‘The Island’s best party’: Fun and friendship at the fireworks

At 6 p.m. last Saturday night, in the center of the graceful arc of Crescent Beach, Maurice ‘Tut’ Tuttle, his wife Jackie, and Mark Halsey were parked in prime fireworks-viewing real estate.

They were three cars away from a truck full of Grucci Fireworks employees, the closest place on land to the offshore barge from which rockets began to shoot into the sky and explode at about 9:20 p.m.

Tut, who served 70 years in the Shelter Island Fire Department, has been fascinated by exploding, fiery things ever since he was a boy, and saw light in the sky from the flames consuming the Prospect Hotel at North Ferry in 1942. He’s in his 90s now, and as the show shot heavenward, he called out the position of every rocket.

East of the Tuttles was a section of tailgaters, large well-attended gatherings of sandy, bathing-suited people holding beverages, enjoying music and grilling meat.

Just in front of The Sunset Beach Hotel, Kate Lawless and Margaret Hoffman, friends for years, lounged on blankets with three generations, their grown children, friend Harriet Reilly and Kate’s cousin Felicia Garcia.“Fourteen years we’ve been doing this,” Margaret said. “I would say it’s a tradition.”

Nearby, nine people celebrated on a miraculously sand-free spread of quilts and blankets, that could only be described as a family compound. Someone was singing the Italian national anthem.

The Troias, who described themselves as a first-generation Italian family from Huntington, were gathered to celebrate American independence and Antoinette Troia’s birthday. 

She said the family has come out to Shelter Island for the fireworks every year for five or six years. “This isn’t even everyone,” said Ms. Troia. “We’re Italian. If we brought the whole family, there would be about 40 people. Shelter Island is so peaceful. We are very European, and when we come here it has more of a European vibe. We are all about old-fashioned. We make our own pasta and sauce, and we have a huge spread.”

She invited this writer to join them. “We’ll come back and have dinner with you sometime!”

Kristina and Billy Martin and their five-year old son Marcus were enjoying sandwiches, positioned next to a very large hole that Marcus had dug in the sand. Kristina clarified that the digging of the hole, which was big enough to trap a groundhog, was a family project.

As darkness fell, Marcus amused himself with a glowing, pulsating pin-wheel-like contraption that was surely battery-powered. “A guy is selling them,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s called.”

The East End of the beach adjacent to the reconstructed picnic shelter was given over to games. What appeared to be a mother-and-son football drill fired passes along the railing on the sand side of the beach walk, miraculously avoiding passersby.

A few yards away a large table was covered with plastic cups, the unmistakable sign of beer pong.

Except in this case the participants, Alexandra Burns, Franny Regan, Luca Martinez, Angelina Rice and Nicole De Leonardis informed me that there was no beer involved, and none was needed. They were having so much fun that the cups were to verify. Yes, beer-free pong.

Around 9:20, real darkness came. The rockets’ red glare filled the sky accompanied by half an hour of oohs and ahs. The evening ended, as it always does, with a sign of appreciation from the tailgaters, known as “The Horn Chorus.” 

Loud, crowded, sandy and fun, it was another great Shelter Island Fireworks, the Island’s best party.