Stand at the top of Main street in Edgartown and look down. You will see a traditional New England village, studded with white church steeples and tiny green parks. Now stand at the foot of Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs and look up. You will see another traditional New England village, this one studded with Victorian gingerbread architecture and a bustling, colorful streetfront.
These are just two of the Vineyard’s six traditional New England town centers. The three down-Island main streets are graced by beautiful coastal harbors. The three up-Island town centers are set in rich pastoral landscapes.
These are places where commerce mingles with daily life in that most pleasant way.
The late Henry Beetle Hough wrote: “Anyone who is feeling blue or doubtful concerning the human race or the ordered world should get on a bicycle and ride to West Tisbury on any pleasant morning. Somehow the dewy aspect of this seemly village, morning fresh in sunlight, is an irresistible comfort and assurance.”
Thoreau is best known for his writings from Walden Pond, but in fact he lived most of his life in the Concord town center. In a book about New England towns, Perry D. Westbrook recounted how Thoreau was asked once why he did not care to see more of the world: “He protested that he had traveled far in Concord and still had more to see and learn there.”
True enough. A person can live all her life in a town like Edgartown — or Vineyard Haven or Chilmark or West Tisbury — and still have more to see and learn there.
Today in this seventy-sixth Invitation Issue of the Vineyard Gazette, the newspaper staff reports from the Main streets of the Vineyard, where they have fanned out over the last three weeks to record life in the town centers.
They went to downtown Edgartown, a town that shutters itself in winter these days, much to the consternation of some residents, but now is ready to open for the season with a decidedly upscale crowd.
They went to Circuit avenue, where post office square is the heart of a bustling village, and many old-timers thank their lucky stars that the post office never moved out of town.
They went to Beetlebung Corner where acres of daffodils are in bloom and it’s still so quiet that an osprey can take the time to devour a bit of road kill right outside the Chilmark town hall.
And to go along with all the reporting and photography, West Tisbury artist Paul Karasik has sketched the three down-Island harbors that are so much the center of life here, especially in the summer.
And that, after all, is the history and tradition of this special edition of the Gazette published each year in early May: an invitation to summer.
So consider yourself invited — no RSVP required.
And welcome to the Vineyard summer of two thousand and eight.
— Julia Wells
Editor
Comments
Comment policy »