Southampton Comes Alive

I am sitting in a cheese shop in Southampton, New York. There is a distinct smell of mahogany and peanut butter flavored coffee, which I just purchased and am currently drinking, while listening to the ramblings of the owner, Dean, who believes that the people living on the North Shore have more sophisticated tastes when it comes to food and drink than the inhabitants of the South Shore, where, like I said, I am currently sitting, trying to plan a lesson for school.

Dean's the type who is loyal to family and friends, and that filters through into his business, where he often greets customers by name, and with a little wit, as they arrive in his shop. "It's still Kendra, right?" he jokes with a customer who is unsuspecting of his charm and friendliness.

Dean is having a conversation with an old acquaintance, let's call her Eve, about Dean's family dynamics. Parents in Florida, Brother in Sacramento, Brother's Daughter hasn't talked to Brother in 20 years until reunited in Florida for Dad's birthday bash last weekend. Dean tells a story about how he rode in the same car as his parents, brother, and sister for the first time since 1976. He tells Eve all these details about his family, and she listens intently as if she knew them personally (and she may), all until Eve's friend Adam enters the cheese shop and they leave to go for a walk. Maybe I should take that as a sign that I should go back to reading Paradise Lost...

A stranger to these parts, sipping coffee from a drab, white paper cup, I am writing and scribbling endlessly while I should be doing my work, which is figuring out exactly how I will be teaching Milton's Paradise Lost to my group of inner-city twelfth graders in Delaware next week. If only Dean knew me from Adam...

Moving on down the road, I decide to try my lesson-planning luck at the Southampton Publick House, a microbrewery of the old-fashioned English type. My company is typical for four o'clock on a Tuesday in Southampton, New York: two old men, probably fishermen, locals gathering for a round at the local pub; two businessmen meeting for a drink and a meal before they head back to the city to catch their flight out west to Minneapolis or Milwaukee; an old wino lady trying her luck at beer with her girlfriends in town for a "ladies week" at the local bed and breakfast; and two young guys catching a beer during happy hour after a long day working for the department store in town.

These last two are wondering if I always bring my work to the bar. In fact, I say, this is the first time. I've decided to move up from the typical coffee shop, and, If only they'd let me drink before I teach my students, I say with a slight, lonely chuckle. We go on to explain our respective places in society, me as a student-teacher of English in Delaware, them as the advertising-execs at the local department store in this beautiful Long Island resort town. Their immediate judgments of me have since dissipated as they wish me luck, not only in teaching but in surviving the bottleneck that is Sunrise Highway/Montauk Highway during rush hour in the Hamptons.

One of the young advertising-execs' advice was to stay in the right lane on the Highway--it moves faster than the left, surprisingly--a piece of advice he never told anyone about until just that moment, I finishing up my Irish Ale and he starting his India Pale Ale, both of us looking for some solace on this long island.

The advice worked.