From the November 1976 West Tisbury town columns by Polly Woollcott Murphy:

Last Saturday, Music street was the scene of a good old-fashioned husking bee, or at least the scene of the first half of it. Twenty people turned out to help Jimmy Athearn strip the field corn that he had planted in the half-acre field next to his father’s house. Each person took a row, and in an hour and a half they had picked more than a ton of corn. “They were like a swarm of locusts,” said Mr. Athearn with considerable satisfaction. “It was weird. You couldn’t see anybody else. You could just hear these strange rustling noises, like cats in tall grass.”

The corn was then taken in three trucks to Mr. Athearn’s house near Sweetened Water Farm and put in the loft of the small gambrel-roofed barn that he built last spring. A harvest supper was served to the 27 adults and nine children that were now involved in the operation, and after supper all hands again repaired to the loft to husk the corn.

Mr. Athearn had taken care that some red ears of corn were among the golden ones because according to the traditions of husking bees, finding a red ear entitles the finder to kiss the person of his choice. With some disappointment Mr. Athearn reported that his workers were husking so fast, and talking so much that the red ears went unnoticed.

The husks were thrown on the ground below the loft, where they formed a large pile into which everyone jumped when the husking was completed. The corn will go to feed Mr. Athearn’s five hungry pigs, while the recollections of a fine harvest day will enrich the memories of all the participants, so everybody wins.

•

Here is a small sequel to the saga of the skunk unwittingly and disastrously transported from the Vineyard to the middle of New York city by Mr. and Mrs. Herman Schneider, who spent the summer in the Wilson cottage at Lambert’s Cove, as reported recently in this column. The Schneiders, when we last heard, had taken the tenacious skunk to Pond Ridge, and had left it with the trunk door open for five hours in a rural and deserted spot.

Upon returning, they saw no sign of the skunk and assumed, with relief, that it had departed. That was Sept. 18.

Mr. Schneider again takes up the narrative, this time using the third person:

“On Monday, Oct. 4, Mr. Schneider was accosted outside his house by a neighbor who desired news of the skunk’s disposal. During the recital of the news another neighbor passed by and perked up her ears at the mention of the skunk. Upon hearing the happy ending of the skunk’s assumed return to its natural habitat she burst into hysterical laughter and said, ‘Look up there,’ pointing to a four-inch opening where a piece of brownstone had fallen out of a stair tread in Mr. Schneider’s front stairs. ‘Every night, at 11:30, when I walk my two dogs, I see your skunk poke his head out and wait until I and my dogs have gone far enough away. Then he comes out, sneaks along the edge of three buildings to a plastic garbage bag waiting for collection, nibbles a neat little hole and has his lunch, then goes back to his home in the stair treat.’”

Mr. Schneider ends plaintively, “Any suggestions?”

•

November seems to be relentlessly thrusting us into winter, against our wishes and against its own unusual manifestations.

Its early sunsets are handsome affairs of crimson and black, but they are winter sunsets, fraught with cold. Its full moon of last week was arctic in its beauty. The leaves are mostly stripped from the trees, and in the woods the dry crunch of them underfoot has a frosty sound, a frosty aroma.

Tuesday morning the thermometer registered 26 degrees and mud puddles were roofed over with ice. Even the ponds had skim ice, and during the day, which never warmed up very much, ice built up around the bushes and reeds growing at their margins.

•

One of the aftermaths of election day is the fact that election bets must be paid. Since the race was close, and anything seemed possible, no doubt a certain amount of cash has changed hands — dolefully. A more colorful arrangement was made between Willis Gifford, chairman of the town Republican committee, and John Alley, chairman of the town Democratic committee. Each agreed to eat crow publicly, if the other’s candidate won. No actual crow being available, they decided to substitute peanuts, possibly because of their political symbolism.

On Wednesday morning, the day after election day, at 8:02 Mr. Gifford appeared on the front porch of Alley’s store, ready to do penance. He carried with him a pail of water, a cake of soap and a towel, so that the hands from which he received his “crow” would be immaculate. Mr. Alley ritually washed his hands under the watchful eyes of Skipper Manter, who was called in to bear witness, and then, ritually, he fed salted peanuts into Mr. Gifford’s open, conceding, and very Republican mouth. And not a television cameraman in the vicinity!

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com