From the Sept. 10, 1937 edition of the Vineyard Gazette: Vineyard youth turned out for the opening day of school on Tuesday, 1,104 strong, the largest enrollment on record, and an increase over last year’s enrollment of between sixty and seventy-five, according to Arthur B. Lord, superintendent of schools. This is not the complete enrollment for the year, numerous pupils and high school students being absent on the first day from all of the down-Island schools and some of the others, so that between thirty and forty more are expected to report within a week’s time.
The marked increase in the enrollment noted is not due entirely to larger first grades, but also to the upper classes holding their numbers as well, which is regarded as an encouraging sign from an educational point of view.
There have been no epidemics on the Island during the summer, and groups of children observed in the schools appeared to be more healthy and vigorous than ever before.
Labor Day has slipped away once more upon the broad flood of time where all holidays and all seasons go. But in the wake of this day which ends the summer as surely as a period ends a sentence, we notice various phenomena, and new thoughts and sensations begin to rise in the minds of those about us.
There are fewer cars in the streets...One friend meets another and says “I slept under a blanket last night,” and the party of the second part not only sees him but raises him with “I slept under two blankets.” This used to be a regular formula of August conversation, but it did not come in until September this year. A neighbor remarks that all the ants left his kitchen on Labor Day, which must be significant. Even the ants, it appears, have to get back in time for school. Chickadees have taken the place of goldfinches on the sunflowers in a back yard we know. One more sign of the times... There are fewer cars in the streets.
No one can mistake the feeling of the September sun, and the air is so clear that it frees the inner recesses of the mind as well as opening new vistas to the sight. There are still a great many visitors here, and more coming. But one hears on every side that there are fewer cars in the streets. Children are discussing the new teachers, and parents are relieved to have the younger generation in school once more. The 1937 high school graduates are adventuring off to college.
Postcards and telegrams come from recently departed guests, telling of things forgotten. A man down the street cannot leave until the weekend, and seems glad to be here in September. Another man is going to keep his family here later next year. We have heard this before, but it is usually next year that people are talking about, and for many of them next year never comes. The Labor Day influence is hard to resist. No more yacht racing, only a few more picnics, the beach plums are ripe and soon the grapes will be flavoring the air . . . There are fewer cars in the streets. The big blues are here. This is the verdict reached the past day or two as a result of the good fishing experienced by anglers from both Vineyard Haven and Edgartown. High hook was Charles A. Welch of Chappaquiddick, who landed a string of fifteen, several of them weighing about eight pounds apiece. Other boats reported three or four or more on Wednesday and Thursday.
The fish ran from about two and a half pounds to better than eight and John Correia, manager of Eldridge’s market, paid 18 cents a pound for them.
Reports come from Cape Cod that the beach plum crop is light this year. Apparently this is true also of the Vineyard. The Cape beach plums are selling for $6 a bushel, and the Cape agricultural extension agents are once again talking of an industry which may make beach plums as important as cranberries. Cape cranberries now have a value of a million dollars a year.
This should be one more stimulus to Vineyarders who have been planning commercialization of the beach plums here. Here is an asset which has far too much value to be neglected longer.
A serious study is being begun at last by the experiment station at Waltham, and since the results may be important to the Vineyard, our own people should be much interested. In behalf of this study, an effort is now being made to find the best bushes of different types. These bushes will not be moved or injured in any way, but slips should be taken from them for use in grafting and future hybridizing. Work in developing the blueberry has resulted in tremendous benefits, and steps now being taken may work a revolution just as striking in respect to the beach plum.
A great deal of land on the Vineyard is adapted to the cultivation of beach plums, and there is little likelihood that cultivation on an extensive scale will be at all costly or difficult, In a word, here is a virtual gift of nature, and we have only to give our cooperation to a research program in order to have varieties and methods which will justify large scale production.
Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
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