Remembering Uncle Hy
Children experience the Hamptons quite differently from their parents. At least for my brother and I, growing up in the 50s and 60s, “the Hamptons” had no allure other than the houses and the people we loved who lived there.
I can still recall driving the long drive from the city out to Montauk, watching for the Big Duck and then the endless number of telephone poles on the long dark stretch between Amagansett and Montauk on cold winter nights. Only the blazing stars and glow of the radio towers lite the way. My father had an extraordinary gift for making deep and lsting friendships. One of his dearest friends was Hyman Jordan Sobiloff a business tycoon whom my father had met at a party and instantaneously became friends. The story was that this was Hy’s party but my father had been invited by a mutual friend. My dad had sidled up to this man and commented on a beautiful woman in a slightly inappropriate way (Phyllis Leachman, I recall) who turned out to be the girlfriend of the host — who turned out to be Hy and the very man to whom my father had made his salacious comment. Papa immediately apologized and offered to leave but Hy’s response, was “No, I like you. Stick around.” And my father would end this story with “And I did for twenty-something years, until Hy died.”
When I was a baby, Hy nicked-named me “Bidka”- which supposedly means “Little one” in Romanian, but who knows? For me that was my name until one of the demon Sisters corrected me in elementary school, “No, your name is not Bidka; your name is Wendy.” Uncle Hy would put my toddler feet on his and we would dance. For Hy I would do that through adolescence.
Hy would often offer his Spanish stucco house In Montauk to our family for a winter weekend and so the long trek down to the end of the island on dark and cold winter nights. The house was built in the 20s, tucked around on one of the back roads in Montauk and was reached by a circuitous route through the village, then off to the left towards the Manor. We loved roaming the large grounds: finding a garter snake skin was magical, smelling the ripe grapes which made one’s mouth water, listening to the slightly scary pines in the wind at night. All this was Montauk for us. One late evening we arrived only to find that Hy had offered the house to a couple inadvertently. They were not thrilled to see a family with two small children show up and refused to let us stay. We found a place in Montauk village, a friend of a friend took pity and took us in for the night. I dimly recall waking up in a 17th century house near the Pond. Later we learned that “Uncle Hy” was not pleased by the discourtesy of the other couple. In retrospect, I think I can understand their view but still. When Uncle Hy put in a pool our kif quotient interest increased exponentially.
By that time my parents had scraped together enough money to buy an old farm house in Amagansett — the drive-through place in the 50s. Our house on Miankoma Lane was the second house in from the street (after the Catholic Church wood) and there were only three houses beyond us. All the rest was potato fields. In back of our old barn you could hear the farmers churning up the soil, and later clouds of dust would waft over our yard. I cannot imagine the amount of DDT dumped on the ground back there. Now the farm land is all developed. We drove out there every weekend during the year and spent all our childhood summers in that wonderful house. But during those years, an invitation for us children to come to use the pool was the highlight of any week. We would drive down the endless highway and upon arriving make a bee-line for the pool.
Because of my love for my Uncle Hy, as a child I decided to stop saying the line in the Nicene Creed which read that “we believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” Even a nine year old can detect hubris and there was no way that any god would ignore my beloved Hy. As far as could I could discern in my early theological ruminations, any god that would care what religion you belonged to was not legit. This is a belief I firmly hold to this present day.
Back in the 1950s and 60s there were rules for children, the most prominent one being “children should be seen but not heard” and yet really not even being seen was the preferred by the adults in our lives. So we were given strict behavior instructions as to what we could and could not do and I believe we must have kept to them as we were invited back again and again. Uncle Hy had his “Aunt Jo.” We adored her. Later I would learn that she was his mistress as his wife was in a sanatorium somewhere. Jo Huntley-Wright was British and simply one of the most lovely individuals we were to know. When she made the decision in the early 60s to move back to England we mourned her loss. She was followed by a couple of other women, none of whom we particularly liked but they were not interested in us either. The pool was the main attraction. While my parents would sip drinks and chat with the steady stream of visitors that Hy always had, we would frolic in the pool. I can still hear Uncle Hy rendering “O Danny Boy” in Yiddish. No clue why, by the way.
As I grew older, Uncle Hy would sometimes include me in the more adult groups, which I adored, even as my parents were somewhat taken aback by my inclusion. (One is always a child to one’s parent, right?) Eating in town at a restaurant on the pond, sitting around in the living room of his house, taking with adults — this is the stuff that adolescent dreams are made of.
As we now had out own home in Amagansett, Uncle Hy’s house was the “pool visit” place but our love for him did not diminish. Hy was a poet as well as a business man. He published a couple books of poetry and my father had helped him make a couple of movies about his writings on Montauk and his early years in Fall Rivers, Massachusetts. Years later I was bemused to learn that one of his poems had been included on a Regents exam for high school students, probably on the assumption that they would not have read it before. In the first summer after I began college out in the mid-west, I did not come home but stayed there to take courses. There were many reasons to avoid home: my own growing independence but also my parents’ drinking disturbed and stressed me. It was easier not to have to witness it day after day. In that August, my father called me to say that Uncle Hy had died. He had a massive heart attack by his pool and had not survived. My father said that he had learned about this from the caretaker of the estate, a Harry Steele, who called him one afternoon and simply said, Well, he is gone.” My father wondered where Hy had gone and Steele bluntly replied, “He’s dead.” This was a crushing blow to my father. He had counted Hy as one of his best friends. Nice way to find this out. My father mourned his loss, as did we all, for many years.
I still have a photo of Hy. He is standing by his pool, his arms outstretched, a warm smile on his face, most likely slightly inebriated, but remains the quintessential welcoming “uncle.” Decades later, I think of him and those warm summer afternoons by his pool in a lost world of childhood and beauty. I still miss him. I would dance with him on his feet again.
