The Kodachrome Lobsterman of Montauk
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When I’d left my house in the early afternoon on this Sunday and decided to head for Montauk, I’d felt, deep
down, that the day might develop in unexpected ways. Had I stopped partway—in the Hamptons—and
ordered a coffee at Starbucks, I would have returned far less affected, for sure. The extra few miles to
Montauk take me across a boundary between places I know and understand and a world where surprising
things just seem to be the natural order. Sea lions sun themselves on the beaches of Montauk. Someone
once caught a three thousand–pound great white shark on rod and reel while feeding on a drifting whale
carcass just a few miles off the Montauk Point Lighthouse. Surfers and surf casters work the onshore
breaking waves for short-board rides and world-record stripper catches. There are hole-in-the-wall biker
bars and artists and writers living the quiet life near the sea in a small village. The rich and famous cross
paths with the down-and-out and drunk. Fishing stories get told over and over in the pubs, and old
shipwrecks litter the treacherous shoals where the lobstermen set their pots. A fast change in wind direction
can whip the shallow waters off Montauk Point into a frenzy within minutes, making it almost impossible to get
back to the docks safely. It can be foggy and misty in Montauk Point because it juts out into the Atlantic, yet
bright and sunny just a few miles away in East Hampton. Montauk is famously unpredictable.
The town is the last eastern stop on the Long Island Rail Road. Montauk Highway, New York State Route 27,
dead-ends at the lighthouse cliffs. For generations, many people dissatisfied with conventional nine-to-five
lives, like Anthony, have gotten in their cars and headed east, away from New York City and Nassau and
western Suffolk counties. They drove as far as they could go. The windswept dunes grew bigger, the ocean
surf crashed louder and cleaner, and the rocky coastline became a wilderness of boulders and cliffs with
scraggy pines and thorny bushes, with fog and wind. Lone fishing boats still troll the nutrient-rich waters for
striped bass and set lobster traps and drag nets along the sandy bottom for big ocean fluke and flounders.
If Anthony the lobsterman decides one day to return my phone call about the extra three hundred
Kodachrome slides he claims to be in possession of, I will gladly make the trek to Montauk and return to The
Dock. I hope the second seat from the end of the bar near the front door will be empty. If it’s not, I’ll find
another seat and wait for the lobstermen to show. If they don’t show, I’ll order a bowl full of hot steamed little
neck clams swimming in buttery broth, served with fresh crusty bread for dipping, and sit there and eat and
mind my own business . . . until something out of the ordinary happens.
by Michael Domino
Copyright © 2006 by Michael Domino