From the March 29, 1974 edition of the Vineyard Gazette by Dorothy West:

In the weekend before his 83rd birthday, Frank Corey of Temahigan avenue, was delivering the evening paper from house to house, a paper boy by proxy, replacing his young grandson Sean, because it was too late to find a substitute in the bicycle set.

Sean had asked this favor at the last minute, with the family car already packed for the trip to Boston, and his parents and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Corey and Kathleen, standing outside their door waiting for him to return from his grandfather’s house a few yards away.

With the ferry already in view there was only time to say yes or no, and not much choice except to say yes when his grandson’s eyes were locked with his.

So Mr. Corey covered Sean’s paper route through three days of prompt delivery, maybe not feeling like a boy again, but maybe remembering the joy of the time when his world was younger.

He is a builder by trade, learning as a lean and eager boy from William Manter, and knowing, as his hands filled with skills, that this would be his excellence, turning a lot of land into a dwelling place, the sinews of it home, where the man in it lay awake into the night and dreamt his dreams, and then went forth in the hope of returning in triumph from a day of giants.

During the years between his reach and his grasp, between the ambitious boy and the man of 26, he worked at anything, at any time that building was slow, generally in the winter months when no day’s weather could be counted on, and again when the summer months brought the strident sounds of building to a halt from late June to Labor Day.

In winter he had a variety of jobs, most of them too plain for a backward glance, but every summer, for a span of summers, he was conductor on a trolley.

Oak Bluffs was Cottage City when the Vineyard Lighting Company brought their open air trolley service to the down-Island towns. There were three or four trolleys running in rush hours, with switches and double tracks for changing directions — in operation at various turning points, the principal switches between Lake Anthony and Sunset Lake, and just below the Walter Besse house, and at the edge of Eastville.

The trolleys were kept in a car barn that stood where the Wesley Arms stands now. Later they were moved to Vineyard Haven. The bus stop in Oak Bluffs was the trolley stop then. The building, which then housed the Cape and Vineyard office, is unchanged, the porch with its patient sitters waiting for transportation.

The trolleys started from the Vineyard Haven pier, then across the Vineyard Haven bridge to Oak Bluffs. There was a tearoom on the bridge, on the right from the Vineyard Haven side. It was run by a Mr. Eagleston. The trolley fare was 20 cents, or 10 cents if a passenger alighted before crossing the bridge.

Gone is the New York wharf, once a busy landing at the end of New York avenue. The steamers from New York made port there several times a week, and a trolley waited for the crowd that would fill it.

Trolley tracks ran to the Lagoon by way of Waban Park and Wing Road, its destination a hotel, which was later destroyed by fire. There were trolleys running down Eastville avenue, Temahigan, and New York avenues, winding and twisting through the Camp Ground areas.

Eventually the heyday was over, before World War I. The Model Ts were up and down the roads, with no hard and fast schedules. Touring cars with their tops down began to appear on the roads, full of dashing young passengers. And then came the red Stanley Steamers, operated by Scoville and Sons, running between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, and any place else a passenger chose to go.

The trolley cars lost money, the wires were silent, the era was over.

Mr. Corey did not see its demise. He had left for New York the year before, wanting to be where building was a year-round occupation. He lived and worked in New York city his first years away from his home, meeting and marrying the lovely Emma, who was to be his wife for 50 years.

He was in business for himself in Larchmont, N.Y., for 40 years, building houses and selling them. He was also the owner of a general hardware store there.

When his baby was ready to be born, he brought his wife to the Island, wanting no other place to have first claim on his child. He owned a house on New York avenue, in which his mother, Catalina, was living. There his wife gave birth. When the baby was a month old, the young family returned to Larchmont.

Frank Corey came back to the Island to stay in 1955, retiring because his wife was not well, and wanting her to be here where the pace and the people made the task of living easier.

The homestead on New York avenue has been sold, and Mr. Corey is content at his present address. There within sight is the sea, but it does not beckon him to other places. He dreams of Sean and Kathleen. Let younger men joust with giants.

Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
library@vineyardgazette.com