From the Vineyard Gazette edition of July 6, 1928:

Martha’s Vineyard turned out en masse to celebrate the Fourth and seemed to remain constantly on the move from the evening of the third, when Vineyard Haven’s fireworks display and band concert started the celebration, until the similar entertainment of Oak Bluffs wound up the Island affair twenty-four hours later.

According to statistics there is a pleasure car on the Island for every four local inhabitants, and at this time of year this number is nearly doubled by the cars brought to the Island by summer visitors. People who notice such things declared that ninety-five per cent of the entire number were on the move during the day and evenings while the Island celebrated.

The Vineyard Haven Band played the opening overture on Tuesday evening, bringing their concert to a close all too soon because of the darkness. Further light not being forthcoming, the fireworks display began.

The committee which purchased the fireworks for Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven have received multiple compliments upon their wise expenditure of he sum intrusted to them.

The down-Island section of the Vineyard did not sleep at all on Tuesday night. Those who did not spend the night in riding and exploding firecrackers were either on police duty, watching for fires and mischief, or lying in bed wondering vaguely why under the sun the Colonial fathers picked the hottest month in the year for the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

But sleepy or not, the whole Island was on hand to watch the parade of the Oak Bluffs Fire Dept., Boy Scouts and Rangers the afternoon of the Fourth, and most of them remained for the ball game between the Oak Bluffs team and a Coast Guard Team, which resulted in victory for Oak Bluffs by the score of 6-4. Destroyers and yachts dressed ship for the occasion, adding to the gay appearance of the waterfront.

Long before eight o’clock individuals and families began to arrive at Ocean Park and those who found a parking place close to the curbing on the west side between Ocean Park and what was known for many years as Landers Park, considered themselves the most fortunate. Cars were parked in every other available place. Children, sailors and officers in uniform from the destroyers in Vineyard Haven harbor, flappers of all ages, whole families including the very youngest in the perambulator, were included in the crowd, which was augmented by those waiting the arrival of the evening boat. The skies were clear with just enough mist over the Sound to give a passing steamer the appearance of being a phantom ship.

At eight o’clock interest was centered on the band stand, when the American Cadet Band of Boston, Frank W. Garley, director, began its part of the evening’s entertainment.

At nine the street lights were extinguished and then began the most thrilling part of the celebration of July 4, the setting off of the wonderful set pieces, rockets with lovely showers of stars, the big noise makers which awake the echoes, the very beautiful waterfall and the final Stars and Stripes with the band playing the national anthem.

All the evening the children, with their sparklers, the sailors and others with red lights and crackers, added to the display in the heavens and on the streets. It was a great sight to see the automobiles with their lights, in masses wending their way homeward to the five other towns of the Island.

The news that clambakes are to be served to the public on Chappaquiddick this summer carries one in thought back to the years, in the 70s and 80s, when the famous Katama clambakes were served daily at the South Side. Those were the days when the trains of the former Martha’s Vineyard Railroad whisked thousands from Oak Bluffs and other towns to Katama and the South Beach. On some days as many as 500 persons would partake of clambakes which for their excellence had become famous throughout New England and even beyond. Arriving at Katama, many would walk the half mile over to the beach to take in the wonderful view of Old Ocean in its varying moods, and then hike back to Katama, the tramp never failing to produce the proper edge to appetites intent on the proper disposal of the splendid shore dinner which had been prepared and was being served in the large pavilion. It would seem this great attraction of public clambakes daily or on certain days in the week might be revived with much profit if some person or persons would venture the enterprise.

The clams are here in plenty as of yore, as are also fish, lobster, green corn, watermelon and all the rest which goes to make up a shore dinner of the old-fashioned kind. The day may yet come when hundreds of cars and airplanes filled with a famishing public, and others on foot and perhaps horseback, will again resort to Katama to satisfy their longing for Vineyard clams, cooked in the manner par excellence that Eli Wood and his successors used to know so well how to do.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com