An Ill Wind is Breaking For Our President
T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Editor at Large, the National TopsiderAnother Labor Day weekend wafts into Montauk, borne as always upon a chill wind of melancholy; a breeze that ushers in blithe spirits for the coming gay lawn soirees, the final chukkers of the summer polo leagues, the annual Montauk-to-Newport gin barrel regatta. But the selfsame mistral likewise presages season's end, and the maids' ritual packing away of the pastels and seersuckers for the annual migration to the dismally gauche winter quarters of Florida.
The seasonal affective disorder seems especially hard on Montauk's children, cleft as they are from the loving breasts of their household staffs by the stately carillons of distant preparatory academies. I could see it in the dilated pupils of young T. Coddington VIII last week, as his driver Evgeny packed the lad's trunks into the old family Daimler for the long lonely drive to Quonsocket Boy's Prep and Rehabilitation Center. At our farewell I left him with the same bracing words of encouragement left me by my father, swashbuckling Topsider founder T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI, upon my annual boyhood departures to the finishing schools of Switzerland: "the Alps will bloom soon enough, dear boy -- persevere, persevere."
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