Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket (Crown Journeys)
Frank Conroy
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 1400046599
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Frank Conroy first visited Nantucket with a gang of college friends in 1955. They came on a whim, and for Conroy it was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with this "small, relaxed oasis in the ocean." This book, part travel diary, part memoir, is a hauntingly evocative and personal journey through Nantucket: its sweeping dunes, rugged moors, remote beaches, secret fishing spots, and hidden forests and cranberry bogs. Admirers of Conroy’s classic and acclaimed memoir Stop-Time will again delight in what James Atlas, writing in the New York Times, called his "genius for close observation."
In Time and Tide, Conroy recounts the island’s history from the glory days of the whaling boom to the present, when tourism dominates. He vividly evokes the clash of cultures between the working class and the super-rich, with the fragile ecology of the island always in the balance. But most fascinating of all, he tells his own story--of playing jazz piano in the island’s bars; of raising a barn in the early '60s with the help of a bunch of hippie carpenters; of leasing an old, failed bar with two island pals and turning it into the Roadhouse, a club "that was to be ours, the year-rounders, and to hell with the summer people." There’s a marvelous story of his first golf game, played on an ancient nine-hole course with two friends, a part-time sommelier and a builder from the South who invented the one-handed pepper mill.
This is a book that revels in friendship, music, history, and the gorgeous landscape of a unique American place, and is a wonderful work by one of our greatest contemporary writers.
entrance to Polpis Harbor in our boat, with the dog. Maggie and I might swim while Tim, my youngest, went off with a bucket for an hour. We could see him in the distance, hunkered down, his small form bright in the stark sunlight, elbows akimbo, digging with purpose. Or on a foggy day, he would simply disappear as the sound of buoy bells rang muffled in the air. We call it Tim’s Point, and we go there often. There are any number of children’s groups, from the Wee Whalers, a day-care operation,
(including a large part of the working class from Nantucket) out to California in the Gold Rush of ’49 on a one-way trip for ships and passengers alike. Well, there was still sheep herding. The animals had enjoyed more or less the run of the island for a long time, stripping vegetation efficiently (hence Melville’s description), the cranberry industry was creeping along, as well as the extremely fragile beginnings of tourism, but the big money was gone. Hard times, even on Upper Main, where no
The oral history connects the two events. For seventy-five years not a single bluefish was caught. These days it is not uncommon to see small boats come in with big catches, the fish having returned even if the Indians did not. A small cycle occurred in Polpis Harbor, where twenty-five years ago there were so many blue shell crabs scuttling around that I could pole net twenty or thirty in an hour. They disappeared for quite some time, but show signs of coming back. I remember one morning in the
forced out, many have stayed, toughing out the high cost of living. NATIVE. AN ENDANGERED SPECIES A Certain Romance THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS ON THE popularity of what it calls “destination weddings,” and Nantucket turns out to be a prime example. The Chamber of Commerce has an information clearing house, listing churches, caterers, photographers, musicians, tent rentals, bartenders, and everything else that might be needed. (A good friend of ours, Mary Keller—she of the chador—plays
(which are still there for many year-rounders), suspiciousness of “flashy New Yorkers,” and some snobbism about day-trippers. I suppose a certain number of people felt that way, but my sense, arriving in 1955, was that most islanders were genuinely happy to see us. The winters were long, and it must have been stimulating to see some new faces, to feel the pace of life pick up a bit. Summer people (as opposed to day-trippers) arrived on the large ferries like the Uncatena and the Nobska, which