MARGARET KNIGHT

508-627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

If you dropped in here from another planet, or just came from some other part of the country, the Island weather wouldn’t give you much of a hint as to what season it is. We had a great snowstorm last Saturday, with about eight inches of snow, but by Tuesday, it was all gone due to rain and high temperatures. It’s odd to see a five-day weather forecast in January predicting more than one high of over 50 degrees. On Wednesday’s sunny morning, it was 70 degrees by 9 a.m. inside our greenhouse, and at 11 a.m., I was outside soaking up vitamin D with the chickens, who were sunbathing on the chicken patio (otherwise known as our terrace).

Usually Chappaquiddick receives less snow than the rest of the Island — at least in part due to it being a smaller land area surrounded by water — but when I went to West Tisbury on Sunday morning, I saw that, for once, they had less than us. A strong wind pushed this storm in, making nearly impenetrable snow drifts on the dirt road to our house. While out cross-country skiing on Sunday, I passed a would-be skier shoveling out his truck from a drift on our road. It reminded me of the years when we used to get lots of snow — pulling a toboggan with kids and groceries on a path through the woods between our house and the tar road, or skiing out the dirt road to dance rehearsals. I’m grateful for four-wheel drive vehicles now.

There’s another potluck on Wednesday, Feb. 1 at the Chappy Community Center, starting at 6 p.m. At the last potluck, hosted by Fran and Bob Clay, nearly 20 people gathered to share a meal. You can find out quite a lot about the island and its people at a potluck. I was impressed to find out that Fran had just finished a 1,000 piece puzzle, and would likely do three more before spring. Sitting with Ruth Welch, Dennis Goldin and Nancy Slate, we heard a little about Ruth’s many years in Switzerland, the village cottage she owned, which was near Geneva where she lived in the same apartment for more than 50 years, and how she showed horses for many years.

We also found out about Blind Joe Amos, whose grave is on Chappy. Dennis and Nancy knew about him, and said you can even Google him. Surprisingly, his name popped up first on my search, on the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Web site. It says Blind Joe Amos was an ordained Mashpee Indian minister “with substantial credentials, a reputation for great sermons and a propensity to fiddle.” He was a leader in an insurrection against Europeans taking wood from Mashpee, and he “initiated the tradition of questioning the insensitivity of those who were unfamiliar with the ways of the People of the First Light.” I wonder how he ended up buried on Chappy. From his grave, we see he died April 17, 1869, at age 63. The stone says: I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course, kept the faith. I’m forever with the Lord. It’s immortality.

After Dennis found out about Blind Joe Amos, he happened to meet a young woman out at Wasque who was looking for his grave. She was a great, great, (maybe another great or two) granddaughter of his. Dennis was one of the few people she could have run into who would be able to tell her she was looking in the wrong place, and direct her to the gravesite.

Which brings us to Peter Wells’s next Chappy question: How many graveyards are there and where are they located, including isolated marked gravestones? Maybe we need to offer a prize, because no one has responded to the question of culverts under the road. Is it possible that people don’t find that to be an interesting question?

On Wednesday, Peter and I went out to research the answer to the question of culverts under town-owned roads. It turns out there is just one, located near Geof and Norma Kontje’s house, before the curve where the Dike Road heads off to East Beach. The culvert is before their house, coming from the ferry and, although you might think the water flows toward Cape Pogue Pond, it actually flows inland into the Great Chappaquiddick Swamp, as Geof calls it. That’s the swamp that covers many acres of the center of Chappy and seems to have no outlet, other than possibly through peat layers under the road on the other side of Geof’s house. There is a great drop-off there, and a marshy area below that eventually forms a little stream that empties out into Cape Pogue near the Potter’s boathouse.

In speaking with Edo Potter about this area, at that first 90 degree curve in the road, she remembers a big pit where her father dug sand and used it to build the road out to his hunting shack on the marsh islands in Poucha Pond. Later, her father used to back up his truck into the hole to load cattle to take them to market. That hole has been filled, but there’s another “borrow pit” still visible across the road next to the Kontje’s house.

I’d never been “hacked” before until recently. Some of you might have received an odd e-mail from me offering things I wouldn’t be likely to try to sell you, or great job schemes like posting links on Web sites. Someone stole my e-mail contacts and sent those out. It feels kind of like being robbed, or having someone break into my house. I apologize.