From the December 10, 1954 edition of the Vineyard Gazette, by Anne Lesnikowski:

The Christmas season is here, moving at its usual accelerando pace, and before we know it, it will be Dec. 25. This holiday, as all the others, will bring its quota of visitors to the Island, visitors for the most part here often enough to know that ways and means of reaching Martha’s Vineyard, even in winter, do exist. It is inevitable, however, that some of those seeing to spend the holidays here will be traveling to the Vineyard for the first time, and it is to these innocents abroad that we extend particular sympathy, knowing full well the frustrations they are in for if they have to journey from any farther away than Taunton.

There must be by now quite a collection of stories of travelers to the Island being told that in winter there is no way at all of reaching here; that only a converted PT boat makes the run summer or winter, and then just when the skipper feels like it; or that an out-rigger canoe visits the islands once a week with mail and supplies and an occasional passenger.

Just why it should be so difficult to get reliable information about transportation to the Island we cannot fathom but difficult it is. About a week after reading the Gazette’ story of the woman visitor who had been assured that she simply could not get to the Vineyard at this time of year, we were talking to our friend, Mae Cronig, recently returned from a trip off-Island. She had not run into such absolute statements that one did not go to Martha’s Vineyard in winter but she admitted that if she had not been a resident of the Island, and what’s more, determined to continue being a resident, she would have given up trying to get here.

No farther away than Providence, she began one evening to investigate the various transportation services in the hopes of finding one that could deposit her at Woods Hole in time to make the 4:15 boat, that boat, she knew full well, being the last one of a week day. The railroad station, to which she first applied, quickly passed the buck to the bus company. Without vouchsafing any information on trains at all they advised her to go by bus.

A spokesman at the bus company allowed they did run buses to Woods Hole. Which ones made connection with the 4:15 ferry? Well, there was one at 7:15 in the morning and on at 4:20 in the afternoon. Stunned for a moment by this piece of information, Mae rallied to protest that one could hardly leave Providence at 4:20 and expect to reach Woods Hole in time to catch a ferry which left at 4:15. The person to whom she was speaking was unmoved by her logic. “Sorry, lady,” he kept repeating, “that’s the connection.”

At this point Mae abandoned Providence sources and put in a call to a New Bedford bus station. This terminal regretted politely that she had the wrong number. It did not send buses to the Cape, but it gave her the exchange of a station that did. At the second station, a noncommittal voice relayed the information that the regular staff had gone home some hours before and that if she wanted to inquire about schedules she must call after 7:30 next morning.

But she wanted to start for home in the morning, Mae reasoned to herself, and 7:30 might be too late. Though it was midnight by now she figured the only thing to do would be to call her husband on the Vineyard and see if he had a Steamship Authority schedule. She put the call through, but it proved as fruitful as all the others up to this time. Henry had no schedule. All he could advise her to do was go to bed and call New Bedford in the morning.

Irritated past the point of being sleepy, Mae nonetheless decided it was useless to carry the struggle further that evening. She gave up and went to bed, but she set her alarm for 7:30 so as to get a call through to the bus station as soon as it opened.

The next morning, in somewhat weary tones, she began her routine query as to connections with the 4:15 boat at Woods Hole. There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, during which she took to be someone poring over time tables. At last a voice replied that she could take a bus from Providence to New Bedford, change in New Bedford for Mattapoisett, change there for Buzzards Bay, and at Buzzards Bay change for the train on to Woods Hole.

It was here, Mae related, that had she not lived on the Vineyard she would have joyfully abandoned all efforts to reach the place. What she did abandon was any notion of traveling by bus. Back where she started, she concluded that the longest way round was indeed the shortest way home, and got aboard a train for Boston. At South Station she caught a train back to Buzzards Bay and on to Woods Hole in time for the 4:15, arriving home with the feeling of “it was a tough fight, but I made it.”

Compiled by Hilary Wallcox

library@vineyardgazette.com