Marching McMansions

Did a House Jump Over Another to Get into that Mecox Farm Field?

By Dan Rattiner

When you come out from New York City on the Hampton Jitney, you get a whole new perspective on the landscape. Things glide by. You sit up high and look down. There's no hiding anything from your view.

Two weeks ago, coming through Water Mill and heading toward Bridgehampton, I looked out the window on the south side of the coach to see some beautiful potato fields gliding by, and beyond them over some bushes beyond, about eight or nine McMansions that were - it seemed to me - lurking.

Lurking is a strange word to use to describe McMansions. I have no explanation for why it seemed to me that that was what they were doing. But that's what I thought.

Last week, I took this same trip out, but was asleep as we passed by this spot.

But yesterday, I was wide awake. I looked. And it seemed to me that two of these McMansions had jumped over some other McMansions to advance onto the potato field itself as if they were on the march, leading the others toward the Montauk Highway.

It put me in mind of a bunch of giant chess pieces. They could be chess pieces, although very elaborate ones to be sure. They were all slightly different one from another, so they might have corresponded to a bishop or a castle or a queen. The ones that had jumped over the others, I figured, must be knights. The ones they jumped over, pawns, were still there. So it was definitely chess, not checkers. And the McMansions must be playing white. Or beige, anyway. Was this a variation of a gambit?

I did think, after I got off the Jitney in Amagansett, that I might drive back out there to Mecox to have a look at where these McMansions had jumped. Where they had moved "from" there ought to be big holes in the ground with elaborate open foundations and perhaps a furnace or laundry room or rec room. The town would permit nothing less. But I never got around to it.

Why the McMansions were advancing toward the Montauk Highway I do not know. Across the street from this potato field was indeed another potato field, but there were no McMansions lined up off beyond it.

I don't think you can start a game like that until the adversaries are both in place.

I look forward to next week.

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