HIS FADED JEANS hung halfway between his waist and knees and yet his t-shirt hadn't pulled loose from his pants, a phenomenon I attributed to Superglue or some strange martial art. He swayed side to side as he walked up the street--a reasonable thing to do if you're trying to hold up your pants with your thighs and move forward at the same time. He was so cool for Columbia County and so unaware his outfit was a couple of years behind the fashion curve.

The antidote I use to prevent myself from condemning him and the other clueless, reckless good-for-nothing youth of today is to imagine bellbottom pants. Bellbottoms and long hair retain their charm on the animated Beatles in the Yellow Submarine movie, but boy did they provoke hostile stares among the geezers and conventional folks 40 or more years ago. That, naturally, was the point, and memories of my own clueless behavior now fill me with dread, tempered by recollections of the pleasure derived from making all that mischief. Those same memories help put complaints about contemporary teenage behavior in perspective.

AS CRIMES GO, this one was so low on the scale of severity that you'd probably have to give it a featherweight rating. That probably makes it heavier than the brain of the moron who perpetrated it. But you also have to wonder what extremes of ignorance, alcohol abuse or twisted motivation lead a person to vandalize artwork on display in a public place.

The work of six local sculptors now graces part of the wide grassy strip along Hudson Avenue in Chatham where the train tracks once ran. The pieces range from whimsical silhouettes of wild animals to abstract constructions, all of them scaled to fit comfortably in this open stretch bordered by the road on one side and on the other by the paved pathway that runs from the traffic light to the Price Chopper plaza.