Chappy Town Column: Sept. 18

“The Final Trip”; a celebration of life and potluck for Trip Barnes will gather at the Agricultural Hall in West Tisbury on Sunday, Sept. 27 at 2 p.m. Everyone is welcome to come and to share their Clarence A. Barnes 3rd stories. You are sure to hear some doozies and to learn new stuff about the larger than life Chappy summer kid who became an Island legend in his own time. 

Trip’s family owned the big house on the bluff above the Quammox landing. The property then included the valley to the west of the bluff and ran all the way from the Katama shore to Litchfield Road. The house now belongs to the Chasin’s. When the ownership changed hands from Cong. Clarence Barnes 2nd decades ago, it caught the attention of the New York news. Trip happened to be sitting at a bar in Manhattan when the television set above the bar showed a photo of his ancestral summer home. Trip told me that he was about to say, “Hey guys, that’s the house I grew up in!” But he looked around at the other guys elbowed up to the bar in the middle of an afternoon and decided that none of them would believe him. 

I’ve always believed every story that Trip has told. I’ve known him long enough to know that he didn’t need to fabricate any tales. His life was a continuous series of “you can’t make this stuff up.”