Welcome aboard we said when the mainlanders came offering big bucks for our family land, old houses, barns.

Sometime by the early 1900s, Islanders learned that they could rent the most primitive of dwellings to city folk for summer vacations.

It was 1945, the war was over and new people had bought the Home Port restaurant in Menemsha and planned to reopen it for the coming summer.

The late 1930s and early 1940s were a busy time in Chilmark as residents prepared for the privations that the impending world war would place on them.

Chilmark is enjoying the first real thunderstorm of the season with some loud thunder over Menemsha on Tuesday evening that had produced a pretty but cloudy sunset earlier. The storm caps two really hot days that folks would have called weather breeders back in the day.

This Saturday is the annual children’s fair at the Chilmark Community Church. It will be from 10 a.m. to noon. There are many games, pony rides, a bounce house and always cupcakes. There is no charge and all children are welcome.

Chilmark . . . a great place to be if you are a landscaper. The buzz of lawnmowers can be heard between every shower. The greenery is thriving and in some places gaining on us.

Chilmark will be happy to see the sun. We have grown tired of saying we need the rain...of course we do but so much for too much of a good thing.

Chilmark’s town hall now houses the town’s historic weights and measures cabinet of 1913. The wardrobe sized cabinet has been stored by the town in several locations and the condition of the case and its scale and weights went untended for a number of years.

Chilmark warmed up a bit today as the temperatures climbed into the comfortable numbers we look forward to in May.

Chilmark is in free fall already. The large number of weekend visitors that were in Menemsha last weekend was the clue. The weather was much more spring than summer but it didn’t seem to matter.