The Far Away Isle

Dressed for dinner in days of yore.  Dolphin Guest House in background

We were in Nantucket for a couple days, and I've decided that July and August are not the months I want to be in Nantucket.  Hordes and hordes of people.  Almost as many vehicles, mostly SUVs, pickups and trucks.  Lots of trucks.  Bumper to bumper.  Bicyclists on the sidewalks avoid the street.  Restaurants so loud you need earplugs.  Everything expensive.  Too many people.  Oh god, the people.  We spent a ghastly amount of money, just 4 people and 2 days.

When lobster was cooked outside by the docks.  Site of current Ropewalk Restaurant

Of course some things never change.  The Nobby shop, Murrays, Tradewinds, Barbara's Bookstore and the Hub.  The Ropewalk seems the same, but I still remember the year they boiled lobsters in huge iron pots in that spot and a folk singer held her guitar and sang.

The "traditional" ferry hasn't changed THAT much, except for, well, the airline type seats and wi-fi and did they always have an elevator?  Leaving the harbor in Hyannis hasn't changed except that the houses look very well cared for and there are so freakin' many of them, like two feet apart.  I love the house with its own lighthouse.  The big monstrosity with the moorish arches is soooo out of place.  What were they thinking?  Where was the zoning board?

Coming into Nantucket one sees the familiar breakwater and the jetties.  Big fat grey houses where some more modest ones used to be at Brant Point.  A couple hold outs.  When we first arrived in Nantucket, the harbor had rotting pilings and a ramshackle ferry dock.    Everything up to date now, of course.  In the old days when you returned from the beach in late afternoon and climbed into the shower, the power usually went out as half the people on the island did likewise.  Now there's a new water tower and a new power plant.  Lots of new stores.  The Mad Hatter is gone, the Opera House is long gone.  Ralph Lauren has a glitzy store where Nantucket Looms (now moved) used to be.

One never did and one still does not cringe at the sight of men in tank tops and black socks, so that is still a Good Thing.  Downflake Donuts are now "mid-island," whatever the hell that means.      Mostly powerboats at the slips, and a few atrociously big sail boats and I wonder if the sails on the current monstrosity are ever actually, like, unfurled.

When the poet asked, "where are the snows of yesteryear," he could have been speaking of The Far Away Isle.  It's airport is the second busiest in Massachusetts.  Private jets, don'tcha know.  Just like East Hampton.  Lots of trophy wives, flaunting their blond hair and skinny legs.  Is this sour grapes?  I used to have blond hair and skinny legs too.  Without the bling, of course.  Definitely without the bling.

There are still blond little kids begging for stuff at The Sunken Ship, and lined up for ice cream.  Those places haven't changed either.  Captain Toby's seems a shadow of itself and 21 Federal is now a pricey Italian restaurant that refers to itself as "affordable."  One man's "affordable" is open to debate.  It's the thought that counts, I guess.  Ice cream cones are $8.00+ if you want large.  Our local dairy store sells them for half that, but then when you see the trucks trundling on and off the ferry you understand why everything costs so much.  Our former boarding house is now a private home, a duplex we think.  The landlady's daughter baby sat for us.  Ah, paradise, enow!  I lost a good pair of sunglasses sailing over the Tuckernuck Shoals.  Wonder how barnacle encrusted they are now.  Those are pearls that were her eyes.

The Ropewalk Restaurant on Nantucket's Dock

Okay, I am getting maudlin.  It's just that the wonderful place, Nantucket, has become a little too wonderful.  I miss the ramshackle restaurant over the water where the seagulls mooched part of your fish, the old Nantucket lightship, the possibility of giving the oldest kid $10 and telling him to take the little kids to dinner, or sending the kids off to a movie while the grownups have dinner.   I even miss the man selling popcorn OUTSIDE the theater.  He put some bright orange goo on the popcorn, and when I asked if it was butter (or course it was not butter) he adamantly declare it was "real butter" and always had been for 30 years.  I don't know what they are building on the old movie house lot.  Looks like another movie theatre, but it will probably cost $12 a head.  I only hope they'll have some g-rated movies so the parents can have a noisy, expensive dinner somewhere without the kids.   Some things never change.

One can thank the many preservation societies for acquiring so much open land, and not letting weird architecture and chain stores (except Ralph Lauren) get a foothold.  By the way, the RL store Is Not your Macy's RL dept, but rather the store of the full page ads in the New York Sunday Times.  Yowza!

A more charming downscale Nantucket

The upshot of this post is that the Far Away Isle that I once knew has disappeared into the mists of time, now further and further away, but never actually . . . gone. 

An Alert Reader

An alert reader wrote:
You took the Hy-Line, the movie theater was razed, and the last movie was the Poseidon Adventure.

Apropos Nantucket. Did I misspell Traffik? See the cars, avoid the cars. Watch the cars trying to go up the one-way streets the WRONG way. Look at the blond women on their cell phones. Run fast!

I try to be meticulous in my novels, but not so much in the blog. Ye gods, who knows? Maybe literary agents are combing it for typos as a reason to reject.

Lots of interesting books reviewed in the NY Times today. No doldrums this August.

Smoked salmon (wasn't sure about the spelling of "lox") and bagels for breakfast today in honor of the houseguests. Me, I'm an Eastern Colorado girl who would just have soon have white toast and jelly.

The girl can't help it.

Some good thoughts for my novel's plot today. Sometimes a bit of down time is a good thing.

So sad, yesterday, at Kate's Mystery Bookstore, when all the authors that Kate has supported over the years arrived to help back. The famous and like moi, the not-so-famous. Kate has a generous heart and will sorely be missed by readers of the genre as well as us scribblers. Alas, alas.

Grapeshot

Deja Vu all over again

We just completed our annual trip to Nantucket. I liked how the Hi-Line called the slow ferry the "traditional" ferry and the high speed, of course, was the high-speed. Both were full on Friday morning. Windy and cool, but warm on land.

We ate, as is our wont, at the Rope Walk, right on the water, and the fish and chips were so good and the wine, a Pinot Grigio "Oggi" was fab. A walk up Main Street with some things the same and others different. Lots of "blingy" jewelry stores and less art galleries, a comment on the kind of money that has moved into town the last fifteen years.

I love the cottage gardens and the funk and that Murray's Toggery hasn't changed much in 40 years. Arno's still there, still crowded. The movie theater has been rased, where there is unfortunately a missing plaque commenorating that Grapeshot questioned the proprietor as to whether the popcorn contained "real" butter and was told of course. Never mind that the so-called butter was orange as a tropical sunset. The entire family agrees that the last movie seen there was The Posidon Adventure.

We had ice cream at the Juice Bar and it wasn't beach weather, so we didn't go, but we prowled thru the town and our small guest bought a few souvenirs and I found a brown t-shirt, so practical but hard to find. That's Murray's for you.

Traffic terrible, and people on cell phones and otherwise clueless. (see next post).

I was very tempted by a big-assed wind gong at the Whaling Museum that sounds like the bell buoy coming into the harbor, but was fearful the neighbors might object, as it was damned loud.

This morning my cute little hummingbird was at the NEW feeder, and he ate and ate. Fighting the tomato blight. Most seem all right. First the rain then the fungus. Weird orange stuff growing in the wildflower garden. Pretty but deadly looking.

I went to Kate's Mystery books to help pack up the store which is closing. The end of an era. Alas and alack.

Why Is Everything Such A Hassle?

Yesterday I had my hair cut and colored for the first time since early November. I was the two-toned kid, with 4 inches of brown and 5 inches of streaked blond brown with ends that had seen better days. Looking good, now. I did this in prep for Edgar's week in NY. It is bad enough to be the unstylish country cousin, even the pudgy unstylish country cousin without being the bad hair etc. country cousin, and might I add the cousin who hasn't published a book since 2003, etc. etc.?

But my hairdresser is great and he is even reading my book as is one of the other stylists. He liked the "descriptive" passages, which I suspect is damning with faint praise, but anyway. . .
I go back to Wellesley for my hair, and bopped into E.A. Davis to ogle the Lily Pulitzer clothes. So cool. So summery. So very Nantucket. Drool. Prices too high. I debated, and decided not to try anything on in the unlikely event that it fit. E.A. Davis is never a hassle.

We were having lasagne for dinner and I needed parmesan cheese and lettuce, so I stopped at Shaw's. Bought a wee box of black raspberries, so I had three (count 'em) 3 items. Took my understuffed basket into the 10 items or less check-out line. The clerk had already scanned the stuff the woman in front of me purchased, and then she began to pack it up, and I realized about the 3rd grocery bag that this woman must have had AT LEAST 20 items. That Shaws is always a train wreck. So, one might expect that the woman would turn and apologize. Maybe no one was behind her when she unloaded her week's groceries. Nope.

Maybe I had a right to expect that the check-out clerk would apologize for holding up the line endlessly. Paper and plastic and the woman's own bag (just one!) and was that a debit or a credit card yada yada.

Nope. Instead, a cheery, "how are you, today?" Now, how is anyone, especially us type A's who must wait and wait in the quick ten-items-or-less (not fewer) line for endless minutes for the rude feeling-so-priveleged shopper? I said "fine," with a chiliness that must have given her a clue. Still no apology. Not even a breezy apology.

Certainly no abject apology. That would come later.

On to the dry cleaners. Opened the door, and the woman who works there was sitting at her desk. She didn't look up. I did a double take. Hmmm. Her eyes are closed. She is erect, and therefore not dead. This woman never looks exactly healthy, so this was a legitimate consideration. I said, "excuse me."

She woke up with a start and starred at me. Abject apologies. My god, you would think they had lost the cleaning, which has actually happened, but not there. I had two "groups" of cleaning and no cash, so I whipped out ye old charge card, and for some reason she rang the cleaning up in three groups, but she had to key in a lot of numbers and the charge machine was SLOOOOOW, just like the Shaw's checkout line. I didn't understand why she couldn't add 10.00 and 19.65, after all it wasn't a quadratic equation, but this math seemed to be beyond her ken.

In the meantime another customer came in and waited and waited and waited, just like I had at Shaw's, and I was tempted to apologize, but hey, I wasn't the sleepy, slow, abject one.

Finally, with three charge receipts for $29.65, I was out of there. No other hassles. It's a wonder I didn't get rear-ended driving out of the parking lot. This is the center where all the truckers stop at the Dunkin' Donuts because there's a big parking lot. Sometimes you have to wait there indefinitely, but when the wait is long, we will feel virtuous and skip the donut. Never a bad idea, skipping the donut, especially is you are the not-very-stylish country cousin a little pudgy and not recently published.

Alas,

Grapeshot

Please Mr. Landscape Gardener, Make Me A vegetable Garden

Back in the day, if you wanted to grow veggies, all you needed was some vacant land, maybe a corner of the back yard, sun, access to water, usually a hose, something to till the soil, and seeds or seedlings and the sweat of your brow.

Now, all this can be yours by hiring someone to do it. You may pay $10,000 and up, but hey, it's only money. Today's newspaper, and sorry, but I can't recall if it was the WSJ or the Times had an article on wealthy folks hiring others to create their vegetable gardens and even raise their vegetables.

I wonder if these people's kids have whipping boys. Ooops! No one whips kids anymore, or at least not the kind of people who hire other people to grow their vegetables Are these the same folks who have quilting rooms and underwater sound systems for their swimming pools?

Seems to me that our government needs to raise taxes for some. They obviously have to much idle cash. Another article, maybe in the Times, listed the woes of those who have second homes and how hard it is to keep track of what's where, and the perils of leaving the computer, cell phone, mayonnaise, well, you name it at the other place. Ahhhhh. Woe is I!

Haven't any of these people ever heard of making a list? Oh, cripes, I forgot. They hire others to make their lists for them. Yeah, we all forget stuff. S.O. once packed for a weekend in Nantucket and forget his swim trunks. It happens. That's why god gave us stores. But I just can't feel too sympathetic. Yanno?

Off to make a crust to tomorrow's tart. I made the brisket with long, slow cooking in the oven, and a red pepper-feta dip for one of the appetizers. . Tomorrow I fill the tart shell with fresh berries and farmer cheese and whip up some stuffed mushrooms and fresh corn on the cob and we nip over to Bertucci's and pick up some brick oven rolls. Except for the rolls, I'm doing the cooking myself, not hiring it out, if you know what I mean. If we're lucky, there will be some cherry tomatoes that we grew ourselves. We did pay a family member to construct the planter boxes a few years ago. We have one for flowers and one for veggies. The heirloom beets look good. Tomatoes are awesome. And I did it myself.

Grapeshot

A Funny Feeling of Deja Vu

Today I wrote about our day trip to Nantucket, and when I saved the post, I discovered, eeek, that I wrote essentially the same post last year on our day trip to Nantucket. Last year, we spent even more money. Next year I'll suck it up and not say a word.

In downtown Nantucket, there was a mother duck and 4 very small ducklings paddling around where the harbor dips down and abuts the walk. Interesting how many adults walked on by and never noticed nothin, as opposed to the little kids who almost always noticed the ducklings.

When we first began going to Nantucket, back when God was a boy, an artist created a character called Mary Seagull, a middle-aged tourist with a large pocketbook and comfortable shoes. From time to time one still sees the prototype of Mary Seagull, not a trophy wife, but an indefatigable tourist. I googled all over the web and couldn't find any mention of this delightful but wooden (literally) character. We walked by the building that housed the gallery where the artist always displayed his scultpures. I always wonder where those sculptures are today? They must be somewhere. I'd love to have one on my deck.

The garden looks so good, and the patio tomatoes have been profilic and tasty. I pick fresh herbs every day. We had some in a risotto tonight and it was delicious. Grilled pork chops with a terrific fresh plum salsa. Summer food is wonderful. But then so is winter food. I'm going to make my corn and rice salad with watercress this week, and the potato salad with peas and chive aoli. Carbs anyone? Down with diets!

I'm crawling thru the hard copy of Festival Madness and finding lots of edits I missed on the screen. I don't know what I'll do with the book once I finish. Querying has become a nightmare, and definitely bad for my mental health. I'm thinking maybe a California publisher, since Burning Man figures so prominentaly in the book. I'm thinking heroin in the jugular. I'm really not thinking at all.

Grapeshot