From the Vineyard Gazette editions of June 1965:

Discotheque, a cultural manifestation that has been spreading across the nation for a couple of years, has now reached the Island, and last Friday night at the Dunes in Edgartown, a group of mostly year-round Vineyarders danced a variety of light, heavy, and middling fantastics to the pulsing rhythms of the new sound.

Discotheque, as viewed at the Dunes a Go Go, is not all that wild, hair-tossing, hip-swivelling dancing to music recorded by adenoidal, mop-haired juveniles. The elaborate new jukebox — which seems to have been developed under the sciences of cybernetics, judging by the number of buttons that have to be pushed, the number of lights that have to light, and the number of bells that have to ring to make it work — contains a host of mercifully square-ish songs, even Stardust, in addition to the hip ones. Unlike ordinary jukeboxes, this machine plays LP’s as well as singles, and even more unlike most jukeboxes, it is richly sterephonic, almost glandular in its effect on even sedentary, two-left-feet types.

To inaugurate its new sound system, the Dunes was offering prizes to dancers last Friday night. The judges were Harvey S. Ewing and Colbert Smith, virtually non-dancers both, who nevertheless had no difficulty coming to a decision to award the prize for the foxtrot to Thomas J. Rabbitt Jr. and his partner, or to award the prize for the twist to Dennis Rose and his partner. The prizes in both instances were free dinners at the restaurant.

Somewhat harder was the judging of the winners of the endurance contest, which required dancers to remain in action for six of the wildest consecutive numbers obtainable on the machine. By the sixth number, quite a few of the couples had retired exhausted to their tables, but most were stalwart, though sweating and wild-eyed, to the end. The prize, a bottle of champagne, eventually went to a young couple who had danced not only through these six numbers but through practically all the numbers leading up to the contest, Ed Sheridan and Miss Dina Reese.

On the cover of the new telephone directory, just distributed, appears the name Martha’s Vineyard; a year ago the directory used the phrase Martha’s Vineyard Island. We are grateful to the telephone company for the change, and for presenting Martha’s Vineyard in an uncluttered, accurate, and adequate form.

The Island on which we live was named Martha’s Vineyard by Bartholomew Gosnold’s voyagers in 1602; to be completely accurate, the form used in the margin of Brereton’s manuscript was “Marthaes Vineyard,” the “e” doing duty for the apostrophe. Our Island is still Martha’s Vineyard, and an appendage to that universally admired name is a defacement.

Long Island and Block Island have names in which their insularity is expressed and guaranteed. If anyone wants to express the geographical character of the Vineyard he may do so easily by writing Island of Martha’s Vineyard, thus presenting a definition without altering the name.

Apart from accuracy and euphony, the usage of Martha’s Vineyard Island is a needless and cheapening concession to ignorance; or it is an attempt to capitalize on a geographical status which derives its real value from being intrinsic, and can suffer only loss from obvious attempts at exploitation.

For that matter, if there is an air of mystery about Martha’s Vineyard, until some time of exploration or discovery, so much the better. Names are among those usages of life which are not necessarily improved by a staining to make them explicit.

This is the best time of the year in the woods of the Vineyard, even better than the vista-opening, reflective days of departing October. One reason is that the trees and underbrush are again in their youth, fresh, tender, full of surprise and the woodland quality of healing.

The warmth of the sun has overcome that annual reluctance of April and May, but more than the sun is at work. Every night a still breath of cold comes out of the ground and lies in pools among the oaks, beeches and maples; though it withdraws during the warm days its necromancy prevails over the heat and insects and diminished innocence of the summer which is here yet not entirely here.

For grandeur in the woods a walker does well to choose late fall or winter when the glacial ravines are starkly revealed along with the boulder monuments and the stone walls which disclose that all the region was once pasturage. Antiquity, strength, and story-telling belong in the woods in winter.

But for poetry and artistry June is by all odds the time, the very moment. Stand still, and the scene changes about you; be absent for a week and you feel you have missed an appointment. Transition is of the essence, yet each moment offers the experience a lifetime would hardly give space to assimilate.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com