From Gazette editions of January, 1937:

News dispatches say that Hitler ordered all the German people to eat more fish. The implication is that Germans do not want to eat fish, but since there is nothing better for them to eat they have to make the best of it. In view of the conditions in present day Germany, the people will probably do as they are told, and eat fish and pretend to like it. Almost everywhere else, such a command would be resented. The surest way to drive people away from fish is to command them to eat it. What a pity it is to make a duty out of what should be a pleasure! Even in a totalitarian state a better approach to the problem would be quite different; for instance, Hitler might compel all cooks to prepare fish properly, on pain of the usual punishments. With all incompetent chefs confined in concentration camps, everyone would be eager to order fish for dinner, and Hitler would be getting somewhere.

In the scramble of industries and businesses to obtain assistance during the past few years, the fisheries have won less help than almost any other pursuit. Everything in the modern world is competitive, and fish competes for the favor of consumers against the finely organized distribution systems and advertising of meat packers. It has the further handicap of being unknown — unknown by name and taste. Even the decrees of a Hitler cannot help in the long run unless these disadvantages are overcome. Fish and fish products must somehow get themselves liked and distributed everywhere. There is no longer any technical difficulty in the way, for refrigeration and speedy delivery are ready at hand.

Al Leonard went hunting to try out his new pup, letting him rest a while during part of the hunt, hanging several rabbits high in the branches of a tree under which the beagle slumbered. When he returned to gather his game and the dog, the beagle leaped high in the air, seized a rabbit hanging there and brought it proudly to the waiting car. This was pleasing to Al, who admires a thoughtful dog, but when he went to secure the other rabbits, alas they were not! The pup had been there before. Try as he would to coax the dog to reveal the hiding place of the rabbits, the pup remained obdurate, silent and unmoved. Al has begun to suspect that the dog made a meal of all those bunnies.

Capt. M.F. DeFrates, George Packish and Robert Vidler of the Edgartown fishing sloop Endeavor, are alive today through the merest freak of fate that sent a rescuer to their aid as their vessel was sinking under them in a gale. The men were exhausted from bailing water throughout the night, after their engine and pump failed.

But for the timely appearence of the schooner Liberty, Capt. Claude Wagner, who towed them into port, all three men would probably have gone down with their vessel, for their tender, a dory, was damaged and unfit for use in the heavy sea running in Muskeget.

The Endeavor had been on a dragging trip off Nantucket and was bound in for market when the heavy sea started her garboard seams. Captain DeFrates realized that his vessel was in a hazardous condition and laid a course for the back side of Cape Pogue, with the idea of running her ashore. But the deck pump failed, and the water rising in the engine pit flooded and stopped the engine.

Meanwhile, the storm increased to gale force and it was bitterly cold. The only place the men could get at the water with buckets was in the cabin and, forming a bucket brigade, they bailed throughout a long night. They had virtually given up hope of ever reaching home when the Liberty hove in sight.

Assistance in bailing, hot food and a tow were supplied by Captain Wagner, and the Endeavor and her crew made port in safety. The damage to the sloop was not so great but that minor repairs will make her fit again, and these are being made by Capt. DeFrates and his men, fully recovered from their experience. They number their night’s adventure as probably their closest call from death at sea.

It was an up-Island resident who hooked on to his telephone wires to secure an aerial for his radio. And there was confusion on the line thereafter as people attempted to use their phones but could not succeed. There was likewise confusion among the linemen and trouble shooters who combed the landscape looking for the source of trouble, and the owner of the radio was not without his difficulties because when he twirled the dials to WEAF or somewhere, all he got was the voice of a neighbor asking someone “why in tarnation can’t something be done about it?” and “there ought to be a law.” And when the wearied trouble shooter finally located the splice in the wire and disconnected it, thus clearing the line, he attached the radio wire to the stovepipe damper, hoping that “the owner might get some very hot place when he tuned in.”

Compiled by Cynthia Meisner

library@mvgazette.com