Writers at Bat: Uncle Abbie - Memories of Abbie Hoffman in the Hamptons

In recognition of Dan’s presenting sponsorship of the 2025 East Hampton Artists & Writers Charity Softball Game on Saturday, August 16, we are giving participating artists and writers free rein to write whatever they want in this space each month. Here, screenwriter Alec Sokolow (Garfield: The Movie, Cheaper by the Dozen) shares stories about growing up in Sagaponack with his “Uncle Abbie,” the notorious social activist, author and leader of the Yippies (Youth International Party), Abbie Hoffman (who, coincidentally, also played in the Artists & Writers Game).

Uncle Abbie

The last time I ever saw Uncle Abbie he was running through the pristine potato fields beyond our  house in Sagaponack cradling america in his arms. Well, it wasn’t really our house. It was really the Smith House, a one-story ranch house on an acre down where Sagg Main hits Sand Dune Court. And  the potato fields weren’t actually pristine. They were seasonally sprayed with DDT back then. A sweet  smelling fog that kept us indoors for a few days each spring.

And Uncle Abbie wasn’t really my uncle. But, a family friend. america was really america, but  spelled with a lowercase “a” and was Abbie’s son.

Uncle Abbie was really Abbie Hoffman. Yippie. Counter culture icon. Political activist. And on that afternoon in the late summer of 1973 was less than a day away from being busted at the 8th Avenue Howard Johnson’s on cocaine charges that would eventually lead him underground for the better part of  a decade.

But, for me, aged 10, Uncle Abbie was a master of trick shots on the pool table in the Smith’s living room. A white guy with a Jewfro and a house in Amagansett. Someone constantly trying to make my own father laugh while gabbing and gabbing and gabbing about things I didn’t yet fully understand.

I think Abbie liked coming over to The Smith House because of their pool table. I found out years  later that he was a self-proclaimed pool shark growing up in Massachusetts. It made sense if you saw him with a cue in his hand, hitting one-handed carom shots. Running racks of balls. Making it look so  easy.

With Bob Dylan’s “Bringing It Back Home” spinning on the living room hi-fi. My mom dancing  across the room. My dad kicking back on a barstool.

We actually rented two houses that summer. The Smith House on Sagg Main Street during the summer and The Rabbi’s house, an upside-down house on Sand Dunes Court throughout the year. I still don’t know why, but we did. Which meant we also lived caddy corner to the Smiths in the off  season. So I knew them. Or knew of them.

I don’t think the Smiths would have approved that my folks were entertaining the likes of Abbie Hoffman in their house. Their own son, who’s room I slept in, was named after Richard Nixon. He  seemed to get great joy watching his small army of Corgis that would chase after me and my sister on  our banana seat bikes, nipping at our heels.

The house itself was rambling with brigades of tiny Revolutionary War British Redcoats aligned on shelves and two wings of bedrooms horseshoeing back to a small yard where acres and acres of potato  fields awaited, and which also served as my own field of dreams that summer. I would fungo loose potatoes while mimicking the batting stances of the NY Mets starting lineup. “Now batting… Cleon  Jones.” (I had been told that’s how local legend Carl Yastrzemski honed his own skills a generation  before.) Or, playing “dare” with my sister. We’d run through the rows and rows of potatoes pretending to  be chased by unseen monsters.

Abbie and my dad played their own games. They spoke and kidded and bet and obsessed on  games. They had both attended Brandeis University in the ’50s. My dad played on the basketball team. Abbie captained the men’s tennis team. My pop eventually won a handful of amateur Squash National  Championships.

Later on, in the ’60s, their paths crossed in the city. My old man was working in publishing and  helped Abbie publicize his first book Revolution Just for the Hell of It. They enjoyed each other’s company. I also think they really dug both being first generation Jews kicking the stuffing out of the country club establishment in their own sporting games.

I only really every saw Abbie when we were in Sagaponack or Amagansett, and always around  games.

Pool games and card games they would play. Televised games they would watch. The previous summer, Abbie was over at the Smith House when the United States Olympic basketball team got totally screwed by the officials in the Gold Medal game against the Soviets. I  remember Abbie marching around our living room goofily chanting, “U.S.S.R.” “U.S.S.R.” As if he was in  on some joke. I doubt seriously the Smiths would have found it funny.

And then, there were the Sunday NFL games. The Smiths only got one channel of reception on their TV, making it next to impossible to watch NFL football. Something my dad simply could not live without. So, we’d all trek to Abbie’s house in Amagansett and his multiple-channel reception and settle in for an afternoon of football and laughter and food and family.

My folks. Abbie and his wife Anita. Me and my sister. america and Amy. Hidden from the  complications of the city, the war, Watergate, and everything else grown up.

My old man relayed to me years later that he had once asked Abbie himself why he did what he did. Why was he always stirring things up? What was he trying to prove? Abbie replied that he just liked trying to make people laugh. He certainly had that effect on all of us.

Sitting around his couch. Watching games on TV. Then, throwing around our own football in the autumn air during half-time.

I knew back then that Abbie was important. Or somehow famous. I didn’t fully grasp why. And it  didn’t matter. All that seemed to matter was the next game of pool.

These days were not G-rated. Joints would be toked by the grown-ups. Language would fly. Abbie even kept an industrial-sized canister of nitrous oxide in his TV room. He would fill up balloons and  suck the gas in, trying to crack up my folks by talking strange while catching a  whippet high. (Once, after much pestering my folks, they allowed me to take a small hit of Abbie’s gas. My  first high, if you will. Though all I remember was feeling like my throat was frozen and talking really  funny.)

As for the day in question. Abbie and america had come over to the Smith House near Sagg Main. Just another day in an endless string of slow August days. Until Abbie seemed to shoot out of the back  of the house as if there was a fire, scoop up america and hightail it across the potato fields. Becoming a  smaller and smaller dot until he was gone.

Years later my mom explained. Abbie had come over to pitch a new book/movie idea he had to my dad about some hippie who puts a big drug deal over the feds when a sedan had pulled up. Two white  men in black suits with skinny ties and crew cuts knocked on the door saying they were friends of the  architect and were hoping to look inside the house.

Feds.

My folks stalled and refused them entry while Abbie grabbed america and fled through the potato fields never to return. Being chased by his own monsters.

The next day, Abbie was busted in the city. Arrested for trying to sell cocaine to an undercover  agent.

He claimed he was set up. Who knows?

I didn’t play pool again that summer.