Dan's Papers - October 5, 2007

Well, as we reported last week, the Big Duck on Flanders Road would be moved to its new home further up Flanders Road on Saturday, September 22 at 11 a.m. There would be a big parade. People were coming from all over, there would be marching bands, people with banners, baton twirlers, fife and drum corps, various fire departments and a whole lot of people on foot. There was even a report that the Maurer family, the descendants of the farmer who built the Big Duck in 1931 in Riverhead, would be coming and staying at the Southampton Inn over the weekend.

Well, here it is, Friday, October 5, and the Big Duck is still where it has been for the last generation - in front of the pony ring at the entrance to the Sears-Bellows County Park. It laid an egg.

Actually, it didn't lay an egg. Turns out that the County, after numerous delays because County Executive Steve Levy wanted to lead the parade and fit it into his busy campaign schedule, scrapped the whole thing for an entirely different reason. Having a big crowd on the street in the middle of a busy Saturday afternoon with all those telephone and electric wires that had to come down in order to make the move may have been okay in '88 when the duck was last moved, but was just too dangerous and an accident waiting to happen in '07. And so a commissioner of safety or somebody cancelled everything and had it rescheduled for this coming Saturday, but beginning at 11 p.m., and going through the middle of the night. Flanders Road would be closed for the duration. The road would be blocked. The Big Duck will be asleep and it will be easy to get a blindfold on her. The public would be told to stay away. And when the move was over at 6 a.m. and the Big Duck was safely up on its foundations at its new location three miles away, they'd open the road again and all the politicians would be available for media interviews as the sun was rising, and they could stand in front of the Big Duck and tell you how it all went, how hard it was and what wonderful people they all are.

I must say this is a bitter ending to how they decided to handle all of this in January of 1988, when the Big Duck was moved the same three miles, but in the other direction. I was there. We had the same telephone and LIPA lines down on the sides of the road spitting sparks and smoke, we had the same potholes and storm drains, but it was so much fun. We just didn't give a damn. We didn't shut down Flanders Road. Those coming the other way could reach out of their cars - seat belts were just coming into general use back then - and touch Big Duck for luck as she went by one way and you went the other. And nobody got hurt.

I have such a wonderful memory of that day in 1988 when they moved the Big Duck. We had marching bands, the fife and drum corps, the politicians, the police cars and even, if I recall correctly, an oompah polka band from Polishtown up in Riverhead.

Goddamn that was fun. And you know, you can't even say that anymore. Gosh darn that was fun.

You know what I think? I think it's a shame that this generation of kids won't get the experience I got along with thousands, maybe tens of thousands other people when the Big Duck picked up and went on the move in '88. I think the times have changed and maybe not for the better. Now everybody sues everybody. And the biggest thrill for a kid is a video game that he plays with his thumbs, except maybe he'll sue Xbox if he sprains his thumb. This Saturday night he'll probably be up late in his room playing Halo on his Xbox with the sound off while his parents are snoring in the next bedroom and the Guy Davis Building Movers are out there with the men with flashlights, defibrillators and fire extinguishers taking the Big Duck where she has to go.

For the record, Big Duck was built in 1931 by two Riverhead duck farmers out of concrete and wood, painted white, and then set up on West Main Street in Riverhead as an attraction that would hopefully get motorists to stop and buy roast ducks. These farmers were probably up there unsteadily on the duck's back, forty feet up in the air with hammers and nails, and the hell with falling off and breaking something. Big Duck stayed on West Main until 1934. Then Big Duck got moved to a duck farm on Flanders Road near Riverhead leading down to Hampton Bays, and then in 1988, having been gifted for $1 by the kind offices of Kia Eshghi and her family, taken as this great flagship on this parade three miles east down Flanders Road to roost in front of the Pony Ring in front of the County run Sears-Bellows Park.

Now, it is going back to its old site because of a need for historical accuracy, I think. Maybe. Maybe they'll be out there and the duck will peck somebody and they'll get taken by ambulance to Peconic Hospital for a tetanus shot and to have a Band Aid put on or be put under observation for a bit. Or maybe they'll be out there and the Big Duck will stampede and they'll have to go after her with nets - can't harm her, she's a member of an endangered species - and they'll evacuate the area and get a psychiatrist to talk to her and calm her down and then get her back on track for the completion of the move.

As for me, I intend to be above it all, dangling from a helicopter in a trapeze, taking pictures for this newspaper and occasionally rappelling down the rope to interview the duck to see if she remembers the time back in '88 when we moved her the other way and everybody had a great time.