Newsday photographer J. Conrad Williams and staff writer Denise Flaim speak with Dan Rattiner in the Hamptons about In the Hamptons. Photo by S. Galardi

Author To Read Chapters In The Hamptons

Every weekend beginning May 10 and continuing on to Labor Day, author Dan Rattiner takes his new book and microphone to one of 25 different locations in the Hamptons and Montauk to give a short history lesson about that spot and then read a chapter from the book In the Hamptons that took place at that location. The public is invited free of charge to the reading, Q&A, and book signing.

THIS WEEK:

Saturday, May 10, 5 p.m., BookHampton, Main Street, East Hampton
The Editor's In Jail

Forty years ago East Hampton's Main Street had only mom and pop merchants, luncheonettes and the five and ten. Newtown Lane had gas pumps on the sidewalk. Next door was Speed's Luncheonette, and next to that was the East Hampton Village Police Station. In the chapter "Speed King," the author describes how he was handcuffed, walked to police headquarters, and incarcerated for the day. In the small town of those days, word was that since Rattiner was handcuffed, in a bathing suit, and escorted to the station, he must have done something bad at the beach.

Sunday, May 11, 11 a.m., Amagansett
Nazis in the Hamptons

On Sunday morning, the author invites us to meet him in the parking lot of Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett, where he will take listeners over the wooden walk to the beach where Nazi soldiers in full uniform landed by rubber boat from a nearby submarine on the night of June 22, 1942. They buried explosives, several hundred thousand dollars in cash and various fuses and weapons in boxes on the beach there. Then they walked to the train station and went to New York City where, six days later, the FBI apprehended them.

The reading of "The Flesheaters" recounts a Grade B black and white horror movie that was made on the beach 20 years later and subsequently had a long run in theatres around the country. The author took part in the making of this movie, and recounts his botched attempt to seduce one of the leading ladies. The connection with the Nazis? The mad scientist, who with test tubes and beakers creates the 40-foot tall monster that threatens the world, is a former Nazi, now a refugee in America, bent on power and terror.

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