. Next to him were two empty lawn chairs. And behind him, wriggling along the grass, were a bundle of black wires that extended from a microphone he held to the giant WLNG news wagon parked at the curb with its motor running. It was painted gold and brown with WLNG in giant letters, beneath which was the painting of a microphone with lightning bolts coming out of it.

It was true. You didn't have to invite Sidney to anything. He just showed up. He'd been showing up since 1964 when he was 25 years old and one of the first employees at the station. And everybody loved that he did that. He showed up at high school football games, school plays, firehouse pancake breakfasts, church fundraisers and town fairs. Now, at 55, he was still showing up. And here he was. His very distinctive, enthusiastic, upbeat, chamber of commerce and get yourself up radio voice was everywhere.

"Hey Dan!" he shouted into his microphone. Sidney's voice came out over a loud speaker, sharp, demanding. He waved me over to one of the empty lawn chairs.

What the hell. Everybody loved WLNG. Half the east end listened to it every day. I ambled over.

"Now we've got Dan Rattiner of Dan's Papers over here for a bit. Dan, what do you think of all these antique cars?" he asked.

"Beautiful, beautiful," I said into the microphone, getting into the rhythm. "It's quite an event. I had no idea there were so many antique cars in the Hamptons. Everybody's here."

"Think they'll get tickets out on the road?"

"No they won't, Paul. Unless they break down. They can keep up with the traffic. They'll look pretty weird, people will wonder what's going on, but it will be quite all right."

Right in front of us, a couple with two kids, tourists, were standing there looking at us. Were these people from the radio station famous? After a few minutes they decided we were not. And so they walked on.

We talked for a while, but now Sidney was looking over my shoulder to somebody else.

"Hey, there's our Town Supervisor Fred Thiele. Hey Fred?" Thiele was walking over. Sidney turned back to me.

"Let's get our supervisor in here for a minute to join us, okay?" he said. "Oh, wait," he said, cupping a hand over his ear. He was wearing a wire. "We've got to break for a commercial. But we'll be right back, with Dan Rattiner and Fred Thiele."

Now, coming out over the loud speakers was the recorded 10-second sing song signature of the radio station, some girl quartet, in harmony, singing the call letters of the station they had probably recorded 20 years before. WLNG plays it a hundred times a day. Still does. A band was in the background. It ended suddenly as it started, with the sound of a chime. Now, over the loud speaker, Sidney's recorded voice was interviewing the recorded voice of Ben Hull, the longtime owner of Hull Chevrolet about his line of cars. Thiele came over and sat down.

"So how is everything, Fred?" the real Sidney asked quietly.

The Bridgehampton Grand Prix, as that event was called, was one of the major events of that summer of 1993. On the front lawn of the museum, across the sidewalk from Sidney, racing legend Jackie Stewart, also with a microphone, stood before a large crowd and interviewed the antique car drivers at the starting line just moments before they each, one at a time, drove out into the "race course," which was a side street leading out to the Montauk Highway.

He and these special cars and drivers were about four feet up, on a wooden platform. The car engines thundered away, and at the foot of the ramp behind them were 40 more cars in a long row waiting to drive up onto the platform to be interviewed by Stewart. The cars made quite a racket. After the interview (a description of the car and its place in automotive history) a starter with a checkered flag counted down the time backwards from 10, and the car rumbled off down the other side of the ramp to the lawn in a puff of exhaust fumes (no catalytic converters for these antiques) while Stewart made more complimentary noises about the departing car in his famous Scottish accent. The crowd would cheer.

Race day July 14, 1993 was a wonderful event. I wrote extensively about it in the paper the following week. And the week after that, sitting in my office, I got a call from Mole, the chairman of the event.

"The committee would like you to be Master of Ceremonies at next year's event," he said. "Would you do that?"

"Are you SURE you want ME to do this?" I asked.

I said I would be happy to. But what would I ask? And he told me just ask them to tell you about their cars. It would be easy. One after another. And so, the following year, I did just that. And since I was not Jackie Stewart, but the local newspaper editor, I wore a tuxedo with a red bow tie to make myself look special. It was another wonderful time. Even more people attended and this time there were over 60 cars. And I did all the interviews with as much exuberance and enthusiasm as I could muster. Afterwards, I did my obligatory interview with Sidney, and, as I was leaving to go home, walking under the maple trees, Mole ran over to me.

"Please do this again next year!" he said.

I was so happy. "Well then, I will."

I just loved this event. And as the winter turned to spring in 1995 and the spring turned to summer, I imagined myself up there again, on the platform in my tuxedo, microphone in hand, interviewing the happy car drivers.

I had to be there by 9:30 a.m. The first of the cars would head out at 10. And so early that morning, slowly and carefully, I once again dressed myself in my tuxedo. This would be my signature dress for MC-ing the race every year. I ate breakfast. I headed out at 9. It was another beautiful day.

I parked across the street, in front of the Candy Kitchen and, as a strange man in a tuxedo, walked past Sidney in his lawn chair talking to Christie Brinkley and into the crowd by the platform to check myself in with Mole. The pennants were flying. The cars, even more than the year before, were lined up in the back, getting ready to move out into the line.

I couldn't find Mole at first. I went into the tent. But I did see Stewart, off to one side, signing autographs. So he was here. This time, he would watch ME.

People looked at me in amusement. A man in a tuxedo at 9:30 on a Saturday morning. At that moment, Mole ran up to me. He was out of breath.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Why, I'm Master of Ceremonies. Like you said."

"No, that was last year."

"You asked me after the event last year for this year."

"Jackie Stewart is back again to do it this year."

"You might have called," I said, feeling the heat rising. I was getting angry. "I got all dressed up."

"That was a year ago I asked you," Mole said. "You should have checked back with me."

And then he was gone.

I look like a fool, I thought. I AM a fool. The crowd was swirling around. I'm not staying for this. The hell with this. And so I turned, and, picking myself through the crowd, went out toward my car. But then I stopped.

Between me and my car directly across the street there was somebody sitting in a lawn chair, in my way. Brinkley had left. He hadn't seen me yet. But he was, at that moment, bantering on about the big crowd, about the oompah band that was performing by the platform, about how everybody should all come on down to enjoy this wonderful event and contribute to the charity, which was the Bridgehampton Race Track Defense fund at that time, and he was scanning the crowd looking, looking...

I zipped behind a maple tree. Made myself thin and tall. He shouldn't see me.

I was a wreck. Humiliated, angry, a fool. I was in no condition for this. I peeked out. Sidney was looking to his left, up the street, away from me. And so I zipped to the next maple tree and made myself thin and tall.

I'm a goddamn Roadrunner cartoon, is what I thought. But I'll be damned if I'll let myself be interviewed by Sidney. I'll blab to the whole East End about what they had just done to me, I'm so damn angry.

He turned, reached down to the grass, and picked up a cup of coffee. I zipped to the next maple tree.

And thus it was that, in the next few minutes, I picked my way from tree to tree until, finally, I was able to run out into traffic and across the street to my car. I opened the door and leaped inside. I was off. Safe. A man who safely had avoided being interviewed by Paul Sidney.

As I drove away, I could hear Sidney interviewing a couple from Larchmont. The man was a car buff. Had a 1964 Pontiac Firebird. Yes, he'd come specifically for this event. I'm outta here.

Sidney passed away last Sunday. He was 69 and in poor health for some time. He was born and raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He had no family to mourn him. But he had several hundred members of his extended family at his funeral, just a small representation of the tens of thousands of people who listened to him every day, a comforting, reassuring presence in their lives, interviewing people, reading the local news, inviting people to upcoming events, playing his 1950s oldies, chattering away about somebody's hundredth birthday or this and that. And everybody told stories about him.

I had interviewed him once for Dan's Papers a few years before the three-year opus of the Bridgehampton Grand Prix and my big fat ego. He did not have much to say about his early life. All he really wanted to talk about was the station and this wonderful community that he had adopted - and that had adopted him.

Probably the thing that he was most known for was being there, a reassuring voice for this community, at the times when hurricanes and other disasters disrupted this community. The power would be out everywhere. But Sidney would be broadcasting using his portable generators, and people would be listening to him over their portable radios. And he would bring them the latest updates to guide them through the crisis.

"The most dramatic thing we ever did?" he asked. "Without a doubt, it was the big flood tide that left most of Sag Harbor underwater. I don't remember the exact year. We were out on Water Street at the station and the water was up to our knees in the studio. But we were broadcasting. Letting people know what to do. WLNG is always there."

And so is Sidney, up there, looking down, about to interview somebody coming in through the pearly gates, with Saint Peter standing by.

The Bridgehampton Grand Prix? Mole and I sometimes laugh about the spat we once had. The event still takes place every year. And everybody looks forward to it, although I never MC-ed it again. This year? Well, Sidney, somehow, will be there too. Count on it.