From the Things Insular column in the April 17, 1959 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

Spring or no spring, the sun came out and the weather warmed up enough so that Corporal McIntire’s assistant was asked to slip down to Main street and get ice cream cones for the Gazette staff.

While this refreshment was being passed around, the member of the staff who most likes to recall old times remarked, “I can remember when ice cream cones first came out. It was early in the century.”

“Which century?” was an irreverent question.

Well, anyway, the rememberer of things past said he really did recall the appearance of ice cream cones on the Vineyard. The trolley line was running from Vineyard Haven to Cottage City, summers were warm, and it was fun to be young. Let’s say the year was 1906 or maybe 1907 or possibly 1908. It was along about then.

And ice cream cones weren’t just shipped in by the carton. They were made on the spot. An ice cream cone machine stood in the window of one of the stores on lower Circuit avenue near where the movie theatre now is, though it hadn’t been thought of then.

That first summer the cones were as much of a sensation as satellites are today. A modern advertising copy writer would probably have called them a “taste thrill,” but advertising copy writers were as scarce as plastic nightcaps, and the few who existed were not modern.

Everybody tried the new cones, including a retired seafaring man from the North Shore who must have been in the neighborhood of his three score years and ten. Hearing that he had been to Cottage City and had been treated to an ice cream cone by a relative, one of his neighbors asked, “How did you like it?”

“It was all right,” he said, “but I had hard work getting the ice cream out of the box.”

He hadn’t caught on to the fact that the cone was supposed to be eaten. It must have been hard work for him to get the ice cream out, too, because he wore full chin whiskers.

The rememberer of things past thinks it was the time taken for one more ice cream cone that caused him to miss the last trolley back to Vineyard Haven one hot summer day. He walked, cutting across lots from the outskirts of Cottage City on New York avenue, and coming out near Eastville Inn. It was mostly open country then, and most people who walked, as many did, took the short way.

Naturally, one of the best ways to cope with the exigencies of spring fever is to go mayflowering, the beauty and the fragrance of the tiny flowers combining to make an elixir that can cure many of winter’s ills. But in mayflowering, as in practically every other pursuit, moderation should be the watchword.

A small bunch of mayflowers can be enough, and most people who pick them realize that if the flower is going to increase and thrive from year to year it must be picked sparingly, to leave plenty of blossoms.

There’s always something new, at least to me. And now it’s quite charming conceit as to how our well loved pinkletinks acquired their fancy name of Hyla crucifer. The explanation appeared in a column by S. Stewart Brooks in the Cape Codder. Here it is:

Incidentally, there is a very charming legend which tells how this very small frog acquired its scientific name, Hyla Crucifer. Hercules, says the legend, was fond of a boy named Hylas. While they were adventuring with the Argonauts, Hercules sent the boy to bring water from a spring, but the water nymphs captured Hylas and thereafter he lived in the water, calling for Hercules in his sweet young treble voice.

Ever since, that voice has been heard in swamp and bogland in the springtime of the year. There’s nothing else quite like it. That is why we listen for it year after year, personify it into legend, cherish it as the very voice of another spring.

I went shopping the other day. Nothing new about that because one of my hobbies is jamming the freezing compartment of the refrigerator so full of frozen stuff that the drawers won’t open — and still we never can think what to have for lunch!

So I went shopping, in Vineyard Haven. This involved my first encounter with the much debated new traffic plan for Main street. Sheer bliss! I thought I was in Paradise. For the first time in my life I drove down the street without measuring with my eye as to whether I would hit the oncoming car, just as its driver made the same computation. And there were parking spaced to be had. To be sure, it was early afternoon, and not the height of investment season in the store, but who could find a parking place any time of day under the old plan, unless it was his lucky day?

Inspired by my success, I dared mightily and proceeded up the street to patronize a trim modern market which I had more or less avoided because of traffic hazards. I was delighted, and shall return if Main street stays one-way. Hurrah for a one-way Main street.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com