Dan's Papers - September 21, 2007

It's official. On September 29, the Big Duck, the 20-foot tall concrete statue in Hampton Bays, will be taking a trip. It will be going on a large reinforced, wooden platform on wheels hauled by a house moving company from its current roosting spot on Route 24 at the entrance to the Sears-Bellows County Park, to a site three miles further northwest on the opposite side of the street in the Hamlet of Flanders.

Approvals have been signed by the Town of Southampton, through whose jurisdiction the Duck will travel, the County of Suffolk, which owns the Big Duck, the State of New York, which owns Route 24 and the Long Island Power Authority, which will have to move some power lines.

Although the exact date of the move was decided upon last Monday, a well-placed source has told Dan's Papers that there are still two possibilities, still to be decided, about which route the Big Duck will use to make the move.

The first route, for which a budget of $80,000 has already been set aside, is the direct route. Marching bands and police and fire equipment will accompany the Big Duck out onto the highway from its present roost, and then at the stately pace of 5 miles an hour, go with it straight up Route 24 for about forty minutes to the new location.

The second route, which will take the Big Duck on a roundabout "waddle" through every hamlet and village on the South Fork, will be more expensive. Going at its maximum speed of 10 miles an hour, the Davis House Moving Company will take the Big Duck on a seven-hour tour at a cost of $4.8 million. Beginning at its current site and wearing a silver wreath around its neck, a gold crown on its head and an American flag draped over its back, it will head down Route 24 toward Montauk to the sound of the firing of a salute cannon at 8 a.m. It will go all the way to Sunrise Highway where it will go up the eastbound ramp, then off to County Road 39 past Shinnecock, Tuckahoe and all the curbside spectators and then through Water Mill where the first of the big flag waving crowds are expected, then to Bridgehampton and up into Sag Harbor then back down through East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk and then loop back to Amagansett and East Hampton, then through Sagaponack and past the Sagg General Store around noon, up through Mecox to Water Mill a second time, then straight into Southampton on Hampton Road, across the canal through to Hampton Bays, East Quogue, Quogue, Westhampton Beach and then up past the airport to Riverhead, around the circle in that town and then down Route 24 to the final resting place in Flanders just three miles from where it started from. It is expected to arrive at 6 p.m.

8 a.m. Route 24, Flanders
9 a.m. Water Mill
9:40 a.m. Bridgehampton
10:15 a.m. Sag Harbor
10:45 a.m. East Hampton
11:15 a.m. Amagansett
NOON Montauk
1:15 p.m. Amagansett
1:20 p.m. Bluff Road
2 p.m. Sagaponack
2:15 p.m. Mecox
2:30 p.m. Water Mill
3 p.m. Southampton
3:45 p.m. Hampton Bays
4 p.m. East Quogue
4:15 p.m. Quogue
5 p.m. Westhampton Beach
5:45 p.m. Riverhead
6 p.m. Flanders - New Location

The Big Duck will be followed by a variety of marching units from every high school and Veterans organization, several bagpipe corps, drum and flute corps, jugglers and baton twirlers and several floats of other creatures from the Manorville Game Farm, the Riverhead Aquarium and the Cole Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

All of our government officials are in favor of this second route. And all have pledged the $4.8 million necessary to make this happen. Our government officials consider this a patriotic parade, a celebration of an American Icon, a symbol of East End farming, and in October, as this resort area is out of season, is likely to bring much new business into the community.

There are only two things holding it up. One is a group of environmentalists, who oppose the "Big Waddle" on the grounds that it is a humiliation and torture to ducks in the same way, well almost the same way, that the "Long March" in the Philippines was a humiliation and torture of our fine troops during World War II. They have vowed to protest the event in every town as the Big Duck passes through.

"Never before on Long Island has a group of animal activists and environmentalists been brought together to speak in one voice like this," said Andrea Hartworm, the protest's organizer. "If they allow this humiliation to the Big Duck, we will have more than 10,000 people on hand to protest. Count on it."

And there is another problem. A group of religious zealots just returned from nine weeks in the small town of Bzzrrttx in Inner Mongolia where ducks are considered sacred, say they also plan to protest.

"Big Duck is God," Xanx Bru Flxnx, the leader of this group, said to a reporter for one of the New York dailies. "He be Big Duck. We pray to him every morning. He says he be angry. But he no tell what he do when he moved. No tell what we do either."

Adam Rensellier, the Regional Director of Homeland Security subsequently met with Xanx Bru Flxnx in his candlelit dome shelter on Peconic Bay in Flanders. Rensellier declined to comment on what transpired when he met with the man, other than that many security people would be in attendance if the Big Duck were moved via the longer route.

The final decision about which of these two routes is to be taken is expected to be made by Governor Spitzer at a news conference this coming Monday morning in front of the Big Duck. We wish the governor luck in making this judgment.

The Big Duck was originally built by two Riverhead duck farmers in 1931. They designed it roosting and they constructed it themselves out of concrete on turkey wire over a heavy wood frame. Red tail lights from a Model T Ford served as the Duck's eyes. There are no feathers. The concrete was painted white. And on the front below the neck, there was a wooden door through which shoppers could pass to buy the fresh killed ducks inside.

The Big Duck, as it was called since the very beginning, was then brought to an empty lot right in the center of downtown Riverhead on West Main Street where it was opened for business.

Two years later, the farmers moved the Big Duck from West Main Street to a new site on Route 24 in front of the duck farm they owned in Flanders. There it stayed until 1988 when the heirs of the farmers sold the duck farm to developers who planned to construct 56 homes on the 40-acre property.

They announced they would tear down the Big Duck. They considered it a nuisance and a distraction.

Later that year, after a public uproar, the County of Suffolk bought the Big Duck from the developers to save it, moving it off that site to a new site two miles down Route 24 to the entrance of the Sears-Bellows County Park next to the pony ride ring. Four years later, the developers declared bankruptcy - their homesites unsold and their houses unbuilt.

Now, the County has bought the failed residential development where the Big Duck spent the majority of its life. And now they are moving the Big Duck back there as a kind of triumph of nature over commerce, with Suffolk County Supervisor Steve Levy leading the parade.

Read our follow up story next week after it is decided which of the two routes will be chosen.