My Vineyard journey began in the spring of 1975 at the University of Pennsylvania library during my sophomore year. I was taking a study break and talking with a friend about summer plans. I told her I was eager to get away from both Philadelphia and New York City, where I had worked the previous summer. Her suggestion: Martha’s Vineyard, where her family had vacationed for years.

All it took was a five-minute description of what my summer might look like along with suggestions for restaurants where I could find dining room work and I was hooked. The Vineyard it would be. I pictured myself in a sharp waiter’s outfit, earning good money and spending days on a beach with other college students.

So, the morning after Mother’s Day, my mother drove me to the tollbooth of the Throggs Neck Bridge to begin my hitchhike to Woods Hole. Yes, it was a different era. Arriving on-Island late that afternoon, I spent the night at the youth hostel. The next morning, I found myself at the back-door service entrance of the Navigator Restaurant at the Harborside Inn, asking Alan Gowell, the steward, about waiter openings. Those jobs had long since been filled, he told me, but I could have a position as a dishwasher provided I could find a place to live for the summer.

It wasn’t the glamorous dining room position I had envisioned, but it meant I could stay on the Vineyard. Besides, dishwashers got fed, which was no small consideration for a constantly hungry young man.

After a quick search through the listings in the Gazette, I rented a room on Clevelandtown Road. I immediately walked back to the Navigator and accepted the job.

While I quickly settled into life at the restaurant and the not-exactly-skilled labor of dishwashing, my housing situation was less successful. I had assumed that simply having a place to sleep would be enough. It wasn’t. I felt isolated and wondered whether I would make it through the summer. Then the gods of good fortune intervened.

At a party in Oak Bluffs on a night off, two girls told me they had rented a group house in Edgartown, about a mile from the Square Rigger. It was a three-bedroom A-frame. They shared the main bedroom, two girls occupied another room, and they hoped to find a guy to take the single. Would I be interested?

It was one of those moments in life when you think you can hear angels singing. I gave them an emphatic yes. Now my life-changing summer truly began.

Life at the house quickly settled into a wonderful rhythm. Most of us worked nights, so mornings meant leisurely breakfasts of cold cereal and coffee while retelling stories from the evening before. Two girls worked at Lawry’s and one was a bartender at Ralph’s so our work lives had much in common. The morning soundtrack leaned heavily to Bonnie Raitt, Jonathan Edwards and Jimmie Spheeris. Grocery shopping was done at the Edgartown A&P, and the Water street post office permitted any of us pick up the house’s mail.

Days off usually involved trips to either South Beach or Aquinnah, where I experienced my first nude beach. Several of us had bicycles, and at least once we rode all the way to the lighthouse, which seems astonishing to me now. On shared nights off, we often headed to the Sea View for music and dancing.

Teenagers, being teenagers, I would occasionally wake up to find a housemate with an overnight guest on the day bed in the living room. In the midst of all this, I had two visitors. First my mother arrived for a short visit, taking the bus from New York carrying her usual two or three paperback novels. A week later, my college girlfriend made a surprise short visit.

The Navigator itself was a summer experience unto itself, filled with unforgettable characters. There was Kenny Bowers, the manager, dressed in full 1970s mod-squad style, complete with rings and chains. Alan, the always-serious steward, once asked for help repairing the kitchen floor after hours. The job lasted until sunrise. As morning light came through the windows, he pulled two slices of cheesecake from the walk-in refrigerator — a remarkably un-Alan gesture.

Barbara Fenner rescued me from the dish station and moved me onto her cold pantry crew. Robbie, the chef, called out dinner orders while listening to Red Sox games on a transistor radio. Long-haired Johnnie worked the sauté station as if his beloved reggae music was permanently playing in his head. Then there was Tony the baker, whose off-road Jeep enabled several after-work expeditions to South Beach for late-night swims.

Some of the restaurant’s production methods seemed strange to me at the time, though in retrospect they made perfect sense given the intensity of summer business. During May and June, huge quantities of food were prepared and frozen for the season ahead. Stuffed quahaugs were assembled in batches, frozen and reheated to order in a commercial microwave. This was a bit tricky as a few seconds too much resulted in an exploded quahaug and stuffing all over the microwave interior.

The largest preseason undertaking was what the staff jokingly called “the Tet Offensive,” during which hundreds of portions of seafood tetrazzini were prepared, portioned into Dixie cups, and frozen for the summer rush.

The managers and chefs of the tight-knit Edgartown restaurant community all knew one another and helped each other when needed. At the Navigator, running out of items such as lettuce or mayonnaise was solved by sending a dishwasher to The Colonial or The Seafood Shanty to borrow supplies, to be replaced after the next delivery.

As the second week of August arrived, the mood in the house began to shift. We realized that our idyllic existence was coming to an end and that we would soon return to our pre-Vineyard lives. To celebrate, we headed to the Black Dog for brunch and spent hours reminiscing about our amazing summer.

On a more serious culinary note, one housemate and I put on the nicest clothes we had brought and made the journey up-Island to the Beach Plum Inn for a wonderful dinner and sunset.

At work, I became the recipient of the Navigator’s longstanding tradition for departing employees: being carried out of the restaurant and tossed into the harbor. The bicycle ride home afterward was not easy.

Fifty-one years later, memories of that magical summer remain astonishingly clear: sitting around the breakfast table with women who had been complete strangers only weeks earlier; the camaraderie of the kitchen and adrenaline of dinner service at the Navigator; hitchhiking everywhere; riding bicycles to Aquinnah; discovering the island’s extraordinary beaches; and experiencing the intimacy of small-town life.

Most importantly, the summer of 1975 began my lifelong love affair with Martha’s Vineyard.

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence...

Ken Goldberg lives in White Plains, N.Y.. He is a culinary business and education author and consultant. During the 1990s he operated Seven Layers, a pastry shop located in the Tisbury Market Place.