EZ-HOAX.(The Talk of the Town)

Shelter Island's first inhabitants, the Manhanset Indians, called their home Manhansack-aha-quash-awomack, which means "an island sheltered by islands"--or, in other words, "take a boat or swim." At least since the days of Nathaniel Sylvester and his teen-age wife, Grissel, who survived a shipwreck on their way from Barbados in 1652, travellers to the area have been content to rely on the former method of conveyance, which, while not free or available at whim, claims the advantages of dispatch and dryness. Comers and goers have their choice of two ferries, one to Greenport and the other to North Haven. Each shoves off every fifteen or so minutes and costs around ten dollars.

Native Shelter Islanders are bred to regard the exigencies of the ferry schedule with less annoyance than with pride; in homage to their ability to run like rabbits for the docks, they're known as "hareleggers." "The same thing that happened to Staten Island would happen to us," Arthur Bloom, a sixth-generation resident, said the other day, at the thought of constructing automobile-friendly points of egress. On the other hand, the "touristas," as Bloom calls them, "move here because of its charm and seclusion, then cry out for a bridge so that they will not be so isolated." Bloom is the Recording Secretary, Director of Safety & Security, Rodent Mitigation Officer, and chef de cuisine of the Shelter Island Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which, of course, does not exist except in his very enterprising imagination.

One afternoon a couple of years ago, Bloom, who is semi-retired from his job as a telephone repairman, was hanging around with some friends, "just thinking about how to try to mess with the tourists' heads." They decided that a good way to "have a laugh around town amongst the local goobers" would be to pretend that there were easier ways to get on and off the island--i.e., the "Stirling Memorial Tunnel" and the "Sunrise Bridge." The result was a fictitious transit agency that, with the hermetic exactingness of a Christmas village or a Monopoly board, included details like "EZ-Path" express lanes and its own motto, "Nulla tenaci invia est via" ("For the tenacious, no road is impassable"). Bloom got some sibta bumper stickers printed up and built a Web site.

In March, he received an e-mail from Jim Crawford, the director of the E-ZPass Interagency Group. Crawford, who had been tipped off by a member of a toll-agency trade organization, cc'd a Port Authority lawyer and another official with the ominous-sounding domain address "@turnpike.state.nj.us." "Do you have an electronic toll collection system?" Crawford wrote. "Are the signs shown on your home page . . . showing one of your ...