Dans Papers - June 1, 2007 - There's Nothing Like A Fresh Bagel At 4 A.M.

At four o'clock on Wednesday morning, I said my goodbyes, gathered together my things at our offices in Bridgehampton and walked out the front door through the darkness to my car. I would be heading home to Three Mile Harbor.

Thirty-five of us had just worked eighteen hours straight to get the 300-page Memorial Day edition of Dan's Papers ready to go to the printer. A few stragglers in production and art remained to wind things up. But everything else was done.

I drove silently eastward and then turned onto Main Street in East Hampton. The first rays of dawn were brightening the horizon.

In the semi-darkness, only an occasional delivery truck went by. There was no other traffic.

And it occurred to me that after I turned onto North Main Street and under the railroad bridge, I would pass Hampton Bagels. It opens at 4 am. They would be preparing the first bagels of the day.

When I got there, I parked between two trucks out front and walked inside. Flourescent lights brightly lit the place. There were deliverymen hauling bags in and out, there was the smell of steam and flour, bread and spices. Three men in white aprons were working behind the counter at the ovens with giant wooden paddles, quickly collecting the bagels as they appeared on trays at the open oven doors to dump them into large wire baskets. Nearby were huge paper bags, their tops folded back so they could stand on the floor open five feet high and other men would put twenty hot poppy bagels or ten onion or forty plain or whatever else was on the order into them. The morning wholesale deliveries were being prepared.

At the counter, I held out a dollar bill. A man at one of the ovens turned around. Who was this fellow, was the look on his face? I smiled.

He nodded, picked one up still steaming from a wire basket and put it into a small white bag. As he handed it to me, I handed him the dollar, then held up the palm of my hand to indicate there should be no change in return. Not at that hour.

"Well thank YOU," he said, beaming.

There is nothing like a hot, fresh bagel made by Jewish bakers -- well, Latino bakers -- at 4:30 in the morning. Nothing.

I started the car, clicked my seatbelt into place, moved around a new delivery truck that had just pulled up and drove off. I crunched happily away. Unbelievable. I was under the influence, no doubt about it. The car weaved out of the lane and I pulled it back.

A fantasy: No, officer. I was just eating this, um, bagel. Step out of the car.

A few purple and pink clouds brightened the far shore of the harbor as I turned up into my driveway.