From the Vineyard Gazette edition of May 26, 1950:

Mrs. George D. Robinson of Tisbury has a hen named Susie. This in itself is not particularly remarkable, as she has nine other hens as well as an assortment of other animals, but Susie is an extraordinary hen. It seems that last winter, Susie was stricken with a lingering illness, and for a while her recovery was far from certain. Mrs. Robinson hospitalized her in a box by the kitchen stove, and cared for her tenderly.

Susie began to get better. She tottered about the kitchen a little, and as her strength increased she laid an egg one day in the box by the stove. After this episode Susie’s recovery was rapid, and as the weather grew warmer, she was let out to join her colleagues in the yard, first a little at a time, then for half days, and finally all the time.

However, Susie thinks that the box by the stove is the only correct spot for egg-laying, and when she feels like laying eggs, she comes to the kitchen door and yells loudly for Mrs. Robinson to let her in. Mrs. Robinson always obliges, and Susie goes straight to her box, lays her egg with great satisfactions, and then returns to the great outdoors.

Page the authorities in higher mathematics! A. C. Tuckerman, better known as “Tuck”, has successfully defied all the established rules of geometry! Nobody can appreciate this without looking over the job he did, and maybe not even then! Suffice it to say that he has completed a range (kitchen) hood of aluminum, for the Harborside Inn, Edgartown. A fourteen-foot affair, four feet in width, it contains more angles than the wake of a Saturday night roisterer.

Normally a difficult task, this was far more difficult than usual because a girder interferes with the height and the hood is constructed to go around three sides of the obstruction. Besides this, the ceiling lies in two levels, all of which accounts for several dozen of the angles. “Tuck” is not yet 80 years old, but his mathematics and skill with the tools of his craft appear to improve with age.

What it is about fishing that turns normal people into maniacs is a problem that might well be called to the attention of the nearest psychiatrist. Perhaps it already has been. In any event, the disease is closely akin to alcoholism, or dope addiction.

It starts, usually, when the potential victim catches a fish. It doesn’t matter what kind of a fish, how large, where or how caught, or anything else. If one has the type of personality susceptible to that kind of thing, the minute the fish is actually in the unfortunate individual’s clutches, it’s all over.

The next step is the purchase of expensive and probably useless tackle. The next is fishing at all hours of the day and night, regardless of anything else, be it job, home life, health, or what have you. The third and most hideous is the stage where the victim (now so far gone that nothing can be done to save him) arises in the middle of a howling blizzard at 3 in the morning to go and catch fish which he puts back because his larder is already bulging with fish, and so are the larders of all his friends. In fact, the most rabid fishermen of all don’t even like to eat fish. It is at this point when the fisherman’s soul is lost.

These weird and wonderful creatures fish about nine months out of the year. There is always some kind of fish somewhere that is purported to bite some time. The other three months are spent in over-hauling tackle. Occasionally these people are arrested and hauled off for observation, because they are seen on snow-covered golf-courses, for instance, in full fishing regalia, manfully heaving a line over frozen waste. This, of course, seems a little peculiar to city bred cops, who react as previously stated. It doesn’t do much good to explain that it was only practice - the cops know that golfers, for instance, practice putting in their living rooms.

As a matter of fact, fishing tackle is very easy to take care of. All you have to do is dry it off, oil the things that might rust, and put it away at the end of the season. But your true addict will do all this and more two or three times a week. Moths might have gotten into his best flies. The fact that the house smells so of DDT that humans swoon when they enter the door, due to the previous applications of same, does not deter him in the least. Every two or three days it is reapplied.

Presently your sweet little home smells like a delousing center. Also, flies keep showing up in the most unlikely places, such as the soft bare feet of the young, and the complex works of the vacuum cleaner. Instead of apologizing for these mishaps, the fisherman is more likely to roar: “How dare you treat my brown hackle that way!” as he rips it from its lodging.

This sad form of neurosis is very prevalent on the Vineyard. Isn’t it time that a group was formed called Fishermen Anonymous? These reformed and chastened persons might spend the fishing season digging for quahaugs.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com