Holes For Workers

It Worked for the Indians, It Should Work for Illegal Aliens

By Dan Rattiner

The residents of Water Mill are fighting to keep thicker power lines from coming through, but they are not willing to do without the extra power. In Sagaponack, the neighbors are fighting to stop Christian Woelffer from upgrading the old worker dormitory on his vineyard property so it has air conditioning, better lighting and more comfortable amenities, but they still want to drink his wonderful chardonnay. There's a proposal afoot in Sag Harbor to legalize guest apartments in private homes, but the residents say no, though they still want to have everything repaired and kept up properly.

What do people want? They don't want the blue-collar workers living among them -- they should live at least forty miles away -- but they want them to show up on time. On the other hand, they're not willing to widen the road so they can get here in a reasonable amount of time. Let them sit in traffic jams for hours. It's not our problem. As for hooking them up with employers who need day workers after they finally get here, how could we even think to give the workers a place to sit on a bench. Give the workers a portable john to go in while they wait? We'll tear the door off.

The other day, I was looking through a history book about this area and I think I came up with the perfect solution to all our problems. It involves how the Indians lived here for thousands of years. It was cheap, warm and comfortable and right near their workplace. It was also legal.

They lived in holes. We have the bulldozers and the backhoes in the Town Highway Departments. And we have the LIPA trucks that cut down the tree branches so we can get our telephone, cable and electric service without interruption. We can bend the tree branches over the holes and tie them with vines as the Indians did to make the frames for the skin covering the Indians put on top to keep dry in their cave holes on rainy nights.

And yes, we have the skins. The rich and famous have their "Super Saturday" yard sale on a farm in Bridgehampton every year, where they sell last year's fashions at markdown prices. Using these clothes would be the high quality way to make the domes waterproof, that's for sure.

And who needs a building permit? The domes are not buildings. They are just covers for holes in the ground.

And where is the perfect place to build these workers' residences? Put them right on the farms. Even better, put them right on the farms that have been preserved as farmland. You'd have the potatoes and vineyards and cabbages planted in small holes. And you'd have the workers and farmhands planted in larger holes. It all makes sense! And in between the harvests -- the harvests only come a few months a year -- these workers can be out there doing what they do best -- rolling tennis courts, clipping hedges and servicing swimming pools. And at the end of the day, instead of jumping into their old pickup trucks and getting into the traffic jams heading west, all they'd have to do is jump in their holes.

Sometimes, it just takes a little looking in the history books to solve a problem. The Indians lived in these domed huts for thousands of years. And they never had one single problem.

And you can even get around the problem of paying them for what they do. Just don't pay them. We house them and feed them. They get summer in the Hamptons. And that's a fair deal. There are dozens of caterers out here who would be happy to feed them when they're not busy with a wedding or other special event down at the ocean.

Illegal immigrants? Legal, schmegal. No money changes hands. Nobody even has to know.

Hard to believe nobody has thought of this before.