From the Vineyard Gazette edition of April 1, 1977 by William A. Caldwell:

Monday was going to be a slack day in the shop and out across the towns; so, on the theory that news is what gets printed in newspapers or disseminated on the air, I went over to the Island of Chappaquiddick for the purposes of inciting a revolution.

I’d go from house to house and point out to people on Chappaquiddick that they are not represented on the Edgartown board of selectmen by a resident of Chappaquiddick. What this amounts to, I would say, is taxation without representation, against which form of tyranny our fathers fought arid died. Arise.

Trouble is that at this time of year occupied houses on Chappaquiddick are so far apart that by the time I had trudged up that first hill as far as Tern About my feet hurt and a couple of gritty little questions were rubbing a blister into the back of my mind. They were questions, I suddenly realized, that would be asked by Chappians, who tend to be earthier or more tough-minded than, well, folks elsewhere.

Yes, I would imagine Ham Kelley’s saying, it’s true we don’t have a selectman of our own, and you’re right: we pay taxes; what do you want us to do about it?

Secede, I’d say. Secede from Edgartown, from Massachusetts, from the United States. Secession is very big this year.

So we’d attach ourselves to Rhode Island or Mexico or Mars, if they’d have us, and does that get us a seat on the Edgartown board?

Well, no, but it gets you 30 seconds on evening news; and so I plod along the paved road to Bea Plumer’s, and she pours a cup of coffee and says she’d adore taking part in a war of secession although she worries about how she’d look in a gray uniform, and what, by the way (Bea Plumer asks in my nervous rehearsal of this scene), ever did become of the principle of republican government? As long as the selectmen are accountable to us and do our bidding, what difference does it make what part of town they come from? John Aylmer is a pretty good state senator even if, like Mr. Carter and Messrs. Kennedy and Brooke, his principal place of residence is off-Island. Rep. Gerry Studds speaks for Islanders more accurately than do a lot of town officials that get elected because nobody else is on the ballot.

There I stood irresolute in the road. A large brown dog was examining me suspiciously. Whoo-o-o went the wind in the pines, and sometimes why-y-y. Other questions — the kind of questions only Chappaquiddick realists would raise — were crowding into mind.

If the mini-island or any Island, including Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket and the Gosnold archipelago, seceded, wouldn’t the lawyers have to apply for licensure in the new jurisdiction? The physicians, dentists, nurses, schoolteachers, beauty parlor technicians? Could they pass the test?

Would the schools’ accreditation lapse? If we were annexed to, say, South Dakota, would the charters of clubs and fraternal societies, lodges and chapters and camps and corporations become null and void? Who needs the headache of reorganizing the Islands’ social institutions from the ground up?

The Steamship Authority is a creature of Massachusetts government; once we are rid of our ties to that monstrous creature of the one-man, one-vote principle, are we not also rid of our only reliable connection with the United States?

How about boat licenses, the state entomologists who stand between us and the ravening wood tick, the preservation of the state forest, the lobster hatchery, the state police barracks, the highway repair and maintenance crews, coastal zone management of the wetlands?

It must be assumed that any state we fled to would have some structure of aid to public schools, public welfare, unemployment or disability insurance, and the like. But what kind of aid, how many dollars in welfare — come off it, Caldwell (they’d be growling at their doors on Chappaquiddick): we know what benefits we have; what has Rhode Island or New Hampshire or Vermont to offer in their place?

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission, now the most powerful and representative regulatory body on the Island, exists only by reason of enlightened Massachusetts legislation and judicial decision. Are you seriously proposing that we abandon this last best hope so that you or anybody else can keep a job?

What will this precious secession of yours do to hospital rates, the relations between churches and their hierarchies, automobile inspection and licensing, insurance, sewage construction, air emission controls, the Trustees of Reservations and their stewardship of lands and beach that would otherwise go the way of Levittown of the North Jersey shore?

It had been such a bright idea. But it occurred to me that I didn’t have all the answers people would or at least should be wanting, indeed, I didn’t have all the questions tough-minded Islanders would or should ask. Jerry Jeffers came by and asked if I’d like a ride back to the ferry house and I went.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com