by Frank Conroy
The Stop and Shop, on a Friday afternoon, was jam-packed with shoppers stocking up for the weekend, anticipating guests, jostling up and down the aisles in a mild frenzy. My wife was waiting in line at one of the checkout lanes. She sees Bob moving forward with a cart filled to the brim, top to bottom, and inserting himself into the express lane. The girl at the cash register protests. “This is twelve items only,” she says. “This is the express lane.”
Smiling his warm, knock-’em-dead smile, Bob reaches up and slides the little placard which says “Express Lane” from its holder and puts it facedown next to the register. “Not anymore, it isn’t,” he declares, and begins to unload his stuff. Flummoxed, the girl waits a moment, looks around, and then goes ahead and starts the long process of ringing things up. There is some grumbling from the line behind Bob, but no one has the nerve to protest. Bob no longer cares what people think. His assumption is that he’ll never see any of the other shoppers again.
I am reminded of a scene in John Cheever’s last book, Oh What a Paradise It Seems. (Cheever was a great fan of the island in its simpler days, but stopped coming when his favorite hotel—an old, rundown place with remarkable views—was demolished to be replaced by a stratospherically expensive luxury establishment.) Although the setting is not Nantucket, the scene is prophetic.
Maybelle was the name of the checkout clerk and she wore a large pin that said so. “Maybelle,” said Betsy, “would you kindly explain to this lady that this lane is the express lane for shoppers with nine items only.” “If she can’t read I’m not going to teach her,” said Maybelle. The twelve or so members in the line behind Betsy showed their approval. “It’s about time somebody said something” . . . “You tell ’em, lady, you tell ’em,” said an old man with a frozen dinner. “I just can’t stand to see someone take advantage of other people’s kindness. It’s like fascism. It isn’t that she’s breaking the law. It’s just that most of us are too nice to do anything about it. Why do you suppose they put up a sign that says nine items? It’s to make the store more efficient for everyone. You’re just like a shoplifter, only you’re not stealing groceries, you’re stealing time, you’re not stealing from the management, you’re stealing from us.”
Cheever continues the story until civil behavior breaks down and a minor riot ensues. It’s a comic scene with an edge, but an important moment in the text. (Neither my wife nor myself have ever felt quite the same toward old Bob, who has gone on to be a tremendous success in the world of finance.)
Let’s See to the Land
THERE ARE TWO FARMS ON NANTUCKET. THE first, Moors End Farm, off Polpis Road, is a small family affair selling a few vegetables, lots of flowers and plants, and, in August, a large crop of the sweetest, whitest, most tender corn imaginable. No sprays or pesticides, and no opening the ears looking for worms. You buy a dozen or so ears and go your merry way. (It is exceedingly rare to find a less than perfect ear.) Although the farm does good business, and is in fact beloved by many islanders, it was almost lost due to economic pressures. The value of an acre of land—any acre—has gotten so high, and the taxes too, that farming is impractical, or would have been if the town, relevant organizations, and interested islanders hadn’t managed to pass special legislation and make financial arrangements to ensure its survival.
The other farm—Bartlett’s—also a family affair but much larger, a very big business indeed, growing many crops, selling sandwiches, gourmet salads, frozen foods, fancy breads, pastries, cheeses, fruit, and so on, was also saved by special arrangements, despite its fancy airs, greenhouses, and expensive equipment. There was a broad consensus on island that the farms, and their open spaces, must be preserved.
There have been quite a few people, for quite some time, highly concerned about development on Nantucket. Robert Mooney’s book Nantucket Only Yesterday teaches the history of the struggle between those attempting to control growth and those resisting any infringement of their freedom to do as they like with their land. (Many working and middle-class families on the island really have nothing else except their land—it is their equity.) The back-and-forth tug of war between different parties, organizations, and local government and interest groups, is a long-standing affair, going back many decades.
There is the Land Council, and I quote from their mission statement: “We negotiate with private owners to voluntarily restrict use of their land and preserve conservation values. These permanent easement agreements—conservation restrictions in Massachusetts—provide public benefits to the community and handsome tax advantages to landowners . . .” In other words, they have done the legal work so that anyone who wants to enter into such an arrangement can do so without hassle or out-of-pocket expenses. They also raise funds, clear title to hundreds of acres of vacant land, and work to protect water resources, among other things. (Nantucket has been designated a sole source aquifer by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.)
The Nantucket Land Bank is based on the proposition that it takes money to defend against money. In 1983 the Land Bank (Chapter 669) was created in law, “. . . a land conservation program created to acquire, hold, and manage important open space resources and endangered landscapes . . .” The money used to buy land on the open market is acquired by a 2 percent real estate transfer fee on almost every house or parcel of land that gets sold. A powerful idea indeed, put forward by the Nantucket Planning Commission, adopted by the voters of Nantucket and established by a special act of the state legislature. . . . Approximately 40 percent of Nantucket is protected by private conservation groups, the Town of Nantucket, and the Land Bank. Big money—almost a hundred million dollars—has worked to protect land. The Land Bank often operates in tandem with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, and there is little doubt that they have saved entire parts of the island.
My house is just 1.3 miles from Altar Rock, the highest point on the island. For years my family has driven, jogged, or walked inland to visit the spot from which you can see hundreds and hundreds of acres of open moors, completely wild except for the ancient dirt tracks like the Barnard Valley Road, or old short cuts to the South Shore. It is a breathtaking panorama—one can see the harbor in the distance, Sankaty lighthouse, the low tree lines of distant hidden forests of scrub oak. Without protection, houses, developments, mini-villages, and the like would be scattered all the way across the interior. Action was taken in the nick of time. Public action, not dependent on philanthropy. This particular part of the island was saved—a part of the 40 percent. The conservation movement has grown stronger over time, although there is still much to be done.
Ironically, a proposal put forward by Senator Edward Kennedy in 1972—The Nantucket Sound and Islands Trust Bill—would have accomplished everything on the conservationists’ agenda, and then some, making great tracts of land on both Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard “forever wild” as well as strictly controlling new construction. In hindsight such an action was clearly the way to go and would have benefited everyone—islanders and summer people alike. But the residents of Nantucket voted against the bill, presumably out of fear of Federalism, loss of control of their destiny and their equity, and other boogeymen. Perhaps the bill would have died at the federal level no matter what the local vote, but at a special town meeting in 1976, Nantucket “lost forever the possibility of preserving its shoreline for the public benefit . . .” as Mr. Mooney put it. (He also makes the point that there have been some pretty strange votes on the island over time, like the resounding yes vote for a downsizing of the state legislature, which resulted in the loss of the Nantucket seat. A self-imposed partial disenfranchment, in other words.)
The Kennedy bill would have effectively prevented the expensive, complicated, and sometimes controversial growth of local government caused by a patchwork of zoning, planning boards, appeals procedures, building regulations, etc., involving more committees, more civil servants, more legal fees, and more paper. The history of the Historic District Commission is an example of the inap
propriateness (or so it seems to me) of the kind of reflexive expansion of activity that sometimes weakens a good idea.
The original concept was to protect that beautiful part of town behind the Pacific National Bank that I described earlier. So far, so good. The impact of a modern structure, or a bad remodeling, would have had a horrendous effect on the area, destroying its integrity. But when the “Historic District” was expanded to include the whole island, a lot of people were unhappy, even to the point of flaunting the regulations. Who says I have to use cedar shingles as siding? Who says, since my house is hidden from public view, I can’t put in a bay window, or paint my fence green, or build an extension? Who says my projected dream house cannot exceed a certain height even if I build it in the middle of a fifty-acre lot?
The expansion has given rise to the worst possible outcome—some people obey the law, and some people get away with ignoring it, since, from a practical point of view, it can’t be well enforced. It may even be unconstitutional. One wonders sometimes if the powers that be on Nantucket don’t regard the Constitution as just another bit of Federalism, or the Supreme Court as nothing more than a bunch of off-islanders who can’t be expected to understand.
A long time ago there was a bumper sticker which said, simply:
NANTUCKET
A young woman of my acquaintance,
who would occasionally appear in town in
a full chador just for the fun of it
(she’s a WASP), slapped on an addition every
time she found one:
ALAS NANTUCKET
The generally somber tone is not to be
taken too seriously. It is more nostalgia
than pessimism.
Degrees of Erosion
ISLANDERS SOMETIMES REFER TO NANTUCKET as “The Rock,” calling up images of the Prudential (a piece of the rock, i.e., a buildable lot) as well as Alcatraz (for some the island is indeed a kind of prison). But the reality is that it’s more like a heap of sand, constantly changing shape under the influence of wind and water. There are eighty-eight miles of shoreline, and more than half of it is subject to varying degrees of erosion. The lighthouse at Great Point, a historic structure if there ever was one, collapsed into the sea in 1984. (A replacement was built with federal funds, thanks to the efforts of Senator Kennedy.) Over four hundred feet of land separating the lighthouse and the ocean had simply disappeared.
The whole length of the South Shore faces the open ocean—the nearest land to the east being Portugal—and suffers dramatic and unpredictable erosion from winter storms. Through the years people have built too close to the surf, as if unaware of what has happened in the past, and many houses have been lost.
An entire area called Codfish Park, lying below ’Sconset between the town and the sea, contained nothing but rough fishing shacks in the old days. But as the building boom progressed and summer rentals shot up, small houses and cottages were built. A storm in December of 1992 destroyed many of them.
A year earlier a storm known on the island as the “No Name Storm,” which eventually was called “The Perfect Storm” in the book and movie of that name, did tremendous damage to Old North Wharf and flooded the streets of the lower part of town. No part of Nantucket, even on the harbor side, is immune to the forces of nature.
Codfish Park.
The most sought after land, commanding the highest prices out of town, is the high ground with water views (even distant water views). Almost all the houses erected in the nineties are sited thus. I remember, a long time ago, when a choice area called Blueberry Hill off Polpis Road, where Nantucket families had picked fruit since time-out-of-mind, was bought by some summer people who built an impressive house. Tom Giffin, then the editor of the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, wrote an editorial bemoaning the situation. He wondered if all the high ground, wherever it was on the island, would be bought up and built upon. At the time some thought him an alarmist, but his remarks turned out to be prophetic. What he worried about has happened. There is no unprotected underdeveloped high land left on the island. (Of course “high” is a relative term. Nantucket is so flat, for the most part, that even a modest elevation is significant.) Trophy houses abound, which is one of the reasons why one must go on foot, rather than driving the roads, to get a better feel for the island. From the roads you see the summer mansions on high ground to the left and to the right. On foot it is possible to discover surprising places—a ramshackle little cottage (called a “tear-down” in the real estate business) at the edge of a salt marsh, the cranberry bogs, the wild and beautiful land and water around the University of Massachusetts Field Station, or a large pond in a shallow valley in the moors. (The Field Station recently closed, making everyone both sad and nervous. The director, Wes Tiffany, was much admired and is now gone. The large spread of land is so astronomically valuable that the pressures on the university to sell it— they promise they won’t—must be strong indeed.) It is a sad fact that many visitors to Nantucket do not, in fact, ever see much of what is most beautiful about the island.
RECENT TRENDS ON Nantucket bear out the observations of Thorstein Veblen, the economic thinker who, in Chapter Four of The Theory of the Leisure Class, first proposed the idea of “conspicuous consumption” as a driving force in human affairs. Enormous houses have sprung up like expensive mushrooms, making the old whaling days’ competition on Upper Main Street look like small potatoes (to mix my metaphors). Long before the stock market began its bearish trend, the island became a status symbol much more potent than the Hamptons, or Palm Beach, or indeed anyplace on the East Coast. Seriously rich people began to make their mark as more and more young ordinary people were forced to leave the island where they were born because they could not afford to live there, because they had no future there.
An irresistible example of the degree of stratification in the society is implicit in the case of Tom Johnson, a forty-year-old ordinary Joe who got around the land and housing problem by creating a living space hidden underground on unimproved property in the woods owned by the Boy Scouts of America. Johnson, whose abode was discovered in 1999 by a deer hunter, should certainly have qualified for Eagle Scout merit badges by making, as described in Nantucket Only Yesterday, an “underground home . . . found to be warm and comfortable, with heating and plumbing and water and shower facilities.” Johnson was of course busted by the town, but quite a few native islanders were tickled pink at the man’s ingenuity. He had not needed a million or two to make his home. The story was picked up by the national press and television, and the island got a good deal of publicity, albeit a special kind.
Who will do the construction work for the conspicuous homes when the labor pool of islanders in the trades is too small to meet demand? When the cost of even temporary housing for working people is prohibitive? Off-island crews, who fly in from Hyannis and New Bedford every morning, sometimes bringing lunch, to put in their eight hours and fly back to the mainland before the sun sets. This has been going on for some time, and could only happen in a place where getting a plumber, a carpenter, a house painter can be sufficiently complex as to cause at least one rich and famous woman (who shall remain nameless) to scandalize practically everyone by offering triple time to workmen who would show up to do the work now, so the new house would be ready for guests in time for the start of the season. Given the high cost of skilled labor to begin with, this was wretched excess indeed.
Who lives in the big houses? One day I saw a uniformed maid in a large hardware/lumber/department store called Marine Home Center holding a shopping list presumably drawn up by her employer. She wanted thirty-five plastic garment bags, forty complete sets of bed linen (from Ireland), a set of Sheffield china her mistress had previously selected, a Weber grill, and twenty lightbulbs—and put it in the black Lexus SUV outside, please. I actually overheard this, and I proceeded to have a fantasy about the people paying for it all.
Their house is on the high ground with a view of the harbor. They paid three and
a half million for it, and it is the wife’s job, with the help of her staff, to keep it up and running. The garden is a particular pleasure of hers, as are the relaxed lunches with friends at the Chanticleer in ’Sconset, or 21 Federal, or The Galley by the water. She has children and there is a nanny. She enjoys sailing, swimming, and horseback riding. She keeps busy.
The husband works on Wall Street but comes up every Thursday afternoon in his co-leased private jet (forty minutes’ flight time) and doesn’t leave till Monday morning. On Nantucket he has paid three hundred thousand dollars for a golf club membership (I kid you not), where he plays a good game and gets a lot of business done with his peers or special guests he’s brought with him from the city. In an odd way neither the husband nor the wife has much of a connection to Nantucket, which is simply the luxurious setting for their summertime activities.
I should mention that they have a cat, Ramses, upon whom they dote. At the end of the season, when they leave in a blue Ford Expedition to catch the ferry (having reserved space six months earlier), Ramses is nowhere to be found. The cat has understood the significance of all the suitcases, of the pink cat box, and has taken off into the scrub. After a good deal of discussion, the husband convinces the wife that they have no choice—they have to catch the ferry and leave Ramses behind. They will alert the caretaker to keep an eye out for the animal. Quite a few cats suffer this fate every year.
Ramses undergoes some severe life-style changes, by the way. From Tender Vittles, his diet changes, first to frogs, garter snakes, and small birds, but eventually, as the cat becomes feral and grows to seventeen pounds, to squirrels, pheasants, and rabbits. Feral cats are considered a dangerous nuisance by islanders, and they are legally shot and killed by the sometime game warden, deer hunters, and duck hunters. Ramses is one of ninety cats so dispatched that particular winter. It is, in fact, the caretaker who finishes him off with his shotgun, while out flushing game birds.
