From the July 1963 editions of the Vineyard Gazette:

A favorite diversion of Vineyard summers has been the listing of states represented by automobile license plates, though the diversion has rather run thin because now — if we remember correctly — every state has been accounted for at one time or another. There was a season when South Dakota represented some difficulties, but in due course it showed up.

But a new diversion of a Vineyard summer might well be the listing of the colleges and universities represented by sweaters, blazers, caps, jerseys, and so on, worn around the Island. So far as we know, no one has yet begun such a list, but if one were to be begun in the morning, there would be an imposing collection of educational institutions, Ivy League and otherwise, well before nightfall.

Look now — here’s another University of Massachusetts. But Princeton, and Southern Methodist may well be taking a drive off yonder raft.

There is no more engaging aspect of the summer scene on the Vineyard than the procession of its dogs, ponies, horses, and occasionally other animal companions of the human species. You won’t find such diversity, character, and expression in any other assemblage we have ever seen or heard about. Many of the four-footed allies, counselors and fiends of their supposed owners — though the ownership sometimes appears to be the other way around — are summer vacationers, and others are all-year inhabitants. One recalls a remark of the late I. A. R. Wylie that a vacation without a dog was like an egg without salt. Her dog at the time was a white bull terrier named George.

If a twenty-unit motel should be built at Menemsha, or a motel of any other number of units, this would mean the end of the Menemsha which has been beloved and admired through generations past. It would also be a bitter blow to the pride of the Vineyard, a deprecation of its values both tangible and intangible, and a major step toward the sort of barbarism that has overtaken the mainland.

Menemsha and Gay Head are two names that stand high in Vineyard repute and loyalties. They are, as of today, unique. The preservation of their unique qualities, their pervasive flavor, appearance, and the experiences one takes away from visits to them, is nevertheless an uncertain and chancy thing. Nothing guarantees that Gay Head will remain Gay Head, and that Menemsha will remain Menemsha, except the alert and fighting spirit of a great number of Vineyarders and visitors.

Let no one say that progress and change are inevitable. Everyone knows that. Both Gay Head and Menemsha have changed and will change, but the essentials have been and can be enduring. To say that a motel won’t do any harm is to be guilty of gross rationalization or complete misunderstanding of the evolution of years. A motel will be death to Menemsha.

As to the defenders of Menemsha, and of places and causes of a similar kind, too many of them want to remain anonymous. They count themselves out at the beginning. “Don’t mention my name — I don’t want to make so-and-so mad.” “Don’t quote me. I don’t want to incur anybody’s ill will.”

This sort of thing won’t work. Battles are won by fighting, and happily the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club, to mention what is certainly the leading influence for Island values and integrity, has been always willing to hoist a banner and fire off a battery. But there must be other groups and individuals, many of them, united in a phalanx of effective public opinion and moral force. How about it?

A stranger from afar or from some remote past might well wonder why the motorists drive at such speed through the streets of our towns. The answer isn’t easy to come by, but once the mystery is explained, a whole philosophy of modern times becomes plain.

They drive so fast, these summer motorists, on order to get to the Intersection. Getting to the Intersection is one of the great goals of modern life, and it keeps repeating itself, again and again.

What is it about the Intersection that demands speed and indefatigability and the exclusion of all other considerations? A tenable theory is that the Intersection represents a pause, a necessity, perhaps a compulsion of fate, without any determination — for the reason that another Intersection lies ahead. Something that is reached at the cost of effort and the machine, without settling or satisfying any human need or problem, is bound to appeal to the generations of the atomic age.

Not to eat, not for love, wrote Emerson. Well, it’s that way with motorists; not to eat, not for love, not to arrive, but to get to the Intersection. To reach the place of getting nowhere. If this isn’t covered in the philosophy of existentialism, it ought to be. The motorist who gets to the Intersection first and then can do nothing about it, because he must wait his turn or a traffic signal, is the winner of the sweepstakes for performing without doing.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com