Paving Cowpaths
by Robert P. Barsanti
On an early Saturday morning, I slipped out of a sleeping house and biked to town for breakfast. When I first came to the island, before all of the chicken nachos and Maker’s Mark redrew me to my current size, my only means of transportation was my trusty Univega. Travelling by bike certainly improved my legs and let me see the island, but it is a lousy way to carry groceries or to get out of the rain. Still, I perservered through a whole year on board my bike before good sense finally caught up with me and installed me inside a Chevette.
Still, as a nod to the man I once was, I got back on board the bike that morning for a short, appetite whetting, ride for breakfast. Without the hustle of the Escalades or the constipated inching of the delivery trucks, the trip to town glided past. In the early morning, the years all blend together in a mishmash of details and signs. India Street, Gardner Street, Centre Street and all the rest look about the same as they did when I first wobbled around on my bike. And, just as it had been twenty years ago, the papers hadn’t arrived yet.
I regret that I have become a man of habits and, even worse, many of them are my father’s habits. Like him, I like to read the paper at breakfast. I fold it over, start with the sports and then move, backwards through the paper until I wind up at the front page. Like all of the highways we follow in adulthood, this began as a cowpath that time, inertia, and habit paved into semi-permanence.
Breakfast, and particularly breakfasts in restaurants, are also highways of habits. Lunch and dinner may require creativity, innovation, and presentation, but breakfast thrives in the mundane and ordinary. One restaurant may have a signature muffin, another makes donuts, a third has a great view of the harbor, but they all serve eggs, toast, pancakes, and oatmeal. Over the last twenty years, the places have moved around and changed, but little else. The Morning Glory and the Elegant Dump are memories, the Jared Coffin House and the India House are losses, but Downyflake just moved, while Even Keel and Fog Island inherited the breakfast from their ancestors.
For this morning, I rolled up to Black Eyed Susan’s, locked the bike to a horsehead pole in the sidewalk, and took a seat at the counter. In the evening, the chef prepares squab, veal, and eleven other top shelf concoctions and collisions of flavors. In the morning, however, eggs go on the grill, oatmeal stays warm, and a sauce pan of roiling water waits for Benedict. I could be back at Two Step’s Up, or even the Dory. The counter was better, the yellow plastic plates were gone, and the hollandaise sauce is a lot richer, but breakfast remains breakfast, no matter what the name atop the menu.
Out here, time moves like an eraser over the drafting paper. History lives in the smudges, half erased lines, and the odd shapes of the modern building. The best of the island incorporate the recent, and the distant, past into the present. “Black Eyed Susan’s” stands on the shoulders of the restaurants that came before it. Chef Jeff Worster may serve Pad Thai and Malaysian Pulled Pork to the Kerry’s and the Welch’s, but it is the richer cousin to the eatery it was when the Sayles and Holdgates stopped by before going scalloping.
On the other hand, the Dreamland sits cold and cashless due to the ignorance and arrogance of its former owner. In an imperiousness that would make Atropos proud, he rubbed out the old pencil marks and redrew restaurants, condominiums, and an underground (and underwater) parking garage. As time and inertia built, his wandering wallet spun to other, easier, catastrophes and left the old building to settle into its dust.
Off island developers and architects tend to see the island as a blank slate where the successes of Darien, Easthampton, and Jupiter Island can be rebuilt and reimagined with gray shingles and Adirondack chairs. They look at the empty screen or the blank paper and start building the castles in the air. Then, with their clients’ wishes hewing the rough edges, they set about creating an acre under air.
If the new owners are lucky, the off island vision loses its first contact with the island. The underground parking garage never gets built, the Super Stop and Shop dies on the drawing board, and the ten story hotel loses its head. The new plans grow in the footprint of the past and rise to its own height. If the owners are unlucky, they find themselves owning an eyesore that needs repairs, excuses, and apologies. The rare African wood candy-striped banister warps in the humid island air, the black mold grows in the dampers of the home cinema, and the shingles blow off the roof. Money will erect what it wants in the short term, but nature and time will have their way over the years. Anyone who believes otherwise can go out to Sheep Pond Road or Cisco Beach and look for houses.
In the past, islanders grew complacent about the habits of the past and the force of nature. The inertia of the past only seemed insurmountable to us; to those who guide the vast herd of money that currently runs over the island, the past was a cowpath that could become a highway. Hence, when town meeting passed on the Westmoor because of all of the wetlands and the expense, investors swooped in and are selling of lots for millions. Great Harbor Yacht Club rises at Poverty Point and the Nantucket Golf Club grows from the moors.
Islanders and developers have both learned to live within their new roles. Those of us who felt that the island would never fundamentally change have to acknowledge the strength of the wealth that the island attracts. They are going to want their gazpacho and their braised cod cheeks, so the old diner will have to start serving it. At the same time, the wealth has to acknowledge that its better to sail with the wind than against it. The old diner will succeed without a radical revision. The new Dreamland failed because it never learned this, while the new golf club succeeded because it did.
Downtown, there is another old diner that found a way to change with the times. When its original clientele left the island, it stayed put and started serving the sailers and the carpenters that worked nearby. Then, as they left and the wealth returned, it changed again and returned to the world of champagne and caviar. None of us think the island any less for having the Club Car around, do we?
