From Gazette editions of March, 1935:

While telephone wires were busy with inquiries as to whether all or only part of Edgartown was being consumed, many town residents watched the spectacle — a thin line of firefighters combatting a blaze which swept across the Great Plain between Edgartown Great Pond and Katama Bay, threatening every house in its path and destroying four small buildings and grove after grove of pine and oak. The origin of the fire was still unclear, and the selectmen commissioned Chief of Police James Geddis to make an investigation.

For a time it looked as if the fire would sweep through the woods to the Sullivan Jones place, Eight Bells, and perhaps other houses in that vicinity. These properties were endangered when Manuel Swartz and a force of men took up the fight in the thick pines along the airport branch of the creek road. Working under great difficulties because of the smoke and flames and the nature of the pines, Mr. Swartz and his volunteers succeeded in checking the advance. Witnesses praised this as a fine piece of fire fighting.

Near casualty was the herd of cattle belonging to Edward T. Vincent. Assuming that they had followed their usual custom of coming to the barn for a noonday drink, their owner had not thought of their being in the line of fire. They were, however, pretty well hemmed in at their grazing field on the plain, when Steve Gentle came to the rescue and drove them to safety. The ordeal proved so great that the discontented cows were ten quarts short at their evening milking.

The newest hotel in Edgartown, the Charlotte Inn, was formally opened by Mr. and Mrs. Philip Pent. The house, built by Samiel Osborn Jr., has been entirely remodeled. The store which was operated in part of the first story has disappeared, and in its place is a spacious parlor, emblematic of hospitality, and a large dining room will look out upon a terrace. It has eleven guest rooms and five baths. The most striking thing to the visitor is the use of wallpapers reminiscent of the old period, the high ceilings and the spaciousness. The same adherence to the spirit of Edgartown is seen in the furnishings, many of the sleeping rooms being furnished in maple. The dining room furniture, too, is maple. Everywhere great care has been taken to preserve the simple dignity which goes naturally with the old house.

A minor disturbance was occasioned last week when news was spread of the acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum in New York of a painting by Jonas Lie, the title of which was Menemsha Bight, but which, as fate would have it, appeared in The New York Times as Menemsha Blight. Things like this give Vineyarders their few moments of sourness and chagrin. Errors of such a general nature occur often and inevitably through typographical slips. But there is something in the allusion to Menemsha Blight which suggests that its source lies behind mere typography, and that someone on the staff of The New York Times, unfamiliar with the word “Bight” unconsciously translated it into the exceedingly familiar “Blight.” The substitution was more unfortunate than such an uninfomed writer can possibly imagine.

The term is not common enough to be trite or to loose its flavor. It was derived, of course, from the bight of a rope, which is to say the turn or curve, and it came directly from the mouths of good seamen to the coasts along which they sailed. Menemsha Bight is particularly felicitous because it combines the usage of the Indians whose names are a fine legacy, with the usage of the early voyagers, to whom a bight was an important and an ever vivid concept.

We’re not so much concerned with the insult to Menemsha, which will survive any typographical fling, as with the evidence that the salty, strong, vividly significant word “bight” is in danger of obsolesence. It must not be allowed to go that way in a lazy, depressed, effete civilization. If it is possible these days to turn “bight” into “blight” without any lightning from the gods of the sea, what might not a contemporary landsman do with Tarpaulin Cove; and how would he manage with tying a bowline on a bight?

A total of 36.8 per cent of the population of Dukes County is being supported by public funds, either from the ERA, public welfare or soldiers’ relief. The total relief load is 479 cases, supporting 1,820 persons. Oak Bluffs is the Vineyard town having the largest percentage of the population on relief, the figure being 68.7 per cent; West Tisbury has the smallest proportion at 17.8 per cent. As a matter of fact the Oak Bluffs figure is the highest for any town in southeastern Massachusetts. Uncle Sam is bearing the largest part of the relief burden in Dukes County. The relief situation compares favorably with that in Nantucket, where the percentage of the population supported by public funds is 37.4.

Compiled by Cynthia Meisner

library@mvgazette.com