During a late night talk with the two Joe's last week I recalled, incorrectly, when I first stepped foot on Martha's Vineyard. I had told them it was back in 1993. When I got home I went digging for that old photo album and discovered it was actually in August 1987. I was 19 years old at the time and sporting my then Ralph Lauren Jersey Shore preppy look.
It was August 21, 1987 when we took the ferry over with our car, which was a 1985 Ford Bronco II. The passenger rate at the time was $7.50 and the car rate was $26.50. Today the rate is $10.50 per passenger and $160.00 one way for a vehicle during the summer months. My recent trip with my larger pick-up cost me $346.00 round trip.
We took the Islander over which was put into service in 1950 and had an original purchase price of $1,010,043. It was sold at auction to an upstate New York fruit farmer in 2009 for $23,500.
Our home away from home was at The Tisbury Inn. It sat on Main Street in Vineyard Haven and was a 33-room inn established in 1794. It had been renovated two years before we arrived and was a most convenient place to stay Down - Island for those coming over without a car. The rate for a double occupancy room with a private bath was $75 per night.
In December 2001 the inn suffered a devastating fire that destroyed the building. Eighteen months later the building was demolished and rebuilt to what is now The Mansion House. These days a room there in June
will cost you $519 a night for a room with a king sized bed. During my more recent trips there I didn't know what had happened to The Tisbury until I wrote this piece. It wasn't the first time that the structure in that footprint had burned, in 1883 a devastating fire destroyed 62 buildings in
downtown Vineyard Haven. The original Mansion House, later renamed The Tisbury Inn, and then after the 2001 fire, renamed back to the Mansion House, was burned to the ground with only the chimney remaining. Interestingly, VH did not have its own fire department at the time
and the closest, the Cottage City Fire Department, was called to help battle the flames. Cottage City was once part of Edgartown, until it broke free in 1880 and became what we now know it as Oak Bluffs. One of the fire "engines" or really hand water pumps the department purchased in
1855 is on display at The Edgartown Fire Department Museum and is pulled out for a demonstration every July 4th.
I vividly remember renting a little Boston Whaler at the Dockside Marina and taking it out for a cruise. It was great sailing out, but the wind against tide, which I didn't know existed
at the time, made for a hair raising and f'in scary ride back in. I remember coming back to a calm harbor looking like we had been assaulted and scared to death. I've never been so glad to stand on ground again.
My first steps at Menemsha were some 38 years ago. Funny to think that last week I may have stepped over those same rocks I was standing on to get down to the water to fish. That's 1987, the years of the "Black Monday" stock market crash, the year Ronald Reagan told Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall", and the New York Giants won their first Super Bowl (XXI).
I remember Menemsha as being more build up with a busier marina back then, but that's just my memory. Maybe 38 years ago the fishery was more robust. And, while this year is the 50th anniversary of the release of the movie JAWS, it was still fresh in the minds of the locals there at it was only 12 years young back then. I'm sure more of the ORCA was still visible in the channel that
connects Menemsha Pond with the Menemsha Bight. Below is an image taken from 1988, a year after I was there, with one of the ORCA boats still on the west shore of the channel. Eventually the weather, and fans looking for souvenirs, would pick away what was left. If you go there there are still fragments of the boats, channels, and rails used during the film shoot.
The cost of the original JAWS was nine million dollars. Filming took place on Martha's Vineyard in 1974 and lasted 159 days, at a cost of $30,000 per day.
I had started the process of becoming a Newark firefighter at that point so I was interested in all things fire service. With the trucks outside I stopped for a picture at the Gay Head Volunteer Fire Department. I'm not sure if they run out of the same house these days, I doubt it.
And Gay Head, whose name was officially changed to Aquinnah back in 1997, was the home to Gay Head Cliffs. If I knew I had this picture I would have snapped a similar one on my most recent visit, just to see how much the landscape has changed.
While there were signs prohibiting nude bathing and soaking in the clay pools that were formed in the cliffs, people still took advantage of it. It was weird seeing people, naked, and
covered with all different colors of the clay walking around or baking in the sun. They say it was the best natural spa treatment you could give yourself. I stayed dressed, from head to foot. At one point while we were walking a boat ran aground and myself an a guy in the buff went out and helped them get off the rocks. It was also weird shaking a guys hand for a job well done while he sat there with his junk swinging from left to right as we walked out. Maybe I shouldn't put hand and job in the same sentence. When in Rome do as the Roman's I guess.
