contacts, and a phenomenal amount of luck. Probably even Nick couldnât do it today.
It isnât that kind of place anymore.
PLEASE TAKE A look at a map of Nantucket. Run your finger from Madaket down the coast to the south shore, and then along the bottom of the island and up to âSconset. As Nancy Chase explains in
We Are Nantucket:
The south shore . . . all the way from Madaket to
âSconset . . . thatâs the south shore. Very few houses
were built there because . . . the next time you went
there, it wasnât there. Somebody stole it! Took the
wood and stu f because of scarcity of wood on the Island. Nobody was there. Nobody to see you take it.
It is unclear exactly what time period Nancy Chase is referring to. She was born on the island in 1931, so she could be talking about just about any time up to, say, the fifties. Nowadays there are hundreds of houses along the same stretch. And thousands of squirrels of course.
BUMPER STICKERS are displayed by year-rounders on the back of their pick-ups or old cars as a kind of self-affirmation, as well as a way to communicate with each other while differentiating themselves from the summer people.
ITâS NICER ON NANTUCKET
was followed many years later by:
IT USED TO BE NICER ON NANTUCKET
A favorite of fishermen, scallopers, and pilots:
FOG HAPPENS
In protest against a development plan that was eventually shot down by the town:
NO MOOR HOUSES
In protest of another proposed mid-island development which would have included a large new supermarket:
BAG THE MARKET
The plan failed.
Third World Softball
LAST SUMMER A FRIEND CAME BY FOR ICED tea on the deck, a woman my wife and I think of as one of our old crowd. âWe had the best,â she said. âThe seventies were the best.â Each generation seems to remember a time when things were best. For Robert Mooney it is perhaps the forties, when people sang songs on Main Street and everybody went home at ten, when there were no tourists or day-trippers, just some townspeople and the summer people. Some remember the sixties and a bar at the foot of Main Street called the Bosunâs Locker, a hangout that spilled outside to the cobblestones where the marijuana smoke drifted freely and people laughed and danced.
A special memory of my own involves the evolution of what came to be known as Third World Softball. Like any small town, Nantucket had a league of sortsâthe oil company, Yates welders, First National, Don Allen Ford, and others, all fielded teams and played on the high school diamond. A fairly insular bunch of big strong guys who took the game seriously. No room, really, for unaffiliated people.
How old were my boys then? Eight and ten, perhaps? (Grown now with boys of their own.) My few friends, a carpenter/inventor, a sommelier, an actor, the camera shop owner with the braid down his back, were all unaffiliated. Waiters, waitresses, bartenders, friends of my wifeâsâthese were the people we raised a glass with at the Shipâs Inn or Cyâs Green Coffee Pot. It started one Sunday afternoon when a few of us took the boys out to the deserted, mildly overgrown softball field next to the water company shack in âSconset. We hit a few soft ground balls, shagged flies, played catch with the boys, and sat on the old benches chewing the fat.
Over time enough people heard about it, or saw it from the road and stopped to join in, that we realized we could make up sides, which changed every week except for the captains, myself and the camera shop guy, whose name was Gene. We were also the pitchers. Slow pitches, so that my kids could play with a minimum of fear.
Rules emerged through a semi-democratic process. For some reason it was particularly satisfying as the rules were realized.
Starting time, 2 P.M. every Sunday
Women and children welcomed and guaranteed a
spot (even if right field)
No aluminum bats
No beer
No radios
High standards of
It isnât that kind of place anymore.
PLEASE TAKE A look at a map of Nantucket. Run your finger from Madaket down the coast to the south shore, and then along the bottom of the island and up to âSconset. As Nancy Chase explains in
We Are Nantucket:
The south shore . . . all the way from Madaket to
âSconset . . . thatâs the south shore. Very few houses
were built there because . . . the next time you went
there, it wasnât there. Somebody stole it! Took the
wood and stu f because of scarcity of wood on the Island. Nobody was there. Nobody to see you take it.
It is unclear exactly what time period Nancy Chase is referring to. She was born on the island in 1931, so she could be talking about just about any time up to, say, the fifties. Nowadays there are hundreds of houses along the same stretch. And thousands of squirrels of course.
BUMPER STICKERS are displayed by year-rounders on the back of their pick-ups or old cars as a kind of self-affirmation, as well as a way to communicate with each other while differentiating themselves from the summer people.
ITâS NICER ON NANTUCKET
was followed many years later by:
IT USED TO BE NICER ON NANTUCKET
A favorite of fishermen, scallopers, and pilots:
FOG HAPPENS
In protest against a development plan that was eventually shot down by the town:
NO MOOR HOUSES
In protest of another proposed mid-island development which would have included a large new supermarket:
BAG THE MARKET
The plan failed.
Third World Softball
LAST SUMMER A FRIEND CAME BY FOR ICED tea on the deck, a woman my wife and I think of as one of our old crowd. âWe had the best,â she said. âThe seventies were the best.â Each generation seems to remember a time when things were best. For Robert Mooney it is perhaps the forties, when people sang songs on Main Street and everybody went home at ten, when there were no tourists or day-trippers, just some townspeople and the summer people. Some remember the sixties and a bar at the foot of Main Street called the Bosunâs Locker, a hangout that spilled outside to the cobblestones where the marijuana smoke drifted freely and people laughed and danced.
A special memory of my own involves the evolution of what came to be known as Third World Softball. Like any small town, Nantucket had a league of sortsâthe oil company, Yates welders, First National, Don Allen Ford, and others, all fielded teams and played on the high school diamond. A fairly insular bunch of big strong guys who took the game seriously. No room, really, for unaffiliated people.
How old were my boys then? Eight and ten, perhaps? (Grown now with boys of their own.) My few friends, a carpenter/inventor, a sommelier, an actor, the camera shop owner with the braid down his back, were all unaffiliated. Waiters, waitresses, bartenders, friends of my wifeâsâthese were the people we raised a glass with at the Shipâs Inn or Cyâs Green Coffee Pot. It started one Sunday afternoon when a few of us took the boys out to the deserted, mildly overgrown softball field next to the water company shack in âSconset. We hit a few soft ground balls, shagged flies, played catch with the boys, and sat on the old benches chewing the fat.
Over time enough people heard about it, or saw it from the road and stopped to join in, that we realized we could make up sides, which changed every week except for the captains, myself and the camera shop guy, whose name was Gene. We were also the pitchers. Slow pitches, so that my kids could play with a minimum of fear.
Rules emerged through a semi-democratic process. For some reason it was particularly satisfying as the rules were realized.
Starting time, 2 P.M. every Sunday
Women and children welcomed and guaranteed a
spot (even if right field)
No aluminum bats
No beer
No radios
High standards of
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