From the Vineyard Gazette edition of May 7, 1982:

Mary Ferreira probably worked the longest hours of anyone at the Up-Island Super Market, which she and her husband opened on May 26, 1965.

The grocery store became an up-Island institution almost immediately, both for summer and year-round residents.

And after 17 years of working seven days a week, Mrs. Ferreira sold the store to Joseph and Dale O’Hayer this April. She says “it just wasn’t the same” running the store without her husband, who died in September 1980.

Opening a grocery store was Joseph Ferreira’s dream, even though for 23 years he worked as an electronics engineer. Mrs. Ferreira says that he had worked with a New Bedford meat packing company, and he helped Ed Pacheco start the Reliable Market on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs. “As a kid, he worked for old Mr. Kligler — Irving Kligler,” the proprietor of the Central Market in Oak Bluffs, she adds.

Mr. Ferreira chose the up-Island location, his wife says, where his family owned land. Buildings on that site caused some controversy among the neighbors, she recalls.

“The local attitude was what are they doing to our Island. Well, we put the building up and then we found that the entrance was too narrow. So we had to cut one more tree down. After all the controversy, we decided we’d better cut the tree down at night,” — which is what they did.

Soon enough, the market became an up-Island institution.

The first summer was such a success, she remembers, that the town fathers asked the Ferreiras to stay open on Sundays for the convenience of the summer customers. By Thanksgiving they were still opening on Sunday mornings, so that schedule became a year-round policy.

“On a rainy Sunday morning in August it was a sight to behold at the Up-Island Market. There was just no room to park a car,” says Mrs. Ferreira.

The market has always been recognized for its high quality meats, Mrs. Ferreira says. “I think the reputation of the store started with the meat department. My husband always felt people didn’t mind what they paid as long as they got a good piece of meat. So as a result we never packaged meats. The meat was always cut to order.”

They had to double the size of the store the second year it was open, Mrs. Ferreira explains, partly because the 10-foot meat case was too small.

She and her husband did not know that they would need to expand so soon. “It was a gamble. As a matter of fact, we paneled the walls of the store mainly with the thought in mind that if it didn’t go over as a supermarket, it would make one terrific house.”

But the store’s reputation spread far and wide — even to Chappaquiddick. “By word of mouth, we had many good customers in Edgartown who were so pleased with the quality of meat and who had friends on Chappaquiddick who wanted some. So what we did was deliver to the Chappaquiddick boat,” she explains. They arranged for someone to pick up the groceries on the other side and made the deliveries.

Then there was the customer from New York city who would telephone Mrs. Ferreira on a Friday morning and tell her that they were coming to the Island for the weekend. Explaining that there would be eight in the party, the customer would ask her to put whatever she thought they would need and deliver the groceries to the house. “And they’d be tickled pink with whatever we sent,” reports Mrs. Ferreira.

Mrs. Ferreira says they had some customers who started off on the wrong foot. Nicholas Katzenbach, who served as attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson and who summers in Chilmark, was one such unlucky person. “I can remember having Nick Katzenbach at the check-out counter. He was attorney general at the time, and he had a shopping cart full of groceries. When I got through ringing it up he didn’t have any money with him, he didn’t have his checkbook, and he wanted to know if he could charge it. I told him, ‘I can’t charge it to you, I don’t know who you are.’ So he said, ‘Well, I’ll leave the food here and I’ll come back in a little while with the check.’

“This fellow in the next aisle must’ve heard the conversation because it got into the Saturday Review the following weekend that Nick Katzenbach couldn’t get credit at a local market.”

The grocery store may be a favorite shopping place for the celebrities who spend their summers up-Island, but it is also a center of activity throughout the winter, and not just on Sundays.

“If the post office can’t find someone, sometime they’ll pop in the store and ask,” Mrs. Ferreira says. “Or sometimes the roads will be so bad in the spring because of the mud that we’ll consider ourselves something like the United Parcel Service depot for leaving packages and picking up packages.”

Mrs. Ferreira speculates that the store will continue in the same tradition under the O’Hayers.

And as for the retired Mrs. Ferreira, “I don’t think I could actually just stay home. I have to be very active.”

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com