Fresh Long Island NY Duck Recipes, Hunting, and Farms.

One of Melissa Joan Hart's favorite pets, Flipper the duck, of Sayville, Long Island. Also pictured is author Charles Panati.

     Fresh from a tail tuck and internal surgery, Long Island's Big Duck reopens tomorrow to do what it always has done best - sell itself. Move over Disney Store, watch out Opryland. Make way for designer duck.
     Admittedly, the first step, er waddle, is small. But it may foreshadow a big step for Long Island - a theme park dedicated to roadside art.   For now, the Big Duck - built in the 1930s by a Depression-struck farmer to sell fresh duck and duck eggs to motorists - will reach out to the passing public with a gift shop and a small museum. It will sell a full line of Big Duck clothes and souvenirs - from golf shirts to umbrellas complete with duck beaks. It will also include a mini-exhibit of duck, highway and roadside architecture history.
     Loudspeakers will beguile passersby with a two-hour long mix of music and news commentary from 1931 to 1939 along with Christie Brinkley's narration of Big Duck history. The idea is not only to take on the marketing gimmicks of retailing outlets like the Disney Store but also to re-create the atmosphere of picnic parks, places where Long Island families used to take family drives.
     And to do it in the spirit of roadside art, once scorned by architectural purists as trash, but more recently praised for its celebration of fantasy.
     "I think people are taken by the whimsy of it," said Jerry Kessler, president of the Friends for Long Island Heritage. He also said in some cases the appeal is more direct. "When I was a kid, I remember sitting in the back of my grandmother's 1929 Nash and going for a Sunday drive," said Kessler, now in his sixties. "Seeing the Big Duck was a great thrill for a seven or eight-year-old."
     Long-range, the county and Friends for Long Island's Heritage envision a park of roadside art and other motoring artifacts including neon signs, old-fashioned gas pumps and perhaps even a diner. But officials say that given the county government's ongoing financing problems, such grand plans are five to 10 years away and $200,000 to $300,000 beyond their current means.
     For the moment, even getting the duck spruced up for the '90s was a larger than expected chore. Although the duck only had to move 40 feet from its temporary quarters at Sears Bellows Park on Route 24 in Flanders, parks officials say the cost of primping the 20-foot-high water fowl for its reopening went three times beyond its $10,000 budget - causing an unexpected drain on the Friends, who are the duck's main support.
     "It's coming out beautifully," said Lance Mallamo, Suffolk's director of historic services. "But as we started working, we found out there was more work than we bargained for."
     Because the duck is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it had to be reconstructed in a way that was faithful to its original design. Restorers for example had to put down a tongue-and-grove pine flooring, and replicate tin walls of the original duck.
     In the process, they also expanded the duck's wood framing to bolster its sagging haunches, increase structural strength and cut down on cracks. And they also had to re-stucco the bird's exterior.
     To celebrate tomorrow's reopening, parks officials are baking their own sculpted duck cake, children from Phillips Avenue School in Riverhead will sing several new duck songs and relatives of the forward-thinking pioneers who helped build the world-famed duck will be in attendance.
     They will all celebrate the idea first hatched in 1931 by Riverhead duck farmer Martin Maurer, who got his inspiration when he stopped at a roadside coffee shop shaped like a pot while on vacation in California.
     Maurer hired local carpenter George Reeve, who employed two stage show set designers, William and Sam Collins, to build the duck. As models, they used a a cooked chicken carcass and a live duck tied with a string to a perch. The done duck was lit with the taillights of a Model T Ford placed in its eyes.
     At its first opening, the Big Duck was pictured in Popular Mechanics magazine. The Atlas Cement Co., whose product was used in construction, made the duck a pinup in its annual calendar and dubbed it "The Most Spectacular Piece of Cement Work in 1931."
     The first site of the 16,500-pound duck was on West Main Street in Riverhead, but in 1936, it was moved about four miles east to Flanders Road, about two miles up from its current location. Through the years, the duck remained in use as a stand for duck farm produce. In 1987, owners Kia Eshghi and his wife Pouran sold the land on which it stood and donated the duck to Suffolk County. It was moved to Sears Bellows in December, 1987.
     Since then, the duck's only activity has been as a model. It has been the subject of cover art for a 1987 edition of New Yorker magazine and a sketch now on display at Guild Hall, both by renowned East End artist Saul Steinberg.
     Officials say the newly-reopened duck and its shop will operate seven days a week, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. from Memorial Day to Labor Day and perhaps on weekends into the fall.
     County historical officials are also hoping that the duck's reopening will spur a new outpouring of duck lore and memorabilia. Richard Martin, Suffolk's assistant director of historic services, said that one idea is to compile an oral history of duck recollections. "For many visiting the Hamptons," said Martin, "the duck was a sign we're almost there."
     Meanwhile, Kessler said he hopes the reopening will spur new contributions to fund-raising efforts and ensure that tomorrow's small waddle for the duck is a big step for Long Island.