Finding the Right Party
by Robert P. Barsanti
June is drifting over the island. It masses out to the east in a low blue wall, then approaches with white puffs blowing to the southwest. In a moment, the horns start on the harbor, the sun blinks out, and the horizon disappears in a fifty degree mist.
June drips from the leaves. The baseball games get cancelled, the planes stop flying, and the grass grows seeds. By fall, the fog will have finally retreated and the short sleeve shirts can come on. But for now, it’s wool and polarfleece.
On Friday, I traveled back to the island on the high speed ferry. The ferries carry you democratically back to the island. A small but growing percentage of visitors land in their G-4 or the Lear and are driven to the great house. The rest of us, even those with American Express Black Cards and Platinum level reward points, have to travel by boat.
The Nantucket June shocks most of the passengers. The Luminaries had ridden up from Connecticut on a warm spring day, in shirt sleeves with the air conditioning on. The Special Guests had driven down from Hingham squinting through their Maui Jim’s. They came onto the ferry in jeans and tweed, silk and a shawl, strode gamely up the gangway and cast one ominous eye at the blue smoke on the water.
Everyone is on the boat. The Luminaries, Patrons, and Special Guests have to race to a table before the Equadoran painters and Marshfeld lacrosse team take them all and leave only the rows of benches. Outside, the last of the sun winks away in three white puffs before the summer descends in drops and gusts. They shiver, they shake, and they huddle together. By the time the boat docks at the height of June, the Luminaries have decided that things are not going all that well East of Manhattan.
There are weekends when it feels as if Nantucket has become the easternmost borough of New York. The fog weighs down on us and the cobblestones streets rise up, but Avenue Z comes straight out of Brooklyn and onto Main Street. The techno bumps out of the bars, the women teeter about on shoes from the royal wedding, and the men preen in tweed and jeans. The Luminaries stand outside, smoking and waiting for the right text message to tell them where the real party is. Because it ain’t here.
The island chose this, years ago. We are the brands. We are Great Wines in Grand Houses. We are Lily and Ralph, Patron and Cliquot, Bentley and Rover. And, in the end, the transformation into the America’s Luxury Brand Island has served us well. There are times, however, that I wish we had built a campground out here. We could use a Papoose Pond Resort.
Papoose Pond is a campground near Norway, Maine and about two hundred miles from sushi in a wine glass. In my bored adolescence, my parents dragged us up to the land of midges and black flies so they could talk with their Marriage Encounter friends and drink wine from Ernest and Julio’s gallon jugs. The real party wasn’t there, either. Camping at Papoose Pond meant sleeping in a twelve by twelve tent with everyone else, getting tripped over during the bathroom breaks, and listening to my father (and everyone else’s father) snore.
During the day, we ignored the grand plans for hikes and volleyball tournaments. Instead, we played Guerilla Mini-Golf, Paddleboat Navy, and went Underwear Swim Team. We mastered the ping pong, the horse shoe pits, and the bumper pool tables. No one lost an eye, was bit by a snake, or died of food poisoning. It was about as much fun as it sounds.
We weren’t the only groups to retreat to the lake. On Saturday Night, pairs of incredibly dressed couples walked over to the dance hall. The women wore pink, purple, and black dresses with skirts that stood far out from their bodies and gigantic, bouncing petticoats. The men wore western shirts that matched their partners’, bolo ties, and cowboy boots. They filled the dance hall, changed their shoes, and spun through the night.
We watched them as if they were aliens.
They were the Bay State Travelers. Or maybe the Adirondack Dancing Campers. Or anyone of any number of large groups of retired folks driving from campground to campground through the summer to dance, socialize, and compare Winnebagos. They knew where the real party was.
The dancers traveled in motorhomes. They decorated the backs and sides with stickers of all of the campgrounds they had visited. Most of them had been all over the East Coast, from one campground to another, one dance floor to another. The Winnebagos and the Airstreams with the most stickers had been out West.
Almost all of the dancers were members of “Good Sam’s Club”; their motor homes had the sticker of a smiling bald man with a halo. Since we were always forgetting something vital for camp, like matches or a shovel, we were always mooching from the Good Sam’s. And they, true to their names, were willing to help us. It struck me then, as it strikes me now, that it must be a nice life: you travel from campground to campground with your friends, dance a few nights a week, and help out the clueless and foolish along the way.
The Adirondack Dancing Campers are not likely to come to Nantucket, nor is the Good Sam’s Club likely to start a charter on island. Whatever could have been a campground is now a compound. Unless they want Ceviche in a martini glass and a Hibiscus Margarita, we aren’t for them. Which is a shame, because I suspect that the dancers would enjoy Nantucket for what it is rather than try to shape it into what it isn’t. They are like the Lighthouse people.
The Lighthouse People were having a grand time on the same boat where the Luminaries and their Special Guests suffered and shivered. They wore lighthouse jackets, lighthouse skirts, lighthouse hats, and one gentleman wore a windbreaker adorned with twenty badges from various lighthouses. On the way out of the harbor, they ran to the rail and threw their pennies. Then they took a thousand images of Brant Point Light flashing red. Ten minutes later, as the fast ferry came up to speed in the channel, they raced to the other side of the boat and snapped shots of Great Point Light. These men, without Winnebagos to match up, compared their zoom lenses.
After the lighthouses had faded from sight, they bubbled back to their tables. As you might expect, they sat side by sideburn with the Luminaries and Their Special Guests. They lunched on bologna sandwiches, Food Club Soda, and mallomars while their neighbors watched and envied. The Luminaries did not want the Montauk 1992 Badge, nor did they want the Outer Banks hat, nor did they particularly want the Sankaty/Great Point Salt and Pepper Set. They could have used one of the sweatshirts.
