Dan's Papers - July 4, 2008 - Reading In The Hamptons at Starbucks? Not.

Every week, I have been reading individual chapters of the new memoir I have written, In the Hamptons, in different locations around the Hamptons.

I have read chapters at Andy Warhol's estate, at Long Pond, deep in the woods between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor, at the gazebo in the center of the town green in Montauk and at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett.

I also have had many readings at bookstores and museums and libraries. It's easy to do this with the chapters in this book because each of the 32 chapters is about 32 different individuals I have known, including town characters, celebrities and just plain oddballs during the 50 years of running Dan's Papers.

Some of the readings have been great fun. We had Shank Dickenson of Indian Field Ranch in Montauk take attendees down to the beach in Montauk by horsedrawn wagon. We've had the owners of Coecles Harbor Boatworks on Shelter Island serve lemonade on the dock to the attendees when I read the chapter on Billy Joel there. I've had as many as 30 people attend these readings.

This past Friday at 11, I had scheduled a reading at Starbucks in Bridgehampton. I'd talked to Chris, the manager there, about a month before, and he said it would be fine. Starbucks used to be a bank. I wanted to talk about a former bank president, Merton Tyndall, who long ago lent me money on a handshake for three years before the FDIC put a stop to that.

In any case, on the morning in question, about 8:30, it occurred to me that I did not know if anyone had contacted Chris in the past week or so to reconfirm everything, so I called over there. The person who answered said Chris would not be in until three, but the assistant manager, Pete, would be in around 10. Since I would be there myself shortly after that, I decided just to go there. Worst case, I'd read by the side entrance that went to the parking lot. It would be fine.

When I got there at 10:15, I was told that Pete had just left, and there was an assistant assistant manager in charge. They pointed at the barista.

"The reading is at 11," I said. "I'll do it over there." I pointed.

He was making an espresso. He didn't look up. "Everybody knows about this?"

There was a couple I knew, Kevin and Margaret Bodkin, at a table by a window, so I went over to them. It was 10:20. Forty minutes early was pretty impressive.

We talked. I told them I was glad to see them. Then the husband looked at his watch. "We have to leave because we have an appointment in Southampton," he said.

"You're not staying for the reading?"

It was indeed advertised in the newspaper. Oh well, others would be coming, surely.

I set up to do the reading. I brought in a stack of books and set them up on a table alongside the old bank safe around the side. There was a sofa and two easy chairs. The sofa was occupied at that time by three noisy children, a nanny, a stroller and lots of children's toys. There was no Starbucks coffee anywhere about. I hoped they would leave. But everybody is welcome to do their thing at Starbucks, so I didn't know what to do. We would see.

Within a few minutes, I had set up the microphone and amplifier I use for the readings. I also had this big three-by-four-foot framed photograph of the cover of the book. I put that a bit away from the kids, but near enough for the nanny to see. She didn't get the message.

It was now five minutes before reading time, and there was nobody. A few people had looked like they might be there for the reading, but when I asked them, they said they were just wondering what the hell I was doing. When I told them, they thanked me for telling them and walked away.

I looked at my watch again. Exactly 11. Nobody. But then I saw this very tall, handsome man, maybe 6' 5", standing there and smiling at me. He was holding a copy of the book.

"Here for the reading?"

"Yup. And I just finished the book. Would you sign it afterwards?"

"Sure." I looked around. "Looks like it's just you and me," I said.

"My wife's next door at the library. She's coming."

A thought was twirling around in my head. "Has she read the book, too?"

"Good. I'll be reading to at least SOMEBODY who hasn't read the book."

The man picked up the picture.

"I'm a good salesman," he said. "I'll go out front and get some people walking down the street. Be right back."

And before I could say anything, he was gone. And he stayed gone. Now, I thought, I'm back to nobody. And he took my picture.

But no. He was back, although just with the picture. He was still smiling. "I'll go get her," he said, meaning his wife.

And then he was gone again. But not quite. He had stopped by the line of people waiting to order their coffee.

"Hey everybody, there's a book reading that's going to take place, right around the side there. Everybody come. It's the book, In the Hamptons."

When he came back, he introduced me to his wife and we shook hands. She was a handsome woman.

And at that moment, an extremely beautiful and fashionably well-dressed young woman with shopping bags appeared, barged between us and marched over to the nanny and all the kids and toys.

"Okay, we're leaving," she said to her crew. The nanny got up. The three kids, who were behaving quite well up until then, suddenly ran off in all directions, laughing and making squeaking noises.

"Carolyn! Rebecca!" the woman shouted. "Angela!" But it didn't do any good. The nanny began rounding the kids up. "Sorry" the woman said to me. The toys and shopping bags went into the stroller. Soon they were gone, too.

And so I read, slowly and with feeling, to this couple who were now sitting in the two easy chairs. I read them the story about the banker who took me into his office, heard me out, opened the drawer to his desk, pulled out a checkbook, filled it out and handed it to me.

"'You want me to sign anything?' I had asked.'"

"'No. You gave me your word of honor,' he said.'"

As I read, I occasionally looked up. The man who had read the book was smiling and nodding as I read the funny parts he had already read. The woman seemed a bit like, "Here's what he has dragged me into," at first, but she soon warmed to the story. In the end, I thanked them for coming, we shook hands and they left.

Then I bought a grande decaf cappuccino with whole milk and one Equal, and the management said it was on them, and I left, too.

There were other readings this weekend. I read "Esther and Sarah and the Rolling Stones" at the Memory Motel in Montauk on Saturday. And I read a chapter called "Jackson Pollock" at the home of Jackson Pollack and his wife Lee Krasner, which is now a museum and study center, on Sunday. I had more adventures there. But I'll write about those some other time.

Next Saturday morning at 11 a.m., I will read "Bobby Van" in Bobby Van's restaurant in Bridgehampton.

In the Hamptons: My Fifty Years with Farmers, Fishermen, Artists, Billionaires and Celebrities is available wherever books or sold. To read more, go to the book's website, which is danrattiner.com.

Since I wrote the above, The New York Times reviewed In the Hamptons. The review was written by Liesl Schillinger, it was in the Style section, and it is a knockout. Here it is.

IN THE HAMPTONS: My Fifty Years with Farmers, Fishermen, Artist, Billionaires, and Celebrities

DAN RATTINER loves to invent preposterous tales. In Dan's Papers, the free newspaper he founded in Montauk in 1960, he occasionally runs a bogus story to see if anyone notices. In 1966, he reported on a sea serpent sighting in Bridgehampton (WCBS fell for it and sent out a helicopter). And in 1991, he made up a festival called Flight to Portugal, in which contestants raced cars off a cliff into the ocean by the Montauk Point Lighthouse: "The one who gets the farthest toward Portugal wins."

But nothing he's ever written seems more far-fetched than one scene he describes in his memoir, In the Hamptons. Driving on a sunny June weekend through the "sleepy little villages of Westhampton, Hampton Bays, Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton, and Amagansett," he doesn't get stuck in a single all-Range-Rover traffic jam or spot one herd of Calypso-clad weekenders grazing at overpriced brunch cafes. Each town he passes is "quiet as a mouse," all the stores closed.

This neutron-bomb tableau is not one of his hoaxes: it is 1956, on the day the author, then 16, first set foot in Montauk, before the philistines approached the hedgerow, before the Hamptons were "The Hamptons."

Mr. Rattiner pays tribute to the local figures, famous and obscure, who have weaved themselves into his personal mythology over the last 50 years. Each portrait is written in unassuming language, with emotional punch, telling detail and impressive recall.

There's the flawless young heiress who captivated Mr. Rattiner at 20, tearfully inviting him to a midnight tryst on the beach after her parents made her cancel a date (German shepherds barred the way to the mansion).

There's the artist Willem de Kooning, in his cups and off his chair at a restaurant, ranting in slurred words, "I'm the greatest living painter in the world." (Mr. Rattiner helped drag him away from public scrutiny and into the back seat of his car.)

Less glamorous but no less compelling are the middle-aged hoteliers Esther and Sarah, who basked daily on aluminum lawn chairs in front of their Memory Motel, "tanned, heavily oiled," and wearing "nearly identical jaguar bikinis"; and the smooth, good-natured Bing Crosby look-alike, Frank Tuma Jr., vice president of the Montauk Improvement Company, who let Dan's Papers occupy the mezzanine of his building for free.

Mr. Rattiner is a great appreciator of other people. To find as many memorable New York characters gathered between two covers, you'd have to look back to Joseph Mitchell's "Up in the Old Hotel."