Backstory: Jeff Parsons & the Rock in Bridgehampton

For more than a half a century, the home office of Dan’s Papers was in a former private home on the Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton. It had a front lawn, a porch, a parking lot in the back and in those years — 1971 to 2013 — it served us quite well.

It also, as it turned out, was a great real estate investment. I paid $52,000 for it. A half century later, I sold it for $1,000,000.

The story I want to tell, however, is about the piece of sculpture created by Jeff Parsons that during my third year at that location, came to be set upon the front lawn. It was a five-foot-tall piece of granite that he had worked on for six months after being commissioned to sculpt it by the powers that be at Guild Hall in East Hampton. They wanted it for its front lawn. But in the interim from when he first began creating it in a barn in Aquabogue and about a week before it was to be moved, there was a kerfuffle of some sort in East Hampton about it and so, in the end, it got carted to my front lawn rather than the Guild’s front lawn.

Jeff was kind of sad about it, but then he was glad about it. It sat prominently in view to all traffic on the Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton instead of East Hampton. I’d taken it on consignment. It was well displayed and could be carted off by a new buyer whenever Jeff had somebody who wanted it.

Physically, the piece was quite inviting. Thick and heavy — it weighed several tons — Jeff had carved an indentation on the top where a person could climb to and sit while watching the passing parade. A plaque in the front of it stated its name. INVITATION. It got sat upon thousands, even tens of thousands of times during that fifty years. But it never got sold.

And then there came the time in 2013 when we began to move to larger offices in Southampton. INVITATION was still there. And so, because it was Jeff’s property, and not sold to the new owner, I called him. He and his wife had moved to the hills of northern California near Eureka in 1980. I hadn’t been in touch in quite awhile, and when I called I found Jeff was no longer there. I got Maria, his wife. Jeff had formed a band and was playing in South America in a resort city in Uruguay where he now lived. He and Maria were divorced. I got his phone number and called him. But he never called back. And that was the only contact Maria had. She had, in fact, remarried. And she said, so had he.

I spoke to the buyer about this situation. He said he would take care of it, whatever that meant. I did tell him Jeff might someday come by and want it back. He said fine.

The new owner of the building, John McLoughlin of McLoughlin Construction, made extensive renovations to my old place. As for the rock, which is what I now referred to it as, one day it just wasn’t there anymore.

And with that, I moved on. Honestly, I don’t know where the rock is now. But on the occasions I drive by, which is almost every day, I look at the front lawn, bereft of it, and imagine that it’s simply six feet down. Too expensive or bulky to remove — and to where? — they must have, without further ado, dug around it to then bury it while awaiting Jeff’s instruction. Or whatever.

And that’s the story.

Have a East End real estate story? Want to share? Text us at 516-527-3566. We’ll call you back, and then write it up for this weekly column. –Dan