Our house sits on a half-acre lot, in a neighborhood of half-acre lots located just south of the Village line. It’s a modest neighborhood by Sag Hampton standards. It’s not in the historic district, in fact the neighborhood is so not historic that it didn’t even exist before 1987, give or take a year. Before then it was just woods. When we began construction there was only one other house in the neighborhood (I almost wrote in the subdivision, but I hate that word with a passion, and my fingers wouldn’t type it until I put it in italics.)
My wife and I cleared the land ourselves, with a bit of help from our young children. It was painful. I felt the need to apologize to each tree I killed. When I was done, our builder told me I hadn’t cleared enough land for the heavy equipment to be able to move around, and he then cut down a bunch more trees. That really hurt, but the pain was soon swept away by the excitement of seeing of our house sprout and grow large amidst what remained of the forest. As the house grew to fill the recently cleared land, my conscience eased proportionately, and I began to take joy in what we were creating.
It’s important to the story I’m telling for you to know how we came to own this particular piece of land. One day, about a year before the clearing started, my wife got a call from our good friend Jane. Jane, who knew we wanted to build a home for our family told my wife that there were two lots in a new development not far from where we were living at the time, that were selling for a reasonable price. Jane and Bobbie (my wife) went to look at the property, and decided that it would be the perfect place for our two families to build homes side by side. So we each bought a lot and began to dream. Within a year, Bobbie and I were clearing our land, but for various reasons, Jane and her family were not able to move ahead with their plans. So, while we were thrilled to see our new home take shape, our glass was only half full (maybe a bit more). For quite some time we hoped that Jane’s family would be able to build on their lot, but it never did work out, and eventually, a few years after our house was completed, they sold their lot to a spec builder.
This was not what we had anticipated. Now, we would be living next door to someone we didn’t know. To make matters worse, suddenly a house was also going up on the other side of our home. So we watched with very mixed feelings as more woods gave way to houses. This was, of course, inevitable, in a half-acre subdi-you-know, but still, we mourned the loss of our privacy. Eventually, the other house was completed, and a nice family moved in with a child that same age as our oldest daughter. So far, so good. The first house, the one that stood where Jane’s family was meant to live, remained vacant longer, but eventually sold.
Now, here’s where things got interesting. The purchasers of “Jane’s” house were a retired couple from New York City, and only came out to “the Hamptons” on weekends, and for a few weeks during the summer. Most of the year, the house stood empty. For us, this was a mixed blessing. These folks not only weren’t the good friends we hoped to have living next door — given their schedule, they were not likely to ever become more than casual acquaintances. On the other hand, with the house empty much of the year, we basically had our privacy back. It wasn’t woods, but it also wasn’t occupied.
We adjusted. Then the neighbors on the other side put their house on the market. The market, being what it is, meant that even the modest homes in our neighborhood were no longer affordable to people of modest means. Before you could say ka-ching, there were second-home owners on that side as well. As it turned out, this young family spends even less time in their new home than the retired couple, and so, we now live in a sort of ghost-town in the middle of a suburban street. We like our privacy, but this might be too much of a good thing.
One of the qualities I particularly enjoy about living in a small town is getting to know and be known in the community. (I wrote about that once before, here.) So, while I know and am friendly with many of the people who live in my neighborhood, I don’t know either of the people whose homes and property abut mine. Somehow, that just feels wrong. It makes our small town feel more like a big apartment building in New York where you see people coming and going all the time, but don’t really know who they are. Unfortunately, this metaphor will shortly become all too real as the Bulova building in the heart of the Sag Harbor Village fills up with summer residents, only to return to its current abandoned state every winter — just one of a dozen reasons why some accommodation for local workforce housing should be made there.
Last night, I went to a gathering at a home on Mecox Road in Water Mill. To get there, I drove down Ocean Road from Montauk Highway almost to the Atlantic Ocean. As you may know, Ocean Road (and much of Mecox Road too) is lined almost entirely with summer homes. Driving down those roads on a cold February night with all the houses dark is mighty eerie. In the summer it’s a community of sorts. In the winter it’s ghostly. Those of us who’ve been here a while are used to that feeling south of the Highway. Unfortunately, the Highway no longer protects our “north-of-” community from the onrushing army of ghosts.
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Currently listening to: Ghost in This House
