From the April 30, 1954 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

“I left my pants in Washington, D.C.” Perhaps there are not many Vineyarders who can boast so unique a result of a trip, which otherwise ran pretty much on schedule, to the nation’s capital. Albert Corwin, member of the Edgartown senior class and a part time member of the Gazette cortege, can though. He returned with fifty-two other Island seniors last week from the annual class trip.

Albert’s pants, it had better be explained at the outset, were not left because they were forgotten but because they were not returned from the cleaners before the two huge Greyhound buses pulled out of Washington on the return trip home.

There were items that were forgotten by other students, though, a common occurrence among travelling seniors of all times. But such matters did not pall the spirits of the travelers.

Albert reports the trip great fun and completely lacking in catastrophes or notable high-jinks.

“Oh, there was a lot of horsing around but nothing that would stand out, you know.”

The stopover in New York on the way to Washington provided the most enjoyable feature of the trip so far as Albert was concerned. It was the Easter season, and the group attended the Easter show at the Radio City Music Hall, an impressive spectacle. The next morning Albert and several of his friends walked up Fifth avenue and on to Rockefeller Center to watch the ice skaters.

“All the stuff in Washington was pretty interesting,” said Albert, “but you’ve heard so much about it before.

“The Smithsonian Institute was something, all the guns they had there . . .”

It was hot in Washington, with the temperatures hanging around in the 90s during the days. In fact, it was warm the whole time they were gone, and clear except for the Saturday they left and the Friday they came back home.

Of course the class trip is designed for fun as well as for education. And on the two free nights in Washington, Albert and some buddies took advantage of the pleasures offered by Glen Echo amusement park, just outside the city. They tried all the rides, but — !

“I was never so scared in all my life as I was on the roller coaster. It was all right until we got to that first hill. I must have gone six inches out of my seat,” he said.

There was only one deviation in the prescribed tour, and that occurred when the group was riding around seeing the sights at Fort Myer. The experienced guide in the bus, it seems, got his signals crossed, for suddenly the fifty-three seniors were looking at the points of interest at the Fort Myer dump.

In Washington, said Albert, “everywhere you went you saw people on class trips. In fact, we never saw anybody who lived in D. C.; everybody was visiting.”

At the Roger Smith hotel, the Island seniors were afforded an illustrated example of how not to act on a class trip. Another high school group wreaked havoc on hotel property by spraying fire extinguishers down the carpeted corridors.

“They had to leave the next morning,” Albert commented, without giving further details.

The return trip was pleasant and virtually without complication all the way to Buzzards Bay, when two tires on one of the buses flattened themselves almost simultaneously. Having got so near home, the simplest thing to do was to load all the seniors from the crippled bus into the other one for a pretty tight rode to Woods Hole. But even that event served to make the trip just that much more memorable.

To Vineyarders, summer and winter dwellers alike, the ferry is a bit of the Island which detaches itself from the main body and, depending on the direction one is heading, comes out like an old friend to give an advance welcome or travels in warm companionship a few miles along the departing way. One never really leaves the Island until he leaves the Island until he leaves the Islander at Woods Hole, and he has already arrived at the Vineyard when at that same port he boards the big ferry.

There is another note worthy of mention in connection with the forty-five minute ride across the Sound, a not mundane rather than of the spirit, but favorable nonetheless. The trip across allows for picking up the loose ends of a rushed departure and permits one to continue his trip on the mainland feeling properly assembled and in control of the situation. There’s plenty of time for the ladies to take down their pin curls and put on complete make-up (this we have seen them do); time for the men to shave, if the sea isn’t too rough (this we have not seen but heard that they do); or take a decent snooze.

Most of this holds true coming the other way, from Woods Hole to the Island. A voyager has time to repair the ravages of his trip and arrive looking as though he had stepped out of a band box, or to get his breath and bask in the satisfaction of making the last boat with one minute to spare after racing all the way from Buzzards Bay.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com