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Martha’s Vineyard: “Why pay less?”

26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. — Matthew 7:26

During my life in the Gone World, I rented summer digs in Martha’s Vineyard. The first rental was through the kindness of very rich friends who “hosted” my small family for a sum so minuscule it was actually a reverse- donation. The second time I was a bit more solvent than usual in those years as a book editor so I rented a cottage out in the Vineyard slums of Oak Bluffs. It was a light structure with a heavy rent set under some tall trees and raised up on cinder blocks. It was placed on a headland above a beach, and both the headland and the beach were made of sand. I reflected on this during the restful afternoon in September when my then wife and small daughter and I hunkered down as a hurricane blew through. We were on the edge of the storm so it only sort of nudged the house on its blocks a bit. I felt my daughter shudder and told her not to worry. At the same time I didn’t think houses were supposed to bounce on their foundation.

In my own mind, I was replaying that scene in Wizard of Oz where Dorothy gets spun up into the clouds (with her little dog too) and gets dropped on top of a witch. She opens the door into. . . colors!

Even with that ending, I didn’t fancy taking a ride on a hurricane while in a house. The hurricane did pass and I did make my way out into the shambles of Oak Bluffs. A few oaks were down in the roads and some small oaks had, I think, been uprooted and blown out to sea. It was not, the elite remarked at later dinner parties, at all as bad as was expected.

I walked to the edge of Oak Bluffs in a sudden absence of all wind. That’s when I sensed we were in the eye of the hurricane. Looking out to sea I saw just off the coast a vast bowl of water moving along the surface of a smooth sea with a slow swirl. The bowl of water just off the coast was higher than the headland on which I stood. I watched. It swirled. Then it passed us by.

That was in the Gone World. That was in Oak Bluffs where rent was a dollar a minute. That was on Martha’s Vineyard that was proud, DAMNED PROUD!, to have restaurants where your entree could clock in at a dollar a bite. And this was in 1985.

Martha’s Vineyard dinner parties were a cost-conscious alternative. As a book editor for the then venerable firm of Houghton Mifflin, I was considered entertaining and so we had as many invitations to these as I could wrangle. Having a beautiful wife who styled herself a “painter” helped me to no end.

But even though the rich old-money/new-money American elites that infest this once proud whaling station have no real-world problems they always have problems that seem real to them. At the dinner parties, with many servants and waiters always hovering about, one of the constant complaints voiced assertively at the table was ye olde “good help is so hard to find.”

Now, at long last, Governor Ron DeSantis feels their pain. . . .

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Sends Planes Full of Illegal Immigrants to Obama’s Vacation Spot in Martha’s Vineyard

Now thanks to DeSantis, problem solved. What a man.

Marthas Vineyard: Just Because You Get Less Why Pay Less?

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Casey Klahn September 15, 2022, 10:24 AM

    This is a cold-hearted gangster moves by the Fla Gov. Play in the same room with the maRxists, I say. Do them dirty in their own game.

  • El Polacko September 15, 2022, 11:24 AM

    This is hilarious, but DeSantis & Abbott shouldn’t stop there.

    Sending a couple planeloads to Gavin Newsom’s home town of Ross, CA, nearby ultra exclusive Belvedere CA and best of all, the ruling class golf resort of Pebble Beach CA should produce some real belly laughs.

  • ghostsniper September 15, 2022, 11:47 AM

    doing the work wipipo don’t wanna do

  • azlibertarian September 15, 2022, 11:48 AM

    Rule 4. I love it.

    • SLM September 16, 2022, 11:59 AM

      And #6.

  • Joe Krill September 15, 2022, 1:26 PM

    Ron be da man.

  • PA Cat September 15, 2022, 3:49 PM

    I wonder how the VP likes the migrants sent to her front door in the Swamp today by the governor of Texas– especially because the newcomers openly disputed her claim that the southern border is secure: “‘Everybody believes that the border is open,’ [one migrant] said. ‘It is open because we enter. We come in free, no problem. We came illegally, not legally.'”

    https://nypost.com/2022/09/15/two-migrant-buses-from-texas-arrive-outside-kamala-harris-dc-residence/

  • Univ of Saigon 68 September 15, 2022, 4:58 PM

    If these airlifts to Martha’s Vineyard continue I would expect that they will eventually be denied permission to land.

    • ghostsniper September 16, 2022, 12:17 PM

      Well maybe they could then ship em in a C130 spooky!
      No permission required.

  • Tellurian September 15, 2022, 9:42 PM

    And there ya go, Saigon. Problem solved.

  • captflee September 16, 2022, 11:32 AM

    GVDL,
    Hurricanes certainly bring into crystalline clarity one’s insignificance in the planetary scheme of things, no?

    Have been through a few, at sea as well as on land, including two Cat 3s while moored, during the former of which the girl who would a decade hence become my bride had herself a bit of an adventure when the house in which she sheltered was ripped apart by falling oak trees. The frightened inhabitants thereof had to refugee into the night, seeking shelter. The only house showing signs of life belonged to a couple of spinsters, and was festooned with the requisite anti-burglary cages and bars. The old gals were having themselves a grand old time therein, drinking wine, playing an old upright piano for all its worth, and singing their way through the hymnal, so many minutes were spent screaming and beating on what bits of the house could be had at before they were able to make their presence known above the storm racket and thus gain succor.

    While I approve of the refugee resettlement efforts to date, I feel that we can do much better. Next time the airlift needs to be a replay of the Berlin one, planes continuously overhead, landing every minute, day after day, week after week, world without end. Let’s double the population of Burlington, Vermont next week! Where is Barry Seal when you need him?

    i