An interesting thing to do when you go to the same place for
vacation every year is to spend some time reflecting on your state of mind
during past visits. For example – that was
the year it rained every freaking day, or, that was the year that work would
not release its iron grip, or, that was the year we had all those visitors, and
so on. Looking back one realizes how
certain themes might in fact have shadowed the whole damn trip, preventing full
engagement with the place. But there
have also been the hilarious vacation themes, such as the legendary Forgettable
Flan, Aging Bodies/Youthful Minds, and Michelle, meet 465. So it is not an entirely glum prospect. What will be the theme of MV 2010? We shall see. Like a great novel, or bread, it can’t be
forced, but must emerge in its own time.
Shortly after our ferry got underway from Woods Hole on 8/22,
the captain came on the loudspeaker to tell us not to worry about the pair of
armed Coast Guard boats that were alongside – just a practice patrol, the USCG
does that sometimes. But we think they
do it a little more often when POTUS, like Big Mama, is in the house, yo (See
MV 2009 Journal for Big Momma reference).
You do feel reassured that if, say, the captain did appear to be heading
the boat toward shore at full speed, at least one of those four big fellows on
one of those teeny boats would have used that very serious looking machine gun
on the bow to take out said crazy captain.
I’m sure everyone will be relieved to learn that we did NOT
take the Annual Wrong Turn on the way to the ferry. Isabel was probably most relieved of all,
having said to her babysitter Ellen the night before “I am anxious about
tomorrow, I hope we don’t take a wrong turn!”
So here we are, as M. Sasek says. This year’s house is a funny rambling little
place, with lots of doors and a bewildering array of light switches, about half
of which do not appear to turn anything on.
It’s not an old house, so is quite nice and tight despite having lots of
windows and doors. This is good because
we appear to have arrived with a spot of bad weather. Good to get it out of the way early, but
there is a lot of TV and Uno in our immediate future. Anyway, the house is comfortable and
well-appointed and fulfills our apparent requirement of being close to the
up-island Cronigs.
Which was quite picked over when I got there this afternoon
for the annual big stock-up. Cronig’s
Trip #1, 8/22, 5 pm. My love affair with
Cronig’s continues, making me buy all sorts of things that normally do not come
home with me from the grocery store. We don’t pick houses near Cronig’s on
purpose, but it does seem to work out that way.
While I was laying in food for the storm, disaster struck in
the form of a header that Peter took off of his bike! He is structurally fine, but has some
impressive road rash on his torso and elbow, and even a sprinkling of it on his
face. He is like Lance Armstrong, minus
the (alleged) doping.
8/23
My dreams of cozy island times during a storm have been
realized – we are in the teeth of a feeble nor’easter. Unfortunately no one else finds this to be
optimal beach vacation weather, and it has already been proclaimed by Peter to
be “the worst vacation ever.” I think it
is the road rash talking.
Cronig’s Trip #2, 8/23, 7:45 a.m. Needless to say, no deliveries since 5 pm
yesterday except for newspapers. But
somehow with just me and one other shopper at that hour, dark with rain and
wind outside, Vincent on the radio inside (“starry, starry, niiiiiight”) – it
was deeply peaceful.
Today we found a new beach area, near to Vineyard Haven, right
on the Sound. To get there you have to
drive down the bumpiest, puddle-y-est, pot-holiest road ever, called Herring
Cove Road. You don’t know if the puddles
you are about to ford are six inches deep or six feet – so there is a sense of
adventure. We were in (ultimately
successful) search of a letterbox (more later on what that is), but also found
the beach. Too bad the wind was
screaming and rain driving so much that we couldn’t even take a walk on it.
Cronigs Trip #3, 8/23, ca. 4:15 p.m. After Menemsha for dinner pick up (clams), Bill
and Peter stop for additional provisions (potatoes, tomatoes, onions and garlic,
to roast with said clams, yum-o).
Despite the several thousand cookies I made and brought with us, they
cannot resist the Quadratini (which one can also buy in Cambridge but
apparently they are really best from Cronig’s).
Cronig’s Trip #4, 8/23, 4:45 p.m. Oops, they forgot bread to go with
aforementioned clams for dinner. This is
a new record for us Laskins, four trips in 24 hours, but we are told that that
is nothing for the Londons.
8/24
I’m upgrading the nor’easter from feeble to pissah. But I don’t know that it is at wicked pissah
yet. We’ll have to tour the island today
to see if there’s any serious damage.
There is! We can now
safely say that this is definitely a category wicked pissah nor’easter. Peter thinks that the gales of November have
come early, but of course we are not on the shores of the great lake they call
Gitcheegumee. (We’ve been listening to
my nautical mix a lot, which of course includes “The Wreck of the Edmund
Fitzgerald.” Trivia note for non-Laskin
readers: Bill went to high school with
Edmund Fitzgerald’s grandson, and was in fact in high school with said grandson
when the tragedy occurred.) Meanwhile
back in the present, a 36 ft. schooner, the Valora,
was destroyed in Vineyard Haven harbor when it broke loose from its mooring and
slammed into the breakwall, and there were power outages, and trees down across
important roads, and the Oak Bluffs car and freight ferries were suspended all
day, due to rough seas. This meant that
all the OB ferry traffic, including all the carnys and the rides from the Fair,
had to go through Vineyard Haven, which explains the heavy traffic in that town
yesterday.
Nevertheless, today we hardy Laskins ventured forth into the
storm for some letterboxing fun, joined by the equally game cousins Nancy and Lily. Letterboxing is an outdoor scavenger hunt
type of activity, in which you find clues at letterboxing websites, and trek to
the locations, where you discover a well-hidden box or pouch with a stamp and a
logbook. You bring your own stamp and
logbook and inkpad, and you stamp your stamp in the box’s logbook, and the
box’s stamp in your logbook. Many people
carve their own stamps, and they are quite something. We are collecting the MV Town Seal series,
which as you might guess involves travelling all over the island to find
letterboxes with stamps of each of the town seals. So far, we’ve found Tisbury (Vineyard Haven),
Chilmark, Edgartown, and West Tisbury.
This particular series are all on Martha’s Vineyard Landbank Commission
properties, which are beautiful little or big spots all over the island, with
nicely maintained trails. The best part
is that while these are all in general locations with which we are familiar,
we’ve never visited any of these Landbank properties, so we are seeing many new
and lovely parts of the Island.
We found one box on a trail abutting Tea Lane Farm, in a
remote area of Chilmark, really quite lovely with rolling pastures, stone
walls, trees, dripping with grape and other vines, all swathed today in a sea
gray mist. Then after a comical stop to
look up the correct directions to Priester’s Pond Preserve, we discovered that
we were in fact parked AT Priester’s Pond Preserve, another idyllic spot just
off the intersection of State and North Roads.
How did we accomplish anything before we had smartphones? We found the last of our day on the way back
from Edgartown later in the afternoon.
But not before Isabel – who claims that letterboxing is no
fun but she lies – achieved her goal of the day which was to visit the MV
Museum in Anchortown (as she calls it) and dress up in colonial garb. That girl loves dress-up, and she is pretty
cute in a mob cap and apron.
Needless to say, the MV Museum was hopping on this rainy
day. This eclectic museum is the place
to learn about all aspects of island life such as whaleship mutinies (the Globe’s captain was a Vineyarder, and we
had read the whole bloody story on the way to the island), rescue operations
(successful – from the six-masted Mertie
B. Crowley, and unsuccessful – the disgraceful City of Columbus disaster off Aquinnah), whaling of course (the
story of six-year old – six! – Laura Jernigan who goes to sea with her family
when her dad is captain of the Roman),
and even a terrific collection of oral histories about Islanders’ service in
WW2. You can spend a good morning at the
MV Museum, although you will probably have to hit the gift shop on your way
out.
Edgartown is hopelessly charming, and filled with cozy,
prosperous-looking houses in any of which you might like to pass a rainy, windy
day. All the houses are white, with
nauticalia tastefully decorating the outside (mostly whales, this having been
the principle whaling port on the island), and colorful, well-maintained
gardens. But if you did duck inside one
of these charmers, you might have missed the crowd downtown, ogling the closed
street where clearly Someone Important is hanging out. “Feet on the bricks” is the police mantra, to
keep the gawkers from getting into the street.
We learn later that we lunched a mere block away from FLOTUS.
Cronig’s Trip #5, 3:30 p.m.
Saran wrap.
Isabel claimed that Barbara’s birthday party this evening was
no fun. That girl is hard to
please. But the dinner was delicious
(John T. grilled tuna), the company wonderful, and the cake good too. Max, Barbara’s extremely nice son, put
together a charming slide show of Barbara through the years, which was enjoyed
by all.
8/25
It is raining – quel surprise.
The six-masters (see note yesterday re: sinking of the Mertie B. Crowley) are pretty interesting. There were only ten ever built, between
1900-1909, and only a couple survived for 20 or more years. These behemoths – 400 feet long! – were built
as coal carriers, or other heavy cargo like ice, for the coastal trade. The genesis was a Southern coal shortage in
1899, which was holding up the New England manufactories. Apparently it was cheaper per ton to build
giant wooden sailing ships for this kind of cargo than to use existing steamships,
and they quickly paid for themselves in terms of cargoes carried. I think that their size made them less suited
to difficult weather however, since seven of the ten were lost at sea or from
grounding during storms. My theory is
that without steam they couldn’t outrun a storm or maneuver fast enough away
from dangerous shoals. Still, it is
interesting to learn about something so big, of which so few were built, and
then vanished.
Astonishingly, there were NO Cronig’s visits today. But as the rain diminished we did manage to
pack in one whole half of the island from the Flying Horses and Isabel’s
request of a visit to the Gingerbread houses in Oak Bluffs, all the way down to
Aquinnah for the last in the letterbox series, Chilmark for Cinema Circus, the
MV Film Festival’s annual evening of kid-friendly shorts (better than last
year, great, actually, although the whole event still involved that
interminable-for-me circus entertainment beforehand. Isabel loves the dress-up aspect of it,
however.), and Menemsha for dinner – with sunset! Yes, the clouds are moving out at last. They’ll linger into Thursday morning but it
has FINALLY stopped raining and blowing.
Bring on the beach!
8/26
Cronig’s Trip #6, 7:45 a.m.
The anticipated bliss of an early-morning shop (see Cronig’s Trip #3,
8/23) is undermined by the lack of most supplies. So, Cronig’s Trip#7 took place at 10:15 a.m.,
after a trip to Larsen’s (tuna for tartare) and the fancy farm (the usual irritation
of how amid all this fabulous local and foreign bounty can they not have the two
things I am looking for?).
At LAST we get to fabled better-‘n-Bali Lambert’s Cove
Beach. Not much changed from last year,
we are happy to say. Digging, damming,
and even some swimming ensue, despite wind and a touch of cool. We hung out with a lot of Londons and had a
rather perfect day.
The London clan – now reduced to 14 – came over for
cocktails tonight. It’s always a good
time when the Londons come over, and I am happy to report that we have no
crackers left.
8/27
Lambert’s Cove beach is closed to swimming, because of a
high bacteria count! Word is that it is
caused by runoff from the Cape, after the big storms. Damn mainlanders. The local press is now calling the storm
vicious which I believe is a category above wicked pissah.
Anyway, it was a perfectly bee-you-ti-ful day, which we
spent mostly at Seth’s Pond with many Londons.
I don’t think Peter came out of the water for about two hours. I managed to get in a swim across the pond
and back. Seth’s Pond is somehow more
pleasant this year than last. Maybe
because it is a bit cooler, so the water is not so much like a bathtub. There is about a foot of beach there this
year, so we set up camp on the grassy verge.
Tonight we played mini golf (more Londons present), and then
went to Grace Church in Vineyard Haven for lobster rolls. There was almost no line! Perhaps because they have raised the price $2
from last year? The church sells the
rolls (and hot dogs for the shellfish allergic) as a fundraiser for their local
outreach ministries. You can get your
rolls from the Rev. himself, gamely wearing an apron with a silly-looking
lobster on it over his reverend duds. We
took our stash (two rolls, two dogs) to a little park nearby, overlooking the
harbor now golden with the setting sun.
Pretty picture-skew, as the other Uncle Thomas (Lemann) has been known
to say. The only thing that would
improve these lobster rolls would be toasted buns, with just a whisp of butter,
but a soft bun is a small price to pay when it is filled with a mountain of
lobster meat that is only kissed with mayo and S&P – no pesky celery to mar
the experience with its uncouth crunch. You
get a drink and a bag of chips with your roll, all for $15. As the saying goes, it really IS all that and
a bag of chips! They have sold over
13,000 so far this year, but will they beat last year’s record of 16,324 by
next weekend, when they close up shop for the summer?
8/28
The whole Marc Hauser thing at the World’s Greatest
University has been an occasional topic of conversation this week with the
local Uncle Tom (London). It has been
discovered that Hauser, a prominent research in the field of psychology, is
responsible for multiple errors in recent research, basically everything from
data collection to data reporting to analysis.
Published work is going to have to be retracted and redacted and
revised, and all his graduate students and postdocs (the original
whistleblowers) are scrambling to find new jobs. Hauser is on leave for a year, possibly
already in place, and Harvard will levy additional (confidential)
sanctions. But he’s going to teach in
Extension this fall anyway, and I don’t find the rationale from my colleagues
there to be satisfactory (“it’s not his teaching that has come under fire, and
FAS says it is OK if he teaches for us”).
But how the heck does he stand up there with a straight face and tell
students about the academic honesty rules?
And didn’t his research skills help to get him the teaching gig via
tenure in the first place? Of course, it
is easy to take the high road when you are removed from it all and hanging
around on idyllic Martha’s Vineyard and not the person who would have to lower
the boom. My esteemed boss agrees with
me, which makes him even more esteemed in my opinion.
But in the here-and-now, we made Peter’s day today by
heading out to Long Point, a.k.a. the Wavy Beach, on the south side of the
island, after an early stop at the almost too-perfect West Tisbury Farmer’s
Market ($5 for a pint of admittedly gorgeous cherry tomatoes? But gosh those biscuits were good! And there is even a lobster lady this year,
plus of course my fave old dames the Shermans selling their tasty jams.). We wonder if Peter is starting to grow gills
– he was in the water more than out for our entire four-plus hours there,
jumping waves like the crazy fool that he is.
Parents are required for this activity, as much for fun as for safety, I
think. Apparently my own performance was
such to earn me the title the Un-scared Mom, of which I am quite proud. Did you eat your Danger Puffs for breakfast
this morning Mom, asked Peter admiringly?
This year, we had a new addition to the wave jumping party, when
young Isabel was carried into the big water by her father for some serious jumping
action. She squeaked her way through
some big rollers, holding her breath when told to for diving purposes, and then
popping up like a cork (held on to by dad the whole time) with a giant grin. She is also a shrieker like her mother, but
if there was ever an activity made for shrieking, wave-jumping is it. Not surprisingly, Izzy was asleep before we
left the parking lot.
Cronig’s Trip #8 by Bill, 5pm ish, after a Larsen’s and
fancy farm run. We are now awash in
provisions. Finished the night with
grilled bluefish with a mustard/lemon/cumin/Aleppo pepper sauce, corn from the
fancy farm, teeny zucchini from the farmer’s market with evoo/lemon/garlic, and
delish chocos from local confectioner Enchanted Chocolates. Not bad, as Snoopy says, not bad at all.
8/29
The Obamas leave the island today. After this, the only way you’ll know they
were here, except for the random protest and support signs that appear stay up
all year, are the STATE HIGHWAY NO PARKING signs every 20 feet along both sides
of South Road around the entrance to Blue Heron Farm. Presumably the entire road is a state highway
with no parking, but they only post about it here. Move it along, nothing to see here, folks.
We spent another idyllic day at Lambert’s Cove, this time
with the Burnhams. Peter and Isabel and
Ava followed a dad and his two kids up the creek, in search of eels. None were found, but one of the other kids
found a baby turtle which he proudly displayed in a bucket. Peter also spent a lot of time in the ocean,
trying to net the speedy teeny fish that swim around you. He was like the Wampanoag of yore, standing
still and silent in the water, waiting for the fish to come to him. But they proved impossible to catch in a net,
no matter how Indian-like he was.
Speaking of fish, Jaws,
as you may know, is a local legend, having been made here in 1974. There are many famous aspects to this film,
not the least of which is that it was and remains g.d. bloody terrifying. It was only Steven Spielberg’s second film, and
came close to being a complete failure. This was the first seafaring film actually
made on the ocean, instead of in a tank, which caused all kinds of problems –
sailboats kept gliding into the shot for example, and then there was the time
the production boat actually sank. The
production ran wildly over budget (original budget: $4M, final cost: $14M), took way longer to make than expected,
had a difficult cast (the drunk-as-a-skunk Robert Shaw, the arrogant young Richard
Dreyfuss, the handsome Roy Scheider), and of course the shark didn’t work. But that’s what made it great, apparently,
since the mechanical shark was almost a complete failure they basically had to
film around it, and emphasize the idea
of the shark and the results of its attacks, rather than the shark itself. If you’ve seen the film, you know how well it
works. And of course it was a huge hit,
the first big summer blockbuster movie, made Spielberg’s career, etc. The really funny thing is that none of the
people who worked on the film like to swim in the ocean to this day. When invited to go big wave surfing in Hawaii
shortly after the film came out, Spielberg reportedly said no way. “I know what’s out there, and they know I’m
here. They’ve got my number and they’re
just waiting for me.” There have been
several great white sightings off the Cape this summer, but none here. Maybe Steven Spielberg is summering in
Chatham.
And speaking of tasty fishy treats, I am delighted to report
Peter’s palate is maturing at a breakneck pace.
Today he tried – and liked – local herring in sour cream, and smoked
bluefish pate. “It’s bluefish, it’s
smoked, what’s not to like?” That’s my
boy! Izzy was up for the bluefish, but
not quite ready for the herring, despite the fact that “The Herring’s Head” is
her favorite song on the nautical mix.
What do we do with the herring’s
head?
What do we do with the herring’s
head?
Make it into loaves of bread,
Herring’s head, loaves of bread,
And all manner of things.
Of all the fish that live in the
sea,
The Herring is the one for me!
How are you today, how are you
today, how are you today, my Finny-O?
Then it goes on – herring’s eyes, puddings and pies; herring’s tail, ship with a sail; herring’s
guts (goots), pair of boots – and so on.
A good fishing community would pride itself on using every bit of the
herring, but we just get ours (fillets) from Larsen’s.
For dinner we grilled
a humongous piece of swordfish that was like buttah. Even Isabel, who was railing against “fish
AGAIN” eventually pronounced it delizioso.
8/30
Cronig’s Trip #9, 7:45 a.m.
Another bliss-out – they had everything I needed, and “Kiss the Girl”
from the Little Mermaid on the radio.
You can even get your latest copy of the journal Foreign Affairs at Cronig’s, should you need to keep in touch with
the goings-on of the diplomatic studies crowd.
I think I saw David McCullough on my short ride back to the
house. He lives in these parts. Drives an old Mercedes station wagon.
Peter conquered his fears – after much griping – and got
back on the bike today, making a successful run from South Beach to the Katama
General Store and back again. In fact,
later in the afternoon he pronounced it the perfect excursion, because you can
get some exercise from your bike ride, get some good food, and then go to the
beach! Peter takes his time to reach the
appropriate conclusion about many things, which is just a bit frustrating to
those of us who see the wisdom of our path earlier in the day. South Beach surf is usually pretty good, and today
was relatively easy, no sign of the late Danielle or the approaching Earl. The only problem is that the break is close
to the beach, and there is a steep dropoff loaded with painful rocks and
shells, so woe to you if you don’t time your exit right. Still, Peter as usual spent hours in the
water, surfacing only for food or to get the other parent to accompany
him. One wave swirled him around, he
said, and “it rather whipped my cream!” I
can’t think of anything else to say about wave jumping that tops that.
Update on the Marc Hauser situation, if anyone cares: he has withdrawn from teaching in Extension
this year. Guess the Crimson’s article
did him in. Good move, say I.
8/31
Another storm may be on its way! The big question is how close Hurricane Earl
will come to the Island, and when. Right
now they are saying Friday and Friday night.
As (Teacher) Kathy Poehler says, it wouldn’t be Labor Day weekend
without a storm. This afternoon, we
received a reverse 911 call, a “Code Red” telling us to stock up for the
hurricane.
Despite the impending storm, today was another stunning day
in this paradise. We boated today –
Peter and Bill in a Sunfish, Izzy and I in a kayak – on Lagoon Pond in Vineyard
Haven. It was a little calm for sailing,
but it would have warmed the heart of the sailors in my family to see Peter at
the tiller. Perhaps because he was with
his dad, or perhaps because the Lagoon is pretty shallow, he did not attempt to
capsize his craft, unlike his self-reported sailing activity at camp. There is a big sandbar in the middle of the
Lagoon, over which one must pass to get to other parts of this long pond. It is really more like a scallop bar, covered
and I mean carpeted with teeny scallops and some big ones. Every once in a while, one little guy breaks
free and swims upward, only to fall back again to his family below. There are thousands and thousands of them,
and I happen to know that they will go for about $30 a pound when they hit the
fish market this winter so that is some serious coin down there. When you bring one up above the water it gets
very angry and either clamps tight shut or spits and snaps at you. If shut, eventually curiosity gets the best
of this bivalve: first his little teeny
iridescent blue eyes start to peek out of the crack – he has eyes at every
ridge of his shell, so it is quite a sight to see that line of shiny blue
dots. Then it widens and the eyes come
out further with some feelers, then the whole gummy mouth opens – and then it
starts snapping! We beached and spent a
certain amount of time in scallop observation, which is how we know so much
about their behavior.
After boating we went to State Beach, which runs between Oak
Bluffs and Edgartown. It’s a pretty calm
beach, although surprisingly rocky on the entrance and exit. We spent a pleasant afternoon with our fishy
children frolicking in the gentle waves and jumping off the jetty into all of
three feet of water. They thought it
quite thrilling.
Dinner tonight was a sunset picnic at Lambert’s Cove, with
yummy eats from the Scottish Bakehouse.
They take their time to produce your Brazilian Plate or your grilled
cheese or really anything at the Scottish Bakehouse. Bill thinks their slogan should be “made in a
hollow tree by hippies.” It was really
impossibly beautiful at LCB tonight, and that sunset light is so flattering to
les dames d’un certain age such as myself.
9/1
RABBIT RABBIT RABBIT
Cronig’s Trip #10, 7:35 a.m.
No bliss-out today, I am a woman with a mission: bottled water, candles, flashlight,
batteries. All are acquired, let the
storm rage.
But of course today was exquisite. We went back to the Wavy Beach, met up again
with the Burnhams, after our usual stock-up stop at the West Tis Farmer’s
Market (egg rolls, more jam, more Orange Peel Bakery baking powder biscuits,
more potatoes). The waves were actually
slightly smaller than last time, although the current carrying you down the
beach was pretty strong when the tide was out.
And, there were masses of little crystal-like jelly things at the
water’s edge – we think they may be jellyfish spawn. Quite pretty, glistening in the sunlight, and
I wondered what they would look like when they dried. Probably nothing, said my son, reminding me
that jellyfish are 98% water so they will just dry up. It’s always helpful to have an expert along,
whatever you are doing. The jelly things
were gently pelting us while in the water, it was a little weird and a lot of
fun. Peter “Surf’s-Up” Laskin was his
usual waterlogged self, while Izzy and Ava made multiple trips to the pond
behind the dunes for more gentle water sports.
They also sold seaweed soup up and down the beach to anyone who would
pay attention to them. Seaweed soup, in
case you are wondering, is a bucket of water with seaweed and two forks
floating around in it. They had a
surprising number of takers. Izzy slept
in the car for more than an hour after we got home.
Cronig’s Trip #11, 5 p.m.
Bill is off for corn and steaks, fish having been pronounced off-limits
by the kids. On our way home from the
beach we picked up a few house-made chocolate bars at the State Road
Restaurant, which is the it-place on the island this summer. We got a Martha’s Vineyard Bar, an Edgar Bar,
and the best (so far), the Island Grown Bar, dark chocolate with dried
blueberries, caramelized cocoa nibs, and sea salt. All proceeds from the sale of the Island
Grown bar benefit the Island Grown Schools, which is part of the Island Grown
Initiative. We may have to go buy
another one or ten. And hopefully
someday I will get to eat an actual meal at State Road, it looks good.
9/2
Well it turns out that the theme of this vacation is in fact
Finding Places We’ve Never Been Before on Martha’s Vineyard. Today’s destination was Hillman’s Point, on
Lake Tashmoo, for a wonderful date with Kathy Poehler, a legendary former HYCCC
teacher of both Peter and Isabel. Kathy
is a native Vineyarder, and she just moved back to the island last winter. In addition to having been at Harvard Yard
for 22 years, she is most famous in our family as Peter’s first science teacher
(and we all know how well that has worked out), and as the owner/manager of the
famed Mrs. Dinosaur, a wire and papier mache creation who lived in the Red and
Yellow Door Rooms. We were delighted to
see her, and even happier when she suggested an early morning clamming session
on Lake Tashmoo, a place we’ve often passed but never visited.
Lake Tashmoo, as you will learn if you watch the video of
this event on my facebook page, was originally a spring-fed lake until the
no-name hurricane of 1938 permanently opened a break in the bar separating it
from the Sound. Now it is a calm,
protected brackish harbor with mostly private access except for a few MV Land
Bank Commission spots, which is just where we went. It was a good thing we passed Kathy on the
drive in because otherwise we never would have found it!
Here’s how you clam, island-style: you walk in at low tide, and go until you are
about waist or chest deep, and your feet are kind of in the muck. Then you sort of float about, digging with
your toes, until you feel bumps under your feet. You dig up the bump with your toes, and maneuver
it within reach of your hands with your feet, and then put it in your bucket. There is a certain amount of grimacing and
grunting involved, because those clams do not want to be dug by your toes or
anything else, so it actually looks like you are laying an egg. Sometimes you get a rock, but if you are
lucky, you get a quahog. You get the
hang of it after a while. Rakes,
apparently, are for lame clammers who want to go home with a backache. And steamers are good, but they are actually
harder to get, and slice your feet up in the process. We filled the bucket, and Kathy took the big
ones home to stuff while we got about four and a half dozen to make a deelish
sauce for pasta.
Kathy, who has been doing this forever, is a real clam
magnet, so she is a good person to initiate you into island-style
clamming. The whole thing is really
peaceful – you just sort of drift around digging and grabbing with your toes,
while chatting away. Izzy bobbed back
and forth delivering our discoveries to the bucket, while Peter kept up a
running commentary. It’s kind of like
floating yoga, admittedly at great expense to your pedicure. The scene was idyllic: blue sky and sun, the gentle clank of lines
against sailboat masts in the Earl-freshening breeze, an osprey soaring
overhead, a sailboat gliding by. A
little nature walk to find crabs and eel egg sacs and other assorted marine
creatures completed this perfect morning.
How to top this?
Lunch from the Bite, on the beach at Menemsha is pretty good (fried
clams, it has been a clammy day for the growns). Here the wind is really picking up, the bell
on the buoy off-shore is clanging furiously, and we hear a couple of Coast
Guard guys tell the Texaco guy that “it is really starting to stand up out
there.” They were on the same craft that
we saw at the beginning of our trip, minus the weaponry. Now that POTUS has left the island, I guess
they don’t need them anymore. Menemsha
was marred slightly by a jellyfish sting to Peter, but it wasn’t too serious,
and now he has a story to tell.
Since it is still lovely out, we head to West Chop (another
new location for us) to find the Town Seal bonus letterbox, but not before stopping
to view the great Stanley Murphy murals of Vineyard life in the Tisbury Town
Hall. Murphy has been called the Vermeer
of the Vineyard, but that’s clearly just for the alliterative thrill – while
these were done in the 1980s, they have a distinct WPA feel to them, almost
like folk art. Still, they’re great, and
you can see Bill’s pix of them on the Kodak page. They’ll probably never be stolen from a
famous museum, but these paintings are really something.
Home in time to receive another Code Red call – it’s now a
Hurricane Warning, and there has been a State of Emergency declared! All businesses are to close by 2 pm tomorrow,
and stay closed for 24 hours, and everyone is supposed to be off the roads by
then, too. The ferry will likely be
suspended tomorrow afternoon, and we hear that NSTAR has 25 additional crews
already on-island to deal with outages.
But tonight we’re reading that the big rain is to come after 5 pm so
maybe we’ll do some touring tomorrow morning.
Cronig’s Trip #12, 5 p.m., by Bill to pick up supplies for
clam sauce. Gosh was that good. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us) Peter’s
palate has not matured so far as clams.
9/3
No storm yet! I
couldn’t sleep, expecting to be awakened by huge winds or driving rain at any
minute. But the humidity is rising. As another fave song on our nautical mix
says:
Strike the bell, second mate, let’s
go below,
Look well to windward you can see
it’s gonna blow
Look at the glass, you can see that
it is fell,
We’re wishing you would hurry up
and strike, strike the bell!
Storm preparations on the island appear to consist of
getting in your car and driving to Vineyard Haven or Edgartown, and then
sitting in gawdawful traffic. Our SPOD
(Storm Preparation Observation Drive) this morning confirmed this as we almost
got caught in the Edgartown traffic while trying to get to South Beach to view
the waves. The main roads are like
slow-moving riptides, you will exhaust yourself and die trying to get out of
them, so you just have to go with the current until you see an opening to swim
away. It’s been showery, but no lasting
rain or wind, at least, not down-Island, and not at our house.
We even tried Felix Neck for a nature walk, but only Bill could
brave the mosquitoes, and then only for 10 minutes. Apparently they all hatched at once today,
and boy were they hungry.
Bill recovers well from adversity, however. After the Felix Neck debacle, he had the
brilliant idea to see if Chilmark Chocolates was finally open. These treats are famously elusive – impossible
to actually get, but rumored to be wildly good.
We’ve never had the luck to be here, or to be aware of them, in time to
get there before they go on their August vacation. You can’t order the chocolates, and you can’t
buy them anywhere else on the island except for their shop in Chilmark, which
is only open Thursday-Sunday, 11:30-5:30, but closed for the aforementioned
last week of August, and the month of October, and six weeks from Christmas
through the end of January in addition to every Monday-Wednesday. And of course they have no website. So, you really have to be pretty sharp to
actually acquire some.
We were not the only ones stocking up on chocos for the
storm. There was a line out the door,
which it turns out is entirely normal, there is always a line out the
door. Once inside, you can buy a pre-boxed
mix, which we did, or you can select the contents of your bag, ¼ lb., ½ lb., or
1 lb. box from about 25 different varieties. They have creatively named ones like
Beetlebung Bars (milk chocolate with ground almonds and ground toffee) or
Tulgeywood (chocolate with chunks of peaches and apricots and crushed almonds) or
Chappy Chewies (chocolate with caramel and cashews), and straight-up ones like
Almond Butter Crunch and Marie’s Raisin Clusters. It is a little unnerving because no one comes
out the front door after they finally get in (you exit out the back) so you
wonder what exactly goes on in there.
But folks in the know take their time creating their collection: “Two Moshup’s Macs, Four Squibnuggets, Four
Menemsha Mints, two West Chomps, and some Fisherman’s Bark, please.” The line had not abated when we left, there
were cars lined up in the driveway waiting to park.
Good call, Bill! This
expedition cheered everyone up enormously, as did a quick pre-storm dip in
Seth’s Pond. We are home by 2, but there
is not much wind until about 4:30.
5:30 p.m. WHERE IS THIS
DAMN STORM? We have taken a walk around
the house, and investigated all the trees. We have made a camp out of umbrellas in the
front hall. We have played an endless
game of Uno, and the kids are now watching a movie while Bill and I sit in the
humid breeze on one of our screened-in porches.
It is actually rather pleasant but all this storm talk has me on high
alert and unable to relax until we get some serious wind and rain already.
Now it is 6:45 and still no rain or strong wind. Bill is walking out to the road, to see what
he can see. Not much, as it turns out,
everyone is heeding the travel ban.
OK, by 10 p.m. we are in it, lots of rain and wind, but we
still have electricity. And lots of
chocolate.
9/4
As the Dixie Chicks say, “Goodbye, Earl!” It wasn’t exactly the no-storm of February,
but after all that buildup, the storm passed in the night with no loss of
power, and as far as we can tell, no property damage. Turns out West Tisbury is a pretty good place
to pass a storm. The day has dawned
sunny and clear so a beach is in our very near future.
A windy beach, in fact.
We were those annoying people whose umbrella blows away and then the dad
has to go tearing down the beach after it, apologizing to all the people it
jabbed on its escape attempt. Checked
out James Pond, which is just the other side of the dunes, quiet and full of
birds – we saw a swan, a hawk, and two blue herons among the many shore
birds. It was really beautiful at
Lambert’s Cove, but crazy windy so we only spent a couple of hours before
bidding it a fond farewell, but never goodbye.
A refreshing morning bike ride in the State Forest (another
place we’ve never been) and a lobster dinner bookended this pretty much perfect
day. Bill stopped at Chilmark Pottery
(another first) on his way back from Menemsha, and picked up a few items. It’s been a good summer for the potter
apparently, he’s gone through two tons of clay already. A very teeny portion of it went into a mug
for me, a rabbit for Isabel, a starfish for Peter, and a rather gorgeous objet
d’art for Bill.
9/5
And so we say goodbye to Martha’s Vineyard for another
year. We finished up with our now
standard visit to the artisan’s fair (one platter for me, one print for Andy’s
birthday present, but no soap for Isabel, alas), and provisioned for the
crossing at the Scottish Bakehouse. I
think we have done our part to keep the island’s economy afloat for another
year, although Bill feels that it was not exactly hurting to begin with.
We are on the MV Island
Home for our return to the mainland, and the high winds and waves drive all
but the most hardy of our party (me) inside for the short trip. But I stay topside as long as possible,
watching the sailboats loving this weather, the trawlers catching something
good I’m sure, and the passing ferries, and keeping the island in sight until
it is time for Drivers, Please Return To Your Vehicles. It’s pretty easy if you are driving off, but
apparently much harder to disembark on foot.
These were the announced instructions:
“Passengers on foot, please exit to the left of the vessel, that’s the
port side, through the entrance you came in on, gate number four. Exit to the left or port side of the vessel,
from the back. If you don’t know which
is the left side of the vessel, stand facing the front, that is, stand facing
the way we are going. Then stick out
your left arm. That is the left of the
vessel.” That is exactly what he said,
honest.
We pick up WMVY, the island’s radio station, all the way to
the Sagamore Bridge. And it turns out I
can stream it at home via the internets, so we can always listen in to what’s
going on, on Martha’s Vineyard.
MV 2010 Tally
Books read:
Bill: The Lost Cyclist by David Herlihy Jr. A collection of Malcolm Gladwell
essays. Slow Love, by Dominique Browning.
Lisa: The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People
Who Read Them by Elif Batuman. A Fearsome Doubt, an Inspector Rutledge
mystery by Charles Todd. Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth. The
Tourist by Olen Steinhauer.
Peter: Millions, The Faceless Fiend, The Sword in
the Stone, Dormia, The Midnight Charter, The Beast Master, and whatever
else he can get his hands on.
Isabel: She does not
read by herself, but we are all enjoying reading Charlotte’s Web to her, as well as a gorgeously illustrated
collection of Persian stories called the The
Seven Wise Princess (I think she got it for the pictures but has stayed for
the stories). Finally, who doesn’t love
reading Eloise out loud, for the
Lord’s sake, call room service and charge it please, thank you very much?
Jellyfish stings: 1,
Peter
Teeth lost: 2, Peter
(one on the ferry!)
Teeth loose: 2,
Isabel
Storms weathered: 2,
the nor’easter, and lame-o Earl.
New places discovered:
ten, maybe more?
Clams who gave their lives for us: many
Chocolates eaten: a
lot
Funs: (Isabel
measures a good time in funs had)
Countless
No comments:
Post a Comment