A Vineyard primer for Obamas
MEMO TO the Obamas: If the rumor is true and you do end up on Martha's Vineyard this summer, here is an island primer.
Like all islands, Martha's Vineyard is a head case, mysterious, a unique coinage, cut off, stuck-up, a loner, a bit of a drama queen.
Newcomers often experience the island as snobby, and not just in the obvious terms of how much property you own and its value. The island sometimes feels like a club for which there are secret rules that no one appears all that eager to share. It can take years of island living to learn the location beyond which telephone poll lurks the world-class beach or to develop a dependable source of beach plum jam or to know who to call when the well goes dry and where to go to get the best bass bait.
The island is filled with hierarchies, an obvious one being the length of time you, and ideally your ancestors, have been coming to or living there. If you ever lived on the island year round, you have extra value. The more you can fold the names of defunct businesses (Feasts in Chilmark, Take It Easy Baby in Oak Bluffs, The Old Stone Bakery in Edgartown) and old-timers, deceased or otherwise, (George Mather, Henry Beetle Hough, Everett Poole, Bea Whiting, and anyone with the last name of Vanderhoop), the better.
The place names on the island are evocative in and of themselves: Squibnocket, Lobsterville, Tashmoo, Takemmy, East Chop, West Chop, Quenames, Moshup Trail. The names play games with your head, teasing fake definitions from the sounds themselves. Edgartown could be a scary theme park based on stories by Poe. . . Oak Bluffs a strategy in poker . . . Tisbury a quaint way to describe the inside of a pie. Menemsha is a word that people love to pronounce and to guess at its meaning. A guest once said she thought Menemsha sounded like a Jewish holiday, but according to my sister-in-law Maria it is a word that a woman, opening her blouse, might whisper to a man.
You have cachet if your phone number begins with the old 693 exchange and if you know that Lucy Vincent Beach is also called Jungle Beach. Posters from the Hot Tin Roof, a night spot that opened at the airport in 1979, are envied in direct proportion to how long ago the event being promoted was held. Memories of having held certain summer jobs are a badge, whether the work was backbreaking, such as picking any of their 10 different kinds of lettuce at Morning Glory Farms, especially if you biked to work in the predawn hours, or mundane, such as bagging at Stop & Shop, or high-toned, such as being a hostess at Atria in Edgartown, or classic, such as scooping ice cream at Mad Martha's.
The island also likes its annual rituals, the slow rhythm of a place that lives off the land and the sea. The Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair in August is run by a group of women who meet all year and who really care about who grows the juiciest tomato or the largest cabbage and who stitched the finest quilt and who shucks clams the fastest. There is a skillet throw and the rules specify that the competition is open to "women the world over," as if females flinging frying pans is a certifiably global impulse. Rivalry is everywhere, among flowers and pickles and cupcakes, as well as for the Best Display of American Pride. Dogs who win Best in Show get their pictures in the paper.
Health advisory: Beware of the tularemia virus carried by rabbits and of Lyme tick disease (common symptoms include rash, headache, fever, stiff neck, painful joints, and swollen jaw).
Fashion note to Michelle: Purple is the Vineyard neutral and Lorraine Parrish in Vineyard Haven has your kind of clothes.
Dining note to Malia and Sasha: Get your folks to stake you and your friends to an "oink" at Mad Martha's.
Political note to Barack: Skip the fair at your own peril.
Madeleine Blais, a guest columnist, is a professor at UMass-Amherst and author of "Uphill Walkers," a family memoir. 