Dusk. West Tisbury School soccer field, woman about 15 feet behind man, both walking briskly to retrieve golf balls.
Woman: Golf isn’t to be nervous. Golf is to have fun. I haven’t done anything in my life because I was always too nervous.
My Laundromat
The airport laundromat
It rain rain rained all night, but when I rose around 6 a.m. clearing looked like a definite possibility. Weather Underground agreed. The laundromat opens at 8; we were there by 8:30.
Laundromats can be great catch-up-on-gossip community centers. The one at Alley’s — where Back Alley’s then Garcia’s once were; the space is now occupied by the brand-new 7a deli — was like that. So was the one in Oak Bluffs where Offshore Ale now stands. The airport laundromat isn’t like that. Most people who use it drop their stuff off and come back later to collect it. In winter I’m often the only customer; even in summer there are rarely more than two or three others doing laundry.
On Martha’s Vineyard these days nearly every household has its own washer and dryer. Guest houses and in-law apartments often have them too. Community takes a hit whenever everyone can afford their own, but we’re doing a pretty good job of surviving the dearth of laundromats: information flows through and congregates at Offshore Ale and 7a at least as well as it did when the washers and dryers were spinning.
Airport sign with sidekick
Where to start, where to start?
It’s July, one of the two most challenging months in the Vineyard calendar. It’s also the birthday of my father, Robert Shaw Sturgis (1922-2008), without whom I might not ever have set foot on Martha’s Vineyard. The summer of 1965 he rented a rustic summer house on Tisbury Great Pond’s Deep Bottom Cove from a college friend whose family was then living in London. I was 14. My mare was due to foal in mid-July, and Martha’s Vineyard was the last place I wanted to be. We struck a deal: I’d come for two weeks, then I could return to my hometown and live at my grandmother’s. I missed the foaling by eight hours.
My father, an avid sailor, loved the Vineyard. He rented the house again and again. In the early 1970s he bought a scant four acres out on Thumb Point for $20K and built an old-style camp (no phone, no electric) for something like $25K.
After I moved to Washington, D.C., I started warming to Martha’s Vineyard, or at least to Tisbury Great Pond and the barrier beach. Most years I’d come back in mid-spring and late summer, spending a little time with family and a lot of time by myself. To make a phone call, I’d hike through the woods and scrub to the airport. To get anywhere else, I hitched.
Walking along South Beach in September 1984, I picked up a bit of wampum and tucked it into the blue amulet bag a friend had crocheted for me. Within two weeks of returning to D.C., I’d decided to move to Martha’s Vineyard. I arrived at the Changeover in 1985, when the July tide was ebbing and the August tide coming in.
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories is my attempt to make sense of what happened next.
Posted in Uncategorized
3 Comments
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . 