This past Saturday, our Royal and Ancient Chappy Links hosted the Joseph Jerome Memorial Golf Tournament. By all accounts it was a huge success, raising over $28,000 for Ed and Marianne Jerome’s charity that benefits island families with chronically ill children.

If you happened to be walking the sands of Wasque that day, you may have felt a discernible tipping to the north as close to 200 people gathered on the Big Camp lawn for the post-golf festivities — a number not witnessed since great-grandfather Frank got that shipment of whiskey during prohibition.

Being from Chappy, I am understandably a bit partial to our side of Edgartown — the cultural opportunities alone on Chappy make any argument over the relative merits of either side of the ferry tracks virtually moot. But I must say that I was immensely impressed with the generosity of the Edgartown merchants. In barely three hours of door-to-door hustling in a quarter mile radius of the village, I was able to secure 21 donations worth upwards of $4,000. This type of community outreach speaks largely to the Jeromes’ standing on the island, but also to the willingness of our small place in space and time to come together and comfort one another in times of need. Truly touching.

I will leave the thanking to Ed and Maryanne because I will invariably leave someone off the list, further coloring myself in a shady hue in the minds of the Brad doubters. But I must mention my comrade Peter (and I use the term comrade securely because of our shared tour in the Soviet Army in the early 80s) — his patience and generosity were (are) remarkable. And some of you (that’s right, I’m talking to you) may think that I am particularly biased toward promoting Peter’s character due to our common profession of Chappy columnists but, in fact, we are bitter competitors in the war of Chappy words. So my praise of Peter, juxtaposed against this obvious environment of rivalry, is all the more remarkable.

To my point, we had decided that attempting to shuttle maybe three dozen cars to Chappy in an hour span might not be the wisest of choices, so we arranged for taxis to transport the participants to the links from the ferry point. Peter graciously offered to give free ferry passage to all those traveling by foot across the ferry to the panting taxis. Well, as is typical with almost anything to do with travel to Chappy, definite estimates quickly transgressed to hardly contained chaos. So, 80 passengers soon evolved to a number closer to 250, with a few cars and Hummers mixed in. Peter handled it all with natural aplomb and grace, possibly instinctively knowing that I wouldn’t have answered my cell phone anyway.

Okay, so here’s my conclusion on the whole matter mentioned above: we are blessed to call home this island within and beyond the borders of Chappy.

In other news, my greenskeeper Randy recently received a bonus of a Samsung S5 smart phone (this is news only to those who haven’t seen Randy running through the streets of town with the aforementioned phone held high above his head) from his benevolent, darned awesome and really quite handsome boss — me. Why is this important to you? I’m actually not quite sure, but it’s what passes for news here.

Lastly, during the gusty winds of Sunday, I witnessed a seagull lose its footing on the Big Camp chimney. What followed can only be described as a chorus of seagull belly laughs from his friends above. I’m glad to see that the humor of humans translates to the avian world as well.

Drive safely, summer is here — and with its advent come bikers and turtles; one only slightly speedier than the other.