MARGARET KNIGHT

508-627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

Chappaquiddick is in the midst of spring — very green at ground level, the blueberry, beach plum and wild honeysuckle flowering at the midlevel, and the oaks and sassafras covered with pale green young and inexperienced leaves up overhead. Even the late beetlebung are releasing leaves from their tight winter buds. Despite the island’s spring-like status, Memorial Day states that, ready or not, summer is here.

On Monday, May 25, from noon to 4 p.m., the entire Vineyard community is invited to the annual Memorial Day picnic at the Tashmoo Spring Pumping Station on State Road in Vineyard Haven. You are invited to bring a picnic lunch and enjoy the activities. There will be rowboats available on the pond, children’s games, pony rides for the very young, and free lemonade and ice cream cones. Grilling chefs will be on hand, and live music by Tristan Israel and friends, and the Flying Elbows, who will perform bluegrass music for their 28th consecutive year. The VTA buses (on their regular routes) will be stopping at the Tashmoo Overlook to drop off and pick up passengers. In case of rain, the picnic will be held the following Sunday, May 31.

After seeing the revealing aerial shot of Norton Point on the front page of last week’s paper, I asked Peter Wells how much the current in the channel had moderated since the opening at Norton Point has grown smaller. He said there hadn’t been any high tides for the past few weeks. The water only comes up to about mid-tide and then goes out, which is what it did when the breach first happened two years ago. Katama Bay has shoaled up so much that it might be restricting the flow of the tides. At the rate the opening is shrinking, Peter may have made a mistake in printing the new car tickets as round-trip instead of one-way.

Evidently the new ferry loading plan is working out well. It has helped to have deck hands on almost all the time, telling the cars and passengers in which order to load — two cars first, then passengers, then the third car. Deckhands have helped with the ferry lines, too, although there are occasional long lines, for example, when the trucks finished painting the yellow lines down the middle of the road this past week. This year’s crew seemed a little more experienced, as the lines are pretty straight. Last time, it looked as if the one controlling the brush had had a little too much to drink.

Starting today, the ferry will be on its summer schedule, running straight through from 6:45 a.m. to midnight. It certainly makes things easier not having to worry about missing the ferry in the evening (and waiting an hour and a half for the next one), or feeling that jolt of panic when you realize you’ve forgotten about the time — and the time may be past!

I’m sure the winter ferry schedule is more of a burden for more sociable people than it is for me. Being an early-to-bed kind of person, I find it can provide a good excuse to leave somewhere early. Actually, just mentioning the ferry any time provides lots of excuses — and some of them are valid! Usually if I mumble something about the ferry, people say, “Oh, you better go. You have to catch the ferry!” And if I’m at home, the winter schedule allows me to know the time frames in which my family members may be leaving or arriving home. Maybe these reasons for not minding the winter schedule are just excuses I make to myself so I won’t care that I live in a really inconvenient place where half the time I have to wait to go out or come home. But the ferry is part of living on an island, which I do like. To paraphrase former captain Nelson Smith, whom Peter likes to quote: “No one held a gun to your back and said you had to live over there.”