School ends this week and the Chappaquiddick Community Center gets into full swing with summer activities. Sailing classes begin on Monday, June 26. Yoga starts on Tuesday. Margaret Mullen will host a welcome-back potluck supper on Wednesday the 28th starting with appetizers at 6 p.m. Please bring a dish to serve six. Tai Chi begins on Friday. The first farmers’ market/crafts fair is on Wednesday, July 5 starting at 4:30. Any farmer or crafter is welcome to participate. Call Lynn at 508-627-8222. There is also an ice cream social that evening beginning at 7 p.m. Tennis lessons begin on Thursday the 6th. The center will be closed on the Fourth of July. Saturday the 8th will be a busy day for the center with men’s tennis and the Chappaquiddick Island Association meeting in the morning and chamber music by the Aeolus Quartet that evening.

The CCC is wholly financed by the Chappaquiddick community. Your donation is greatly appreciated and tax deductible. Chappaquiddick Community Center, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization. You need to be a subscriber to sign up for sailing and tennis classes as well as for tennis court time. Subscribers may even request use of the center for a private event. See the CCC website or call 508-627-8222 for rental information. All other center activities are open to everyone. Subscription member rates apply for yoga and Pilates. Renters who are here for two weeks or less can get a special short-term subscription.

Your yearly fee of a mere $125 helps pay the operating costs of the center. The additional tennis court subscription is $25 for individuals and $50 for families. You can make an additional donation of any amount and specify whether it goes towards the Cressy Fund or the general fund. See the website for all subscription and sign-up forms or stop by the CCC during office hours.

Last Sunday we were way out in western Massachusetts at the Boston Pops Orchestra’s summer home at Tanglewood in Lenox. We watched the original movie Jaws shown on a huge screen while the Pops orchestra played the John Williams music score live for us. Thrilling for all of us. Must have been a great test of patience for the members of the orchestra. I wasn’t surprised to see several Vineyarders there, too. I have seen the movie at least once a year since it came out. More and more it is has become a home movie for me. Many of the extras are friends, old and new. Many of those folks are gone now. Some of those folks I see daily. The scenes with the SSA ferries Naushon and Islander are very nostalgic. When I first started driving the Chappy ferry the On Time One was still in service. That now-long-gone ferryboat is the setting for the scene with Dr. Nevin and the mayor confronting the police chief. Midway through that scene the On Time 2 scoots by in the background. Now I am the caretaker of that movie prop.

The film is a detailed record of the configuration and structure of the Chappy ferry slips. The scenes inside the town hall remind me that a connection to even the recent past is precious and reassuring to me. The hallway department signs and the selectmen’s desk are the same ones that I saw the first time I ventured into that building five and a half decades ago to get a clamming permit.

I watched my favorite movies for the first time at the town hall when the movie theatre occupied the second floor. Every time that I watch the movie The Russians Are Coming!! The Russians Are Coming!! I experience again the feeling and perspective of being a 14 year old in the summertime on the Vineyard and Chappy. My daughter lives in the area where it was filmed and when I see it I know that she and my grandsons walk down the same streets that the Russian submarine crew actors snuck along so many years ago. There is something about a motion picture that freezes time, giving us an anchor to the past. For me it is a comfort. It helps me to have tolerance for the stumbling blocks of the present knowing that when I look back years from now I will focus on the positive side of events. It allows me to enjoy a bigger view of my present world when I get hobbled by unpleasant details.

Send Chappy news to peterchappyferry@gmail.com.