You might be looking at this blog thinking “There’s something different going on here”, and you’d be correct! We have moved our blog, and our entire Colonial lnn website to a new host to help us better manage all the great Martha’s Vineyard news and goings on that we have to share with you. We hope you like the new look! If you find anything that doesn’t seem to be working as it should, please let us know.
Photo Credit: RBertieg
Fall is the opposite of spring. Nowhere have I seen the contrast of the two as obvious as on Martha’s Vineyard. In April, we see a world coming slowly and ambitiously to life. I’m not just talking about the overnight sensation of your brown lawn suddenly showing little patches of lime green. I liken what happens here to ants coming back out of the ground. Suddenly, workmen on ladders are taking plywood down from windows and sprucing up storefronts, and shopkeepers are dusting and sweeping and carting in new merchandise. Seasonal homeowners, fed up with winter, venture back to open up musty houses in hopes that it will hasten the advent of summer. And if we’re lucky enough to get some sunny weekends, brave souls in shorts, but still wearing layers of sweatshirts, descend on the towns to get a jump on the new season. Those of us who live here have fun taking note of the local merchants who move to new venues, thinking the change will bring them a better season than the last. The most positive sign that things are on the upswing is the first time the ferry pulls into Oak Bluffs since last fall. Hope is definitely in the air.
Ah, but I am a fall person. I’ve never bought the theory that it’s a time when everything dies or goes to sleep. There’s a tingle in the air that makes this time of year at least as promising as spring. If you’ve read my previous blogs, you know how I feel about the colors of fall, the long shadows, and the unique quality of the light of October and November. Driving my daily commute from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown, I can barely keep my eyes on the road the marsh grasses on the pond are such a delicious palette of ochres, rusts, greens, and lavenders. And the road, as it takes you toward the Triangle is dappled with sunlight filtering through the tunnel of the tree limbs overhead. You have to beware of deer, fooled by the autumn light into thinking it’s evening, running out in front of you here.
The whole experience is spring in reverse. One by one, we watch the seasonal stores and restaurants locking their doors and posting, “Thank you for a great season” signs in their windows. Now is the time to take advantage of fabulous sales. No department stores with specially brought in sale merchandise here. What you get is dramatically marked down prices on all the unique items you were eyeing in August. Bring your holiday gift list.
You’ll find that activities and entertainment don’t disappear when we roll up the beaches. In fact, there is no better time than an autumn day for a long walk on a beach that was closed to all but town residents in the summer. We still have theater right through the holidays. We have concerts and dance parties, complete with pre-party lessons. Nature walks and kayaking are breathtaking events. Restaurants have specials and two-for-one nights (more on those specials soon). And local bay scallops are in season!
Where we island people made note of location changes in the spring, we now take joy in counting the restaurants that are staying open for the off season. This year, there are several special new ones; State Road in West Tisbury, Deon’s in Oak Bluffs, The Atlanticin Edgartown, and The Mediterranean in its new Oak Bluffs location. Come enjoy dining with the locals who venture out to dine after the throngs have dispersed. You’ll find some of us may be a bit quirky, but in general, we’re a very nice lot and enjoy talking to the visitors who, like us, appreciate our island at this special time of year.
As I mentioned, Jim, our maintenance man, grew bored of winter island life. He decided to entertain himself by rooting around under the building for relics. Therefore, with fedora and bullwhip, he began his search for coins, arrowheads, old bottles etc.
We were not expecting him to find bones. Large bones. I’m no expert. I looked up the human skeletal system online and it looked to me like the thighbone. It had the L shaped knob that goes into the hip…
Jim found them sticking out of the side of the dig site and brought them to our attention. We called town hall first. In a town this small, everyone is going to know pretty soon so we might as well fess up.
Enter RED-Tape stage: Ron, the site supervisor for the construction company, agreed with us. He walked the bones over to the town hall and they told him to call the State Police. The State Police told us that they’d be right over to investigate. The newspaper photographer and reporter were here first.
Oh…by the way, we also needed to call the local tribe representative of the Wampanoags, the local Native American group. This whole affair made me a little nervous. Forget the scary bits…The fact that this street has had numerous ghost stories told about it, the phone call and bones…etc.
If the remains were human, the de/construction would have to stop until an investigation took place to everyone’s satisfaction. (I have a muddy ‘Slip ‘n slide” for the front yard of a hotel that was supposed to re-open in April. The LAST thing I wanted were delays!)
I feared for nothing. The Police sent the remains to the hospital for testing. The Wampanoag rep came and looked around. She gave us tips on what to look out for while further work took place and praised us for our diligence. Most people in these circumstances, she said, would have tossed the bones in the dumpster and kept on building. Forget the historical possibilities. She was going to call the newspaper and let them know how great we were…
What a let down this will be for some of you. The bones were not human bones said the hospital. They don’t know what they ARE, but they weren’t human. The newspaper made no mention of our historical uprightness of morality.
The digging recommenced the next morning and now all is right with the Colonial Inn world.
However, that doesn’t explain the phone call, does it? We may never know…
Editor’s Note: Just in time for Halloween… this 3 part series is about the spooky events surrounding the 2006 construction of the Edgartown Residence Club on North Water Street, at The Colonial Inn. If you are interested in more spooky (but true) Martha’s Vineyard stories, you should check out some of the books by local writer Holly Nadler, including Haunted Island.
Once, upon a time, there was no Edgartown Residence Club! We have been operating for so long now that it is hard to remember back when it was simply the Porch Wing of the Colonial Inn. The creation of the Edgartown Residence Club involved a major restructuring project. The Porch Wing was an annex to the Inn with fifteen rooms on three different floors. The project was this: to change these fifteen rooms into six luxury suites that would be available for fractional ownership. Easy enough with an industrious crew; but the building was on sand, which means there were no true right angles left in the building. Designs drawn to shore everything up and put some beams underneath the building also included plans to replace the crawlspace underneath the entire building with a full basement.
We closed the hotel for the winter so this was the sole form of excitement for us, not to mention the entire town. (A beach town in the winter is an easily entertained entity.)
We spent the month of December in a frantic scramble to empty the hotel rooms in that wing. When you look at a hotel room, it really is more full than you realize. Stationary, ironing gear, fridge, phone, toiletries, TV, bathrobes, coat hangers, shower curtains, towel racks, pillows, bedspreads, mattresses, end tables, chairs, armoires…they all have their place and they look great where they are. However, they all take up loads of space when you take fifteen of any one of those items and put them somewhere else. In fact, they seem to grow in mass.
Now, add in the fact that the armoires weigh approximately as much as a small moon. In addition, the stairwells were too narrow to allow the armoires to leave. (They originally entered by means of a huge crane jacking them up through each floor’s porch doors, and that was how they left in the end.)
The next step was to call one of the few moving companies on the island. They sent a crew of workers who may or may not have understood a word I was saying. I had to monitor each person’s load and tell him where to put it (so to speak) on almost every trip up and down stairs. Eventually the building was empty of everything we wanted to keep. Our maintenance man, Jim, removed sinks and toilets, as well as light fixtures, mirrors, towel racks and phone jacks. It was a maintenance man’s buffet of spare parts.
Many large, loud pieces of equipment then came in, tore everything in our front courtyard out, dug twelve feet straight down and suspended the entire wing on big Jenga-like block columns. Our neighbors, who were earlier so pleased to gawk at the goings on, now turned against us. Local restaurants claimed we were driving away business, and neighbors reported that the shaking of the ground from the equipment caused stress cracks to appear in their walls. In other words, the site had been thoroughly disturbed at this point. That’s when Jim got bored and things got weird…
1. You HATE sunny days with temps in the low 60’s – “Give me the 90’s and humid or nothing!”
2. The only thing you hate more than that is a cool, crisp evening with a breeze blowing in the window – must have AC!
3. You can’t stand being able to walk into all the great restaurants with no reservations and still get a great table, great food and great service.
4. It drives you mad when people are friendly and helpful and can take an extra 10 minutes to show you their favorite spots to visit – you much prefer the harried and rushed service that sometimes comes with the summer crowds.
5. You always like to pay full price for everything – sales, discounts and promotional rates are not your thing at all!
6. Empty beaches are the enemy – long walks on the beach with not a soul to be seen sound boring.
7. You have no interest in learning – all the seminars, festivals and educational activities are an awful waste of time.
8. The highlight of your vacation is that 4 hour wait in the stand-by line at the ferry – it just wouldn’t be the same if you could get a reservation at the time you prefer.
9. Hustle and bustle are what you thrive on – serene views, quiet streets and a slower pace of life are hell for you.
10. Most of all – you LOVE to be stuck in traffic wherever you go – the 10 minute wait to get through 5 corners and the 20 minutes to get through the Triangle are what life is all about!
