From the April 8, 1960 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

Right on schedule, the Regional High School bus driven by Preston Averill set out on its rounds last Friday morning to pick up its quota of Edgartown students and take them to school, just as it does with clocklike precision every morning.

Mr. Averill’s school bus route goes his favorite game of chess one better. The students are like chessmen, stationed in the mornings at strategic positions around the giant chessboard which is Edgartown, and it is Mr. Averill’s duty to perform a sweeping gambit and get them all picked up and delivered to school. But unlike chess, there is an element of time involved.

But last Friday, something went wrong. Mr. Averill moved the bus about the giant chessboard only to find the chessmen were missing. Where were they all? He had made the circle around town and was heading back out Upper Main street with only a couple of students on board, wondering whether the defection of most of his passengers could be explained by wholesale hooky or a widespread epidemic.

One of the bus’s last stops before heading directly for the school is in front of Leonard Hendrickson’s house at the fork of the road. The worried bus driver pulled up, not really expecting to see any students waiting there either. But lo! There emerged from hiding the bus’s whole complement of passengers, all very much beside themselves with mirth at having pulled off one of the most elaborate April’s Fool jokes of the decade. Not too many years ago, one of the most individual of Edgartown merchants, William H. Mayhew, conducted a paint shop where Robert de Paris, accent and all, now functions. Space was not at a premium then, and a big and admittedly unkempt lot, also Mr. Mayhew’s property, adjoined the shop. With his death, the disposition of the property, it was the fate of the vacant land to be put up at auction. Owners of adjoining business properties clubbed together to buy it. The land would have gone for much less if a somewhat frivolous minded individual — at least at that moment — had not come forth with a figure higher than they proposed to pay.

With due ceremony the property was presented to the town, with strings attached. It was to be used to cut a road through from North Water street to Dock street. And the deed was done. The new street had been christened Mayhew Lane, with its close connotation of the distinguished family so long and so closely associated with Martha’s Vineyard. What it turned out to be, surely not with the owners’ intent, was an alley, none too neatly kept, with cars and buses parked all over the sides, and with buildings which present a dignified enough face, displaying their less attractive rears.

This fairly ancient history is brought up here by the present appearance of the “lane”, beleaguered to right and to left. On one side, the newest of Edgartown’s three parking lots is being carved out from the bones of a garage site, on the other, a few precious feet are being added to a business property. Steam shovels and bulldozers have been noisily at work. It’s all in the name of progress, but what would the founding Mayhews have called it?

This is certainly the slow season so far as Martha’s Vineyard is concerned, and we do not mean in respect to business or human activities, for there are occupations sufficient to keep everyone active. We refer to the grudging, moody spring which, having cast upon us a singularly captivating smile now and then, proceeds to hide her face for weeks and weeks, as if in penitence. The techniques of modern communication keep us well informed as to enviable temperatures elsewhere, and we, who in February were warmer, now find ourselves on the chill side.

The thing is that the burst of authentic sunshine which warms certain other localities, simply results in fog and dampness here, moderating us right back where we were. Well, one cannot win all the time. If we are to be moderated preferentially in respect to other places at some seasons, we must stand being moderated prejudicially at other seasons.

But although the general trend out of doors is slow, and we feel ourselves coaxing and struggling, inch by inch, toward real spring, many things in nature happen rapidly. For instance there is the sudden greening of the grass. Why can’t we feel spring as soon as the grass does? For that matter, how can flies, caterpillars, worms, and such, emerge openly and even with a show of confidence or vigor, just forty-eight hours — no more — after a month’s hard freeze and a record blizzard? The fault, perhaps, is in us, who are now equipped with too much reason and too little instinct.

The spring comes slowly here, but nature is rushing just the same. It rushes past us and over us and around us, and we find fault with the Weather Bureau rather than the gap that has widened between us and the caterpillars, daffodils, and the general citizenry of the outdoors.

Compiled by Hilary Wall

library@mvgazette.com