Finding Martha's Vineyard

by Jill Nelson

  Connie: Some friends invited my husband and I and our children up here to visit them, I think it was in 1977. My husband was dragging his heels. He said, “Oh, that place is full of snooty people, I don’t want to go.” We finally came up here Labor Day weekend. We met people on the boat, the kids met people on the boat, and we par-tied all weekend without the kids because they partied themselves, and we said, “Hey!” The next summer we rented a house for a month and had a very good time. The following year we rented a house for the whole summer.

  Irma: My husband and I had retired to Spain. Connie wrote us a letter that started off, “This is it!” She said that she was going to be here in the summers and not coming to Spain, and we followed her here the next year. Since they were not going to come to us anymore, we had to come to them.

  Connie: Someone once made the statement to me that the winter is just something to get through until she could begin her life anew on the Vineyard, and I agree with that. I enjoy coming here, I like the sense of community, I like the ambience, I certainly like the physical beauty. I love entertaining on the porch.

  My husband established a tradition. Every Sunday after church, people would come by for hors d’ouevres and Bloody Marys. We’d have a porch full of people.

  Irma: The great majority of young people who grow up summers here, they make something of their lives, they don’t just mess it up. My granddaughters and their friends, they all have outstanding jobs; they’re doing very well for themselves. You don’t meet many kids here who just mess up their lives.

  Connie: Many of these kids, to a degree, grew up in a white world. Coming here was an opportunity for them to be with black people. And if you had an argument with them, it was about the issue and not about race. That was a yoke that was removed.

  The rule with the grandchildren was, you can’t go off the porch without an adult. My grandson was out on the porch one day, and it must have looked as if he was going to step off the porch, I don’t think he was, but anyway, it appeared that way to somebody. They yelled out their window, “Don’t go off that porch, Ian!” I saw him standing there, looking around to see where this phantom voice came from. I never figured it out and neither did he. But someone was watching him. That’s how the Vineyard is.

  I have developed a nice cadre of friends. We all sit together on the beach in “The Circle,” we all have T-shirts saying “The Circle.” Every year the same group of people sit in the same spot on the beach, every day. You always know if you go and sit in the circle there’s going to be someone to chat with. They’re not necessarily water people, but they’re certainly beach people. We talk about everything under the sun, and during the years we have been sitting together we have come to know each other very well, the joys, the sorrows. We laugh, tell jokes, and have very intellectual and very stupid conversations.

  I think anytime you come into a group of people who have bonded strongly it’s difficult to move right in. But every year we have new people in the circle, and every year we have a big party, everyone brings food. The only qualification to join the

  circle is to show up with a beach chair, you can’t stand up. And you can’t read. We don’t read in the circle, we talk.

  I certainly am aware of covert and subtle racism, but I have not felt it here, and I am ever on guard. I felt my children were safe here, and as teenagers they had a great deal of freedom, and certainly that would not have been the case on Long Island. It is very hard for people who are involved in antisocial things to get off the island.

  Irma: I hit the beach every morning, I’m a Polar Bear. I’m a Cottager, and we play bridge in the morning. At twelve o’clock we go back to the beach. That’s most of the day, isn’t it?

  Connie: I belong to a book club, I belong to the Cottagers, I’m a commentator at the fashion show, I’m a Polar Bear. I belong to a nameless group of people, I call us the Lonely Ladies. We’re widows, women who find themselves single later in life. We meet every other Wednesday for lunch and chitchat. I belong to a bridge club and we play every Wednesday. And then around one o’clock I’m back at the beach.

  don: I get up and do diverse things around the house. You see, if the ladies don’t do any of the housework, cooking and all that, somebody’s got to do it. And I’m delegated to do that.

  (Donald Wheat passed away in 2004 at age 90.)

  What We Love Here

  On Martha’s Vineyard, even though it is a few thousand miles from the Arctic Circle and in the worst of winters doesn’t get anywhere near as cold, you can swim with the Polar Bears every morning from the Fourth of July until Labor Day. You don’t have to be invited, or know anyone, or even be able to swim. All you have to do is be inclined to get down to Oak Bluffs Town Beach (also known as the Inkwell) any

  Myrtle O’Brien (center) and original Polar Bears. Stanley Maynard (right)

  time after seven thirty in the morning. The Polar Bears will be there, and they will extend a warm welcome.

  The Polar Bears began around 1945, when a group of women and men began to meet and swim together each morning during the long summer. The group originated as a morning ritual among people who stayed at the guest house of Mrs. Myrtle O’Brien on Upper Circuit Avenue, on the hill between the Oak Bluffs Public Library and Massasoit Avenue. Mrs. O’Brien, a woman of strong character and humor, insisted that her guests accompany her to the beach for an early morning immersion in the Atlantic Ocean.

  After their swim, the Polar Bears returned to Mrs. O’Brien’s kitchen, where each member of the group had their very own mug, personalized by Mrs. O’Brien with their name written in red nail polish. They’d sit around her big, black iron stove, eat doughnuts, and talk stuff as their bathing suits dried and bodies warmed. Then everyone would go about their business and their separate ways—until the next morning.

  The group was christened the Polar Bears by Mrs. O’Brien (now long deceased), although there is some disagreement about exactly why. Some say it was because they swam so early in the morning, others because the water of the Atlantic is so cold that only polar bears would swim in it; others insist that the name is a combination of the two or something else altogether.

  Nowadays, on July 4, the official beginning of the Polar Bears’ season, it is not surprising to find a hundred people in attendance. They do not all swim. Some stand in a circle in the water, exercising, while others swim slow laps. Others cluster on the beach, gingerly easing into the cold water or drying off with faded, well-used beach towels.

  Still others do not venture onto the beach or into the water, but instead sit on the memorial benches installed by the Friends of Oak Bluffs or the concrete seawall that borders the beach, across from Waban Park, talking, enjoying the sun, greeting friends not seen since the previous day or summer. While the numbers have grown too large for anyone’s kitchen, good food and camaraderie remain essential ingredients of the Polar Bear experience. On July 4 and every Monday until Labor Day, members provide an enormous, complimentary, and always delicious potluck breakfast.

  Walkers, joggers, bicyclists, and skaters invariably slow down as they pass by, made curious by the crowd of people, the laughter, or sometimes the sound of singing voices wafting off the water. It’s nearly impossible to pass a Polar Bear by without being greeted cheerfully. There is never a shortage of Polar Bears ready and eager to answer questions and quick to invite the curious to join them, if not that day, then the next. I know the Polar Bears are among the most democratic of institutions on Martha’s Vineyard, maybe in the world, although I’m not sure of that. They serve the function of a town square and egalitarian public meeting place on an island that, like most islands, simultaneously invites visitors and yet in subtle ways is closed to them. For the most part, socializing here is done in private homes, either by invitation or casual familiarity between friends. As often, a summer resident, already with a house full of people, welcomes one, three, four friends who happen to drop by, and suddenly there’s a party of sorts. Here, invitations are extended c
asually, by telephone or when one runs into friends at the post office, grocery store, or beach, but they are invitations nonetheless.

  Once past the age of going to the bars and clubs in Oak Bluffs or Edgartown, the only of the six towns on the island that sells liquor—the rest of the island is dry—it is not easy to connect here. Newcomers to the Vineyard, unless they have young children who meet other children on the beach and insist upon seeing them again, pulling their parents into a relationship, often find it difficult to crack the social scene.

  It is here on this beach that it is possible to connect with a diverse group of people on the island. The Polar Bears, the ones who have been coming for decades or those who visit for a few weeks each year, are, as a rule, a curious, talkative bunch. Sitting on the seawall drinking a cup of coffee and munching a doughnut, I am convinced you can find out about practically anything you want. Where to fish in the morning? What’s a good restaurant? What day is garbage picked up and where to buy the necessary dump stickers? Is anything going on that weekend? Who has the best prices on lobsters? What’s going on socially? Any and all questions can and will be answered. And if you don’t get an answer immediately, you can bet that someone will have a response for you the following morning at seven thirty.

  Friendships are begun and nurtured in this early morning community. Some last through the summer to be put aside as fall approaches and renewed again the next year; others thrive and blossom year-round. Births are celebrated here, deaths mourned. The successes and the setbacks of life are appreciated and shared in the early mornings on this small beach.

  The cold waters of the Atlantic anoint, rejuvenate, and, some say, heal. Immersing ourselves in the ocean, we are made buoyant, the aches and pains, physical and psychic, of life on land washed away by the waters. What better way to greet the day than by sharing this buoyancy, this cleansing, this prayer without words or denomination, with like-minded souls?

  Eloise Downing Allen, a native of Roanoke, Virginia, was married to G. Wesley Allen for fifty-nine years. She is the mother of two sons, Wesley and Mark, and has six grandchildren. Allen was elected the first black woman moderator of the 68,000 mem-

  ber Philadelphia Presbytery in 1982, and was active in many civic groups in Philadelphia, where she and her husband settled in 1947, the same year she first visited Martha’s Vineyard.

  Eloise: I’ve been a Polar Bear since the I970s. We go swimming every morning, rain or shine, at seven thirty. I was walking Waban Park for exercise, and as I would walk by I would see these people going in the water early in the morning, and I’d think how crazy they were. I’d walk around the park and started thinking, This is probably the most boring thing I’ve ever done. So I just walked over to the seawall, and one of the ladies looked at me, smiled, and said, “Come and join us.” Next thing you know, I’m hooked. We officially start the Fourth of July. There’s an opening prayer and people bring food. I go every day of the summer while I’m here.

  When I first became part of the group there were only eight or nine people, and after the swim we’d go from house to house and have doughnuts, coffee, or something. As the group grew, we got too large to go to houses, so we used to go by the bakery. Now we have breakfast on the beach on Monday, and everyone brings something. Anyone is more than welcome to come and join the group. We have people who just sit on the bench and watch, we have people who exercise together, and we have people who swim. You’re free to choose whichever you want. If you want to be an official Polar Bear, that costs five dollars. That pays for the paper goods for the breakfast and if somebody gets sick, we send them a card. I think there are 111 official Polar Bears, but it’s not like one hundred and some people all summer.

  Eloise Downing Allen

  I first came to the Vineyard in 1947. My sister, Gloria Pope, was in Boston getting a master’s degree at Boston University and met people who had places here who talked her into coming. They talked about it all winter, as if it was the type of place you’d never heard of. That next year, I came and spent a month at Shearer Cottage. There was an atmosphere of beauty and a certain amount of peace, not that at that young age I was looking for all that much peace, but it was something I had never experienced before. I had grown up on the beaches in Atlantic City. My mother was from Philadelphia and every August when we went to visit her family, my grandfather would send us to Atlantic City. That was my idea of a beach. But when we came here it was so totally different. People didn’t bring a lot of cars over in those days. Even though it was only about five dollars to bring your car, it was expensive. We walked from Shearer Cottage to the public beach, which we referred to among ourselves as the Inkwell, but I never saw it in print or expected to see it in print. The beach next to it, it was just sort of understood that that beach, the ten cents beach, was for the white people. There were no signs saying white or colored, but it was understood. We’d spend the whole day on the beach and go back to Shearer to shower and have dinner. After that summer, I just couldn’t think of any other place I wanted to be. My mother bought a house in 1950, and from then on, we stayed with her.

  My sister met her husband here, and my brother Lylburn—he’s now deceased, but his wife, Jean, is here—and my brother Lewis, they met their wives here. So it’s like coming home here in the summer. I see my family.

  The Co-op was a group of six couples in Philadelphia that happened to all be invited to the same dinner party one night. Chews, Carsons, Berkowitzs, an interracial couple, Moores, Edleys, and us, the Allens. We enjoyed it so much that we said, “Let’s do it more often,” but we really couldn’t afford it back then. The only way we could was we started to get together once a month and everyone brought something. Every Labor Day, we’d go to one couple’s house for Labor Day weekend, and there were about fourteen children. We started having a big Labor Day party, each couple putting five dollars a month in the pot. Then one weekend I invited them to Martha’s Vineyard, just the couples, not the children. Some stayed at my mother’s and some at Liz White’s, the sister of Lincoln Pope, my sister’s husband. We all had such a good time that weekend. At some point when we looked at the treasury we had three or four hundred dollars, so much money. Somebody said, Let’s buy a place on Martha’s Vineyard, and we all laughed. But the more we thought about it, we said, Let’s check it out.

  My mother was still here, she hadn’t gone home yet. So I called and said, Would you and Mabel Sanders look around and see if you can see a place that would accommodate this group, six couples and fourteen children. They found the Maxwell cottage, the house that Millie Finley bought, and this house, and one other place. We sent five people up to look at those three places, and they liked this one, took pictures, and brought them back. This cost $8,500. We decided we’d put up $3,000 cash, which meant each couple had to come up with $500. Well, in this group of five lawyers and one undertaker, the older lawyer and the undertaker came up with their $500. The other four of us had to borrow the other $500. This was in I958. We called the house the Co-op.

  We drew for rooms. There are twelve bedrooms in the house, and we developed a policy that you couldn’t have guests. You could come when you wanted, just notify whoever was here that you were coming, and that was just out of courtesy. That worked for eighteen years. When six couples bought a house, I think people were almost selling tickets waiting for the explosion; they knew that this thing was going to erupt. What they didn’t know was that we had been a group for almost ten years. We’d have our little parties with our little drinks and some people drink too much and cuss you out or tell you get out of my house, but you all remain good friends. It’s like a family, you know.

  The group never fell out. Someone died, another couple divorced, kids grew up, and eventually we bought them out. We had no intention of buying a twelve-bedroom house for a family of four. I had opted not to work when the kids were coming up. Once I got a taste of Martha’s Vineyard I couldn’t sacrifice my summers by working, which is why I now have to run a guest house, so we can
have a house here. Look at this view: How can you not want to be here?

  A lot of people say that when they get on the boat, it’s as if something is lifted.

  When we get off the boat, we don’t lock our car or our house ‘til we get ready to get back on the boat. I don’t know how long that’s going to last, but for all these years we’ve enjoyed that. Generally, people don’t seem so uptight here. There seems to be a more friendly interchange with people here, even people you don’t know, just hello and how are you. Coming up in a small town in the South, we had to speak to everybody, so I like that.

  We usually come in mid-June and leave mid-September. We used to come in May and open up, but the trip got too long. I have six grandchildren, five girls and one boy, all teenagers, and they come to spend the summer and help out. My oldest granddaughter, Candace, has worked here, in Reliable Market. The others baby-sit sometimes. I just put five of them on two boats that left at almost the same time. I waved good-bye, I was so glad to see them go. I came back to the house and it was dead silent. I said, I want ’em back.

  I love to just sit on the porch and look at the water. Sometimes it’s gray and sometimes it’s blue and sometimes it’s lilac, pinkish. Sometimes it’s very angry. I can sit for hours and just look at the water. I love the sailboats. Never been on one, but I love them. How can I explain that?

  Being a property owner and taxpayer, I’ve unfortunately had to deal with the selectmen, various boards, the Park Department, so I’ve had to do more civic kind of stuff than I really want to do in the summer. I had to fight to get rid of the carnivals we used to have in the park in the summer. When they built the Sea View condominiums they had to make the street one-way, and people were speeding through here, and it took me two years to get a stop sign. Now, I’m dealing with this sewer situation.