Lobster, Windmill, Pollock, and One Not So Big Duck

The final Sibling Daytripping Summer event: Windmill in Watermill, lobster rolls at The Lobster Roll, awesomeness at the Pollock Krasner house, and the Big Duck in Flanders.

I was up for the long drive because Southampton was my MFA home.  I drove out there once a week and spent 10 days each summer there as I earned my degree.  I love the vineyards.  I've been through corn mazes out there.  Visited the lighthouse a few times.  It's my territory for fun stuff.

On a Thursday midmorning, it took like three hours.  What the?  I understand summer traffic going out east, but this was ridiculous.  My brother was getting a kick out of my astonishment of the traffic.  We saw some cool roadside art and I noticed an art museum I'd never seen before, so that distracted me from the drive.

We finally got to our first stop in Watermill.  We were wondering how we'd find the windmill when suddenly, it appeared. 

Oh, there it is. (Anthony Rau photography)

(Anthony Rau photography)

Then back in the car!  We'd parked behind a car from Maryland on the side of the road, hoping that we wouldn't get a ticket.  Also hoping that they didn't come all the way from Maryland to see only this windmill.  It was pretty and nice, but it took maybe ten minutes to walk around it and take it in.

Back in traffic, we finally found The Lobster Roll in the middle of nowhere in Amagansett.  The parking is tight but we luckily pulled in right as someone was pulling out.  It was busy but we didn't have to wait long to get a table.  I'd been thinking I'd have to split something with my brother because the serving sizes looked huge, but on the menu they offered sliders.  Lobster Roll Sliders!!  He got a shrimp roll and I got a lobster roll slider and we basically devoured our food, saying over and over again, This is so goooooood!  We'd driven three hours to eat for maybe twenty minutes.  It was worth it.

Famous people who've eaten lobster rolls

Lookit how tiny it is!

Because you gotta make it black and white (Anthony Rau photography)

Then we found the Pollock Krasner house.  It's a museum as per the wishes of Lee Krasner upon her death.  The tour is $5 unless you have a SUNY ID.  Which means for me it was FREE!  We took the spiral bound book self-tour and followed its instructions to take in the view of the water first, the studio second, and the house third.  While we were in the studio, we had to put on these ridiculous slippers, and my brother somehow found the wrong size and was busting out of his.  While we went around reading the explanations on the walls, some guy was talking to the docent really loudly, namedropping artists and actors and telling the story of how he worked on the set of the movie Pollock.  That was a really good movie, but reading was difficult with the guy's yammering on.  Everywhere else was quiet, and the guy finally stopped talking and we were able to take in the rest of the studio in peace.  It looks very much the same as it does in the photos from the past.  Very eerie and quite exciting.

There's a photo of Pollock and his mistress sitting on these rocks the day they died.

I kinda wanted to keep these.

Name Those Artists!

Dried paint and a turkey baster

I'm an ass.

The rest of the book had the entire history of Pollock and then of Krasner and of the grounds.  I read a lot of it out loud, but then it got to be tiresome, especially after we'd seen everything.  At the back of the book was a map of how to get to the cemetery where Pollock is buried, but we didn't do that.  The house and studio were the best way to remember him.


We headed Westward, homeward, and The Big Duck was kind of on the way because really anything West of where we were was homeward and on the way, so we decided to stop to see it.  It took like an hour to go five miles.  I took my traffic frustrations out on the duck.  When it finally appeared roadside, I was like, It's not that big!

Lame duck

I was expecting a gigantic duck, and really, it's more of a medium duck.  We went inside, and I was delighted that we could actually go inside, and the woman there explained to us the history of the duck.  There used to be a duck farm there.  Also, any building shaped like what it sells is called a duck.  So this building shaped like a duck sells duck stuff, so it's a duck.  A boot-shaped building that sells boots is called a duck.  An apple-shaped building that sells apples is called a duck.  And so on.  This duck is also a national landmark.  Because we learned fun facts such as these, I was no longer disappointed in the duck. 

Duck with a door

Not much smaller than the duck but okay, it's still a big duck

Duck's ass HAHAHAHHAHHAHAAAA!

Sepia duck (Anthony Rau photography)

Back into the traffic once more, and this time, it was rush hour.  However, when you're so far out, rush hour isn't really the issue.  Once we hit more civilization, we flew towards home because we were pretty much behind rush hour because no one who lives that far out should be commuting this far in.  Thinking it over, however, sitting in traffic for a few hours at a time to see everything we saw ain't all that bad.  One trip Eastward and we got to take in art, seafood, wind mills, and ducks all in one day.  Day tripping at its best.