Time & Tide Page 6

  I LOVE AIRPORT NOISE

  It’s true. There’s an awful lot more than there used to be. Jets and props all day long.

  PIPING PLOVERS TASTE LIKE CHICKEN

  In protest to closing four-wheel-drive access

  to Great Point because the birds nested in

  the tire tracks.

  20 IS PLENTY IN ’SCONSET

  Twenty miles per hour. Good advice because

  the streets are narrow, and many of the

  cottages are inches away from the berm.

  Some natives change the sticker with Magic

  Markers to read:

  80 IS PLENTY IN ’SCONSET

  Since the town is almost completely summer

  people. (Often spotted behind a beer and

  shots bar called the Chicken Box.)

  The Pace Quickens

  SOMETIME IN THE SEVENTIES I HAD A TALK with a local minister about the island. He was worried about a lot of things, but most particularly about the laundering of drug money in Nantucket real estate. He did not tell me his sources of information, nor did he mention any names, but it seemed to me, in that age of cocaine, to be quite possible. In fact it was not long after our talk that a guy I knew—I’ll call him Swifty—was arrested (and not by local law enforcement) for trafficking heroin. Swifty had a T-shirt store downtown which provided a light rinse for his ill-gotten gains, which were finally laundered in the purchase of an expensive cottage in ’Sconset. The cottage was confiscated and Swifty went to jail, but he’d come close to getting away with it. Nantucket operated on money from off island, and no one seemed to worry too much about where the money came from. (Heroin continues to be a problem even today. There seems to be something about island life— not just on Nantucket—that makes people susceptible to alcohol and drugs. The per capita consumption of booze on Nantucket is the highest in the state. Heroin users on the island are not like users in the cities. They are, for the most part, working men, often with families, and not easily spotted by straight people. I have known two men from the trades who have died of drug overdoses, for instance, and I was truly surprised in both instances.)

  The minister was also worried that the town was losing its soul, so to speak, as more money and more houses and more people became more important than “the courtesy and manners that are critical to the texture of life in a small town,” as David Halberstam, a longtime summer resident, phrased it in Town and Country. The center could not hold, said the minister, as the island lost its identity even to its own sons and daughters.

  Rich men have affected the island in many ways for many years, and quite often to the good. Old money has protected ’Sconset, for instance—well-to-do summer residents closing ranks to protect the village. Islanders remember Roy Larsen with fondness (at least those interested in conservation and preservation), for starting the Conservation Foundation and for donating large parcels of open land. A far-seeing gentleman, to be sure.

  At the risk of appearing snobbish, I cannot help but compare the character of the philanthropists of the sixties and seventies, even of the eighties, with some of those of the nineties and the aught. Dennis Kozlowski, for example, under indictment for milking $600 million (along with two other men) from Tyco while he was CEO. There is a mural in the anteroom of the ER at Nantucket Cottage Hospital celebrating Kozlowski, his boat, and his status as angel. No one worried about where the money came from. No one probably knew the man well enough to be able to foresee what would come out in the criminal investigation—that, even in small matters, he spent crassly: $2,900 for hangers, $6,300 for a sewing kit, $15,000 for an umbrella stand, $17,000 for an antique toilet kit, $6,000 for a shower curtain, and so on. Kozlowski apparently took Nantucket more seriously than the couple with the cat. He wanted to buy his way in through civic good works, through giving money away. He succeeded, at least until the year 2002 when the Enron, Tyco, and other scandals finally broke. But did he really? Or was David Halberstam correct when he observed, “Many of the true pleasures of Nantucket are not easily gained and cannot be purchased on demand . . . they have to be like everything else in life, earned.” It’s hard to imagine that Mr. Kozlowski would understand the true pleasures Halberstam refers to.

  PEOPLE CONSIDERING A visit to Nantucket should know that they are welcome, that they are needed, truth be told. A long time ago when the year-round population was three and a half thousand, the island lived off a ten-week summer season. But now the population is approaching ten thousand, and everything possible is being done to make the season start earlier and last longer.

  There has been a pattern in many of these efforts. Start with a local initiative, however small, expand it, and advertise it. A well-known force in the Garden Club, Mrs. MacAusland was perhaps inspired by Ladybird Johnson’s Beautify America campaign when she and her cohorts started planting daffodil bulbs at the edges of roads, in the rotary, along the bike paths and other strategic spots. They planted thousands and thousands of bulbs over the years, and the results were spectacular. From this emerged Daffodil Weekend in April, which attracts many visitors from America, including various off-island garden clubs, and those who simply need an excuse to come over for a visit. This despite the fact that April can be a cruel month on Nantucket. April 2002 was particularly so when a storm trapped a lot of visitors who wound up spending the night in the high school gymnasium. A celebratory mood prevailed, apparently.

  In May, there is the Wine Festival, started by Denis Toner, a local sommelier, more or less for his friends and colleagues. It grew beyond his imaginings, moving from his house to larger venues, most recently the White Elephant Hotel, a snazzy environment if there ever was one. Today famous chefs from New York, France, and other culinary centers fly up and guest-cook at local restaurants. Wine merchants, collectors, and aficionados come from the East Coast along with media people to cover the action. It has become a very big deal indeed.

  In June there is the film festival, started by a local brother and sister team, both young, which has grown in stature and importance every year. The first East Coast screening of The Full Monty occurred at the Nantucket Film Festival, along with other independently produced movies.

  There is the Island Jazz and Folk Festival, the Cranberry Festival, and the Nectar Fest, this last started by two young guys, Tom First and Tom Scott, who spent the winter of 1990 making and bottling fruit drinks, which they sold from a boat to the yachting crowd in the jam-packed harbor and marina the next summer. Their business, Nantucket Nectars, expanded, went national, and was worth $35 million by 1996, when they sold it to Ocean Spray. The Nectar Fest involves music, of course, and fund-raising for island causes.

  Snow on Main Street.

  A CLOSE LOOK AT THE annual Christmas Stroll reveals a good deal about the recent history of Nantucket.

  I remember the first Stroll, back in the seventies, when Maggie and I lived on the island year-round. We knew a number of people who worked in the shops, or ran them (paying high rent to Sherburne), who were concerned about locals going to the strip malls of Hyannis to do their Christmas shopping at the franchise retailers. The Nantucket markup was built so deeply into the system that even with the best will in the world, local retailers could not avoid it. So it began as a small-scale local initiative to encourage locals to buy on-island. Main Street was lined with miniature Christmas trees strung with lights and decorations. The shops stayed open late, doorways and windows spilling light, welcoming people inside for punch, canapés, and cookies, or shots and beers on the sly for special friends. (I found myself with a distinct buzz on before I was halfway up the street.) A nice, warm holiday party, in which one knew everybody in the shops and on the sidewalks. It was fun. A sense of community prevailed, and from a business point of view it made sense—some dollars stayed on the island that might otherwise have left.

  The goals changed gradually, as the Chamber of Commerce and the tourist industry advertised the Stroll, giving an old-fashioned small-town image, a kind of false nos
talgic glow.

  It was marketed, in other words, in order to attract visitors. People began to fly in, or take the ferry (having arranged accommodations at a hotel or a bed-and-breakfast), in order to take the Stroll and do some shopping. The number of visitors increased as the island’s status increased, and, paradoxically, as the shops became more luxe and more expensive: jewelry, $800 cashmere sweaters, lightship baskets decorated with scrimshaw, fancy housewares, antiques, gee-gaws, and the like. The original idea turned upside-down because the islanders could no longer afford the shops at all. The question was no longer the Nantucket markup, it was what might be called the Veblenization of Main Street.

  It did not seem to matter that visitors might find themselves, as they once did, socked in by weather. They came anyway. Recently fifteen thousand people came for the Stroll. One and a half times the population, in other words. Change happens, shrug the locals, and they ought to know.

  So Much to Do

  FAMILIES THINKING OF RENTING A HOUSE for the summer should be aware that Nantucket is nothing less than a paradise for children. My three sons (now age forty, thirty-eight, and sixteen) all had unconscionable amounts of fun—and this is one area where the island is even better now than it was when my oldest were kids.

  Let’s start with small kids. What does one do with them? All of my kids picked blackberries along the sides of the long driveway leading to our house. (How do you make a driveway? You simply drive over the same track, time after time, and you wind up with a dirt road, with grass in the raised center strip. Over the years the road sinks down, and you get puddles when it rains.) For all of my kids, and for Jonathan and Nicholas, my three-year-old twin grandchildren, picking berries was the first foray into the outside world of the island.

  Everyone’s first beach experience was on the shore of Quidnet Pond, where only thirty yards of dunes separate the waters of the open harbor from the intimate pond, always calm whatever the weather. Quidnet is a cluster of houses—most of them modest old-money summer homes—far enough away from everything to be a sort of secret, special place. Small children play in the sand, wade in the water, and make up games. Sometimes a mom throws a tennis ball for her pooch (quite often a Labrador) to retrieve. Sometimes a dad will fly a kite, or shmooze with other dads, all the while keeping an eye on the water. The kids are totally absorbed with one another, and it’s rare to see them fuss.

  What youngster could pass up throwing bread into the pond off Polpis Road near Hollywood Farm (no longer a farm—although once what is called an old lady’s farm where my first wife and I would buy baby vegetables and really splendid watermelon pickles made by Mrs. Maglathlin, the owner) in order to see the snapping turtles rise to the surface?

  And what about hermit crabs at the Brant Point breakwater? The sight of these prehistoric life forms seems specially thrilling to the young. As the kids grow a bit older they might go out to Madaket Bridge and throw chicken legs, tied with a long string, into the water to catch crabs. Again the fascination of primitive life forms, spiced by the aura of danger. Watch those claws!

  The kids discover the joys of clamming and of the fact that you can bring something back for dinner even if you’re only seven years old, let’s say. We always went out to a tidal flat near the entrance to Polpis Harbor in our boat, with the dog. Maggie and I might swim while Tim, my youngest, went off with a bucket for an hour. We could see him in the distance, hunkered down, his small form bright in the stark sunlight, elbows akimbo, digging with purpose. Or on a foggy day, he would simply disappear as the sound of buoy bells rang muffled in the air. We call it Tim’s Point, and we go there often.

  There are any number of children’s groups, from the Wee Whalers, a day-care operation, to the more upscale Maria Mitchell Association’s nature group with visits to interesting sites around the island— places like Gibbs Pond, hidden away in the moors, or various marshlands. A group called Strong Wings provides a kind of outward-bound experience, encouraging kids to test physical and mental limits. (Many children’s groups—more than one—visit a conservation holding in the forest next to our house. We can hear their voices from our vantage point on the rear deck, and they sometimes cross over into our little forest, or so it sounds.) Dozens of play groups feature different kinds of activities. Even the Nantucket Island School of Design and the Arts, NISDA, has programs for children.

  When it rains there is a splendid children’s wing in the Atheneum, in the town library, with readings, singing, and various games. The hall above the main library was the site for many famous lectures in the nineteenth century. The lectures and readings for adults continue on, but the library has recently shown a gradual but definite tilt toward children—who sometimes spill out into the adjacent park to roll in the grass or climb the trees.

  The recent introduction of public transport, buses on a regular schedule, has opened things up for older children, who can go into town whenever they want to eat pizza, get ice cream on old South Wharf, or pick up a video to take back home. Parents need not worry because the island is safe. Kids can go anywhere, and they do, enjoying a kind of independence no longer possible on the mainland.

  Boat rides around the harbor are always fun, and somebody’s dad seems always to suggest a trip out to Tuckernuck, where on the way one sees seals basking in the sun on Esther Island, black eyes flashing above their whiskers. The south shore of Tuckernuck is a splendid place to fish for striped bass and bluefish. The island used to be half deserted, and I can remember coming over in Walter Barrett’s boat as he delivered mail and groceries to the tiny pier. As soon as one stepped on land a hundred seagulls would begin to track from the air, gradually coming closer, diving down like creatures in a Hitchcock film. A bit scary, always, as I walked across the sandy ground to the old LaFarge compound, where I had friends. (In fact my first wife contracted hepatitis there, eating shellfish from the inlet.) Nowadays there are quite a few houses and the land is expensive, if any is available. The fishing is still superb, either from the shore into the surf, or from a boat outside, casting back into the surf (à la the late Bob “Stinky” Francis, a local who took out fishing parties for a fee—or for no charge if you got skunked).

  There is the Dreamland Theater, where the audience is less inhibited than at any other movie theater I know. The big summer movies are always packed with kids laughing, hissing, and booing like Italian opera fans. I saw Psycho at the Dreamland when it was first released, and will never forget the shocked, almost dazed look on people’s faces as we emerged, many of us going directly to Gwen Gaillard’s Opera House for a stiff drink.

  There is also the tiny Gaslight Theater, but for kids the best movie venue is probably the old hall in ’Sconset, where the audience sits on folding chairs and everybody knows everybody else. A true summertime feeling, not much different than it was thirty or forty years ago. As I mentioned before, ’Sconset has worked hard to maintain its traditions.

  Teenagers do not need cars (although many of them seem to have the use of them) because they can bike anywhere on the extensive network of bike paths or take the bus. They go to the South Shore with Boogie boards or surfboards, having called the hot line for an up-to-the-minute description of the size of the waves. They can spend a long time—all day—at Cisco or Nobadeer beaches knowing they can get hot dogs and ice cream from the truck or from the hip vendor who uses an old motorcycle with a dry-ice sidecar.

  Beach parties seem to occur quite often in the evenings, and teenagers get to know each other, sometimes very well indeed, and perhaps quaff an illicit beer or two before the recently imposed ten-thirty party curfew. The cops, who show up on dune buggies, are invariably polite and understanding, some of them not much older than the kids. They are able to blend in, sort of, standing around the bonfires with everybody else.

  All sorts of activities are available. At sixteen, Tim rides horseback with his pal Seth in the shallows of Polpis Harbor or on Quaise Pastures. He plays tennis in ’Sconset (and works at the club desk scheduli
ng games for people), jogs to Altar Rock, practices stick-shifting on isolated dirt roads, or goes into town for a pizza on our old fifty-horsepower duck boat. The day is not long enough for him and his buddies. They love the island with a passion and never seem to take it for granted.

  Boats

  AS WE HAD THIRD WORLD SOFTBALL, WE ALSO had the more amorphous Third World Yacht Club. The first members being myself and John Krebs, a pal who keeps his inflatable on my point since he does not have access to the water from his property. I started with an old scallop boat, and actually tried to earn some money scalloping with my friend Phil.

  We worked the harbor, and work it surely was. Winter. Socks, and then wool socks for a second layer. Rubber boots that almost reached your knees. Long underwear, jeans and wool shirts, a heavy sweater and full weather slicks. Workman’s gloves. We would putt-putt through Polpis Harbor out into Nantucket Harbor proper, cutting the engine when we reached a likely spot, which meant a smooth rock-free bottom where scallops rest in the eel grass. Chain-link dredges on iron frames are tossed overboard, the engine is started, and the ropes begin to feed out. When the dredges fall into the proper staggered pattern, a bit more power is coaxed from the outboard engine and the dredges are pulled twenty-five yards or more. The outboard is placed in neutral, and the outboard “donkey engine” (scavenged from a lawn mower) is cranked up, its drum extension turning, waiting for the rope which gets wrapped around the drum in such a way that the dredges, one by one, are pulled in.