From Gazette editions of April, 1935:

One of the most fascinating suggestions yet made is that there is an economic future in the beach plums of Martha’s Vineyard. There is more than mere dollars and cents in turning the beach plums to account in reviving the productive independence of the Island; there is also poetic justice and a vision of creamy white blossoms which ought to make beach plum orchards of the future an attraction of early spring — a festival of the Island’s own nature, growing out of the birthright of all Island dwellers. Sentiment, aesthetics and economics all combine in support of this proposal for what is at the same time an older and a newer agriculture.

The beach plum is as firmly fixed in the sandy places of the Vineyard as the glacial boulders seem to be. It defies northeast gales and droughts, low temperatures and the beating sun of summer. The growth of the bushes, scraggly and angular, is an adaptation to conditions which tamer, pampered fruits cannot withstand. The flavor of the beach plum is a distillation of the elements in which it is nurtured — an outdoor, tangy, different taste with no inconsiderable appeal to the palate. Wilfred Wheeler at Falmouth has experimented with beach plums successfully and has shipped large quantities. Why not agriculturists of the Vineyard?

The return of the CCC camp to the Vineyard reservation may be expected around the first of May, according to information received this week. Assurances were offered that a detail will be assigned here and that the men may be expected within the next month. In the matter of bringing about the return of this unit, through which the Vineyard benefitted greatly, all the branches of local government have worked together harmoniously and to good effect. The first move to effect the return of the camp was made before it actually closed, in the protest made by the selectmen of Oak Bluffs, who were promptly joined by those of Tisbury, and the county commissioners. To their aid came Francis X. Hurley, former state auditor, and Rep. Ernest Dean and Senator David Walsh supplied support in approaching state and federal government bureaus.

It is a fair statement that no relief project has so interested the Vineyard as the CCC, largely because of the number of local young men who were able to enroll, and because of the disinclination among the Islanders to accept remuneration except for service rendered. The program of reforestation as followed by the CCC was recognized as valuable work, a project that has for years been planned. Vineyarders feel that it will some day pay a dividend.

Schooner Alice Wentworth, Captain Zeb Tilton, brought mail on her arrival from Nantucket yesterday. The schooner loaded in New Bedford with coal for the Vineyard and a deckload of lumber for Nantucket. Running up past Cross Rip Lightship, 28 letters from the crew were put aboard the schooner, which delivered them at the Vineyard Haven post office on her arrival.

There have been plenty of authorities to explode fallacies about the weather. Some of the fallacies seemed pleasanter to get along with than the authorities, and we have parted from them slowly, incompletely and with regret. It is good to believe that the way muskrats build their houses will foretell the severity of the winter.

Some other fallacies affecting our daily lives have been less acceptable. How uncomfortable to sit down to dinner with friends who have a confirmed belief that fish cannot be eaten with milk! This is a tradition of long standing, and although Vineyarders have served fish chowders and lobster stews for generations, there are always dour looking individuals at the feast who pull long faces and hold out slight hopes for the future well-being of anyone who mixes fish with milk. Under such disapprobation the harmony of the dining room is impaired; for it is far easier to mix fish with milk in the diet than to strike a social compromise between those who believe the practice dreadful and those who are sure nothing but satisfaction will follow.

Now comes the Fish and Sea Food Institute and issues a pronouncement which ought to be heeded. Speaking as an authority, the Institute declares that the myth about fish and milk is utter nonsense. “This idea has robbed children of bone and tooth making lime.... People have for generations eaten with delight and relish oyster soups, clam stews, chowders and cream sauces on fish.” Moreover they have quaffed beakers of milk at a meal of lobster, a fact which will stand as a supreme test for the superstitious. There is little hope the dietetic fallacy will yield at once to truth, but one hopes that truth will so far make its way that a partaker of good things may have his fish and milk without being admonished in graveyard fashion by a bigoted Islander.

Compiled by Cynthia Meisner

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