September 05, 2002 - The East End's changing faceThe Suffolk Times • September 5,
The Ea
LAST WEEK I TOLD YOU of some of
the major changes I've seen during my
lifetime. I spoke about the drinking
water, the landfill and agriculture. I
also told how our East End had start-
ed to grow. When I lived on Fleets
Neck in Cutchogue and went to grade
school in the '30s, we were the only
year -round residents there. All the
other houses were summer bungalows
We had to walk to the Depot Lane
school. There were no school buses in
those early days. Later J. Henry Wolf
ran a bus on the Main Road. When
my sister and I went to Southold High
School we had to walk the
mile -plus every day to catch
the bus at the head of
Pequash Avenue.
Even when we lived in
Fleets Neck in the '50s we
saw only,one other light at
night during the winter.
Today, there are not one but
several buses that pick up
kids from Fleets Neck, giving you
some idea how Fleets Neck and our
whole East End has changed, and is
still growing, but today at a much
faster pace.
Then. there was the slow but steady
use of our creeks. In the early days
they were shallow. You could walk
almost anywhere to dig clams, catch
crabs and, in season, reap the harvest
of scallops and yes, oysters, too.
Oysters could be found along the
creek banks. You could fill a pain in
the distance of 20 or 30 feet or so. And
soft clams could be dug on the many
sandbars throughout our creeks.
Slowly our creek edges started to
build up with more and more houses.
The people wanted to get their boats
in and out at all tides. So those in
charge brought in the huge county
harbor dredge. It was an era of igno-
rance and greed. The rich creek bot-
tom and acres of valuable wetlands
were destroyed. All the spoil from the
dredging was put on hundreds of acres
of wetlands. Many acres of lush, green
marsh were covered over by spoil
from the dredging. Up sprouted hous-
es and phragmites, that tall plume
grass that has taken over many of the
spoil sites in our town.
Remember, those wetlands are the
nutrient factory that starts the food
End's
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Nab
Bathing attire surely has changed since those old days of bathing suits that
looked like winter underwear. Most will agree the change to today's attire is
much more appealing to the eye.
FOCUS
ON
NATURE
by Paul
Stoutenburgh
chain in our creeks and bays. As the
tide moves in and out of our wetlands
each day, it flushes nutrients out that
are utilized by the plankton that's
then eaten by the tiny fish, scallops
and clams and a whole variety of
other organisms that live in this valu-
able estuary. Ip the end the little fish
are eaten by the bigger fish and even-
tually we eat the big fish, dig the clams
and harvest the scallops.
One of the big natural .changes
came in the '30s when a disease
attacked the eelgrass in the bays and
creeks. It's believed that because of
the loss of this seaweed
there was and still is a great
loss in the production of
scallops, crabs, fish and other
animals that lived in these
grasses and thrived in their
protection. Most people
don't even realize what we
have lost. That was one of
the great changes I've seen
over the years.
Today, to supplement the lack of
natural spawning of shellfish, tlie
town, in cooperation with Cornell
Cooperative Extension, has gone into
a seed clam, scallop and oyster pro-
gram in which the baby shellfish are
raised in tanks and trays and distrib-
uted throughout our creeks. What
nature once did by itself years-ago is
now being done in a. limited way
through modern technology to ensure
there will always be some of these
valuable natural resources in our
There was a time when you could
crop a line almost anywhere and catch
all the blowfish you wanted. Blowfish
are good eating. Buckets of "swellbel-
lies" would be caught on anything
from chewing gum to a piece of worm
:)r clam, etc.
It was the time when weakfish liter-
ally flooded our bays, and party boats
were lined up at Roses Grove. There
they would use sand shrimp to lure
the weakfish in close to the boats.
Hundreds of weakfish would be
brought in on each boat.
I remember one time I paddled our
canoe over to Robins Island to do a
bird survey with Dennis Puleston and
we casually picked up a pail full of
weakfish on the way. In New Suffolk,
Fleets Neck, Jamesport and Southold
the streets were lined with cars of fish-
ermen from the west end. There was a
thriving business in party boat fishing.
That's all gone. We no longer have the
luxury of the great runs of fish and
quantities of scallops and all the
things that went with them such as
flounders, kingfish, blowfish and a
host of others that made the East End
famous.
The climate is changing. Lately our
winters have been so mild I no longer
cover my fig tree as I used to and still
get wonderful figs. In those early days
the winters were much harsher and
snow was common: Today our creeks
and bays hardly get a skim of ice on
them, while years ago we'd ice skate
and iceboat on both the bays and
Photo by Paul Stoutenburgh
Wooden boats are a thing of the past. They all just "faded away" and were
replaced by fiberglass boats.
creeks. When the creeks were frozen
over, farmers and others in the area
would head for their favorite spot,
where they would chop a hole in the
ice so they could spear eels. Using a
special mud spear that caught the
sleeping eels in the mud on the
upward stroke, the men would pull,
them up on the ice and put them in
burlap bags. If you didn't get your'eels
put away soon enough and your back
was turned, hungry seagulls would
swoop in and help themselves.
I can remember the first fiberglass
boat I ever saw. It was a heavy, cum-
bersome thing but it didn't require
any painting and it never leaked. Up
to then wooden boats ruled the
waters. If your rowboat was out of
water for any length of time, it would
dry out and then, when you put it in
the water, it would leak like mad. So
usually you just anchored your boat
off shore, where it would swell up and
you'd get away from the problem of
having to bail it out each time you
used it. Today is the age of fiberglass
in most boats.
When you talk about water and
boats, you also have to think about
swimming. In those early days we
were wrapped in bathing suits that
came up over our shoulders and had
big openings under our arms. They
looked like some sort of winter
wardrobe compared to today's bikinis
that show a lot of slain. That was a
change for the better, I must say!
One of the greatest losses I see and
few realize is the lack of small wood-
land birds, particularly warblers, of
which we used to see easily 15 to 20
different species on an outing. They
have dwindled to almost nothing. This
loss can only be attributed to the loss
of habitat caused by man's appetite
for progress. We seldom even see
thrashers or towhees that were com-
mon in our woods years ago, and it's
truly a bluebird day when we spot one
of those jewels of yesterday. What we
are seeing are more crows, red- winged
blackbirds, cowbirds, grackles and
starlings. These we can do without, as
they are the culprits that attack the
farmers' products, along with the deer
that are so prolific now. Years ago, the
only deer we ever saw was a stray now
and then that crossed from Robins
Island on the ice in the wintertime.