Dan's Papers - June 29, 2007 - Uncle Sam Turns 231

If a friend has a birthday, you give him a gift, right? Maybe a bottle of North Fork wine or a book from Burton's in Greenport. And if your friend doesn't drink wine and owns dozens of books he's not yet read, then you search around for another gift. Perhaps a gift certificate to a local restaurant. Everyone likes that.

So birthdays come and go. If we're lucky, we live to a healthy 100. Even longer, nowadays. And we accumulate, with all those birthdays, lots of gifts. Mostly, we're grateful for them.

Well, I'm celebrating a friend's birthday next week. Your friend, too. It's a birthday calling for 231 candles on the birthday cake. Obviously our mutual friend is pretty old. He's still healthy, though, and thoroughly enjoys receiving a gift or two.

However, like most older folks, "things" don't mean so much anymore. Like surf boards, earrings, golf clubs. Remember how parents always said, "All I want is peace and quiet." Well, that seems to be what our friend wants, too.

Our friend? Let's call him by name - Sam. And his birthday's coming up on July 4. Now we gotta get the gifts. I have a few in mind and I bet you have some good ideas. One provision, though - our gifts have to come from the North Fork. Then we'll have one heck of a party!

How about a gift package of serenity? There's plenty of it where we live and it's certainly needed elsewhere. Walk our bay beaches at twilight time or hear church bells chime all along Main Road. See kids play in a Riverhead schoolyard or wait with the fisherman, patiently wait, on Long Island Sound shores. That's it! A gift box of North Fork serenity given freely and with love. No matter how much serenity we pack in the box, there's lots more here at home.

Or how about a gift of beauty? No, not a gift certificate to a spa or some expensive face cream. (Though if anyone is listening, I guess I wouldn't mind receiving both). But the beauty our dear old friend would enjoy seeing most what we see each day on the North Fork. Clear waters in our Cutchogue creeks, protected wetlands in our Riverhead parks, starry nights at Southold's Custer Institute. Maybe you can't wrap up a creek, but how about a promissory note? That with due diligence, we, Sam's friends, will enjoy and protect our environment for birthday years to come.

And let's tie a ribbon around a gift of concern. Like a Maureen's Haven dinner and shelter for the homeless on a cold winter night when churches from Riverhead to Orient open their doors. Or maybe the concern in a fundraiser for a Greenport resident, a town employee for more than 20 years, who is ill and needs health insurance. The concern of men and women who staff our volunteer fire departments, coach our kids at local ball fields, volunteer in our thrift shops. All of them and many more.

This last gift may not appear a gift at all. It seems to me that work is a gift to others, to ourselves, to our country. Think of how we work here on the North Fork.

The young men and women who have just graduated from high school, most working hard at their studies and deserving our congratulations. The farmers, the storeowners, those who pour us hot coffee in a local deli, the guy who puts gas in our car in a heavy rain, hospital staff members who dispense hope as well as health, even those who work in Riverhead and Southold town governments. Sure, we pick on them. But most of them must be doing something right or life on the North Fork wouldn't, couldn't, be quite so good. The gift of work. Let's put that in a great big gift box. Sign the birthday card "To Sam with love from the North Fork."

Then as the July 4 party comes to an end, with the gifts or serenity, beauty, concern and work unwrapped, it will be time for Sam to blow out the candles on his cake.

Now I ask you, who has enough strength to blow out 231 candles? Certainly not our old friend. But maybe that's OK. Maybe we'll all just glow on together.