Why do I write this blog?

Recently I’ve been wondering, from time to time, why I post to this blog. Why do I write? Who do I write to? My answer, off the top of my head without a lot of reflection is: I write because I get the urge to write. I want to write. Because I like to, because it’s fun. I write to keep a record for myself of what’s happening in my world. I write to keep connected to/with my friends and family. Knowing there are people out there who are interested in all, or some of, my ramblings, rantings, ravings, my opinions or what’s going on in my life is encouraging.

I write because no one has suggested I stop writing, quite the opposite. Every once in a while I get a personal e-mail, not a comment on the blog, that encourages me to keep on writing. In the process of writing I often find out what I think and feel. Often I start writing about what I’m thinking, with the notion I have something all figured out. My notion is I have an opinion. This is it. Then I start writing, which makes me start thinking and sometimes I find out I have an opinion that differs from what I thought I thought. That is a benefit.

Writing, instead of closing my mind to other ideas or solidifying my opinion on some issue, can open my mind to other ideas, opinions. I like to hear other people’s thoughts and opinions. Different ideas stimulate thought. I’m happy to have comments pro and con about my writing or what I’m writing about.

There isn’t much to say about my reports of what’s going on at Sun Rise Cove. I would like to know if anyone out there is bored with my writing, but I suppose anyone who is bored by my blog has stopped reading and isn’t around to tell me. I may have lost a valuable commentor or not. However, I understand that most of you reading this blog have a life, better things to do with your life than respond to what I’m writing. You are busy or not inclined to write.

Some of you may not be comfortable writing in a place where someone else can view what you write. That’s O.K. I’ll probably continue writing as long as it serves a purpose for me, whether anyone reads it or not. However, if I knew no one, not one person, was reading what I write would I continue? At the moment. Yes. Writing is a way to process my life, understand it, grow from that understanding. A little like dreaming.

Who do I write to? My friends and family. I have no idea who reads this. Well, I have some idea. I know four of you have signed on as followers. I know there may be others out there who read this. Unfortunately I’m not sure who I have told about this blog and who I haven’t told. I’m reluctant to send out an e-mail to alert people for fear of annoying someone I’ve already e-mailed. I doubt there is anyone reading this who doesn’t know me or know someone who knows me.

Some of you don’t know me that well, haven’t known me for very long. You’ll get to know me better by reading this blog, but I miss out on getting to know you better, unless you start a blog and tell me about it. One draw back of this blog is the one-way street aspect of it. Nothing is perfect.

My friend, Simone, told me she reads this blog. We have known each other since we were 5 yrs. old, although we didn’t keep in close contact for a number of years. My very first friend was Judy. We met shortly before I met Simone.

Judy moved to the Vineyard in 1948. At least this is what I remember. She may have different memories. She moved from Worcester, MA just after a Tornado went through there. She was born in October 1942. I was born in March 1943. We were both 5 years old, as I recall, when we met. Must have been in the Summer, before first grade began.

I lived on the North Bluff at the time with my father, Albert Edward H. and my mother, Dorothy Mae .....Norton H. 10 Saco Avenue. My father was the Postmaster in Oak Bluffs. Doris Shackleton lived across the street with her mother and older brother. The only other family on the Bluff in the Winter were the Willoughbys. Kendall was a little older than Judy and I. He had an older sister and, a younger sister. I’ve forgotten their names.

Judy, her mother, father and older sister lived two streets over. Her Auntie Serra lived at the bottom of the hill, during the summers, as I recall.

Before Judy arrived I had no playmates. I spent the first five years of my life with my parents, my very much older siblings, an occassional baby sitter or alone. For some reason my parents did not send me to kindergarten. They tried to send me to a sort of day care the summer I was four, l947. Mrs. Sharples, Stanley’s mother, took kids in for the day. That’s the way I thought of it.

That summer my father bought The Captain’s Table, a diner, now demolished, across from The Tivoli, now the OB police station. The diner sat where the Standby Diner was built, now a Chinese Restaurant. Both my mother and father worked there, my father after work in the PO. My half-sister, Faye was 21 and away at nursing school. My half-brother, Bill, was 18, probably working at Amaral Brothers, beginning his career as a plumber.

What to do with me? I’ll bet my mother wondered. So, I was taken over to the Sharples’ house, off New York Avenue, somewhere above and behind the stone house. The only thing I remember about that day was this. Me sitting at a table for lunch looking at food I couldn’t bring myself to eat. Something like spaghetti with tomatoes. The only way I would eat a tomato was in tomato soup, Campbell’s. There was very little I did eat when I was four, five, six, I’m told. I do remember I ate hamburg (hamburger), raw carrots, coffee ice cream, Coffee ice cream sodas, maybe some mashed potatoes, perhaps a grilled cheese sandwich, macaroni and cheese - comfort food. There wasn’t much comfort in my home. I got it from food.

Anyhow, I sat at the table, scared to death, not knowing what to do. I knew I couldn’t eat the food in front of me. I didn’t want to be impolite, but what could I do? I had not learned to speak up or even talk very much. I was painfully shy when I was little. I didn’t eat, probably cried. My mother came and got me. I remember telling her how much I didn’t like it there. How I couldn’t eat the food, didn’t like being in a strange place, with strange kids, strange food. I must have done a lot of crying, something I was pretty good at, because I never went back to Mrs. Sharples’ house, nice as she was.

The good news. I spent the Summer of 1947, at The Captain’s Table and my love of Diners began. Downstairs under the diner there was a cot across from the wonderful old ice boxes. The whole wall, as I remember it, the ice box/refrigerator, was covered with beautiful wooden doors which had stainless steel handles, cool to the touch and pleasing to the eye, that lifted to open. I read comic books and entertained myself down there part of the time as my mother worked upstairs. When I wasn’t hanging out next to the refrigerators I went next door to the Bowling Alley.

At the bowling alley was an old black man whose name I can’t remember, maybe never knew. He tried to teach me how to bowl. I wasn’t all that great at bowling at four, but I loved rolling the balls down the wooden alleys. The place seemed so huge to me. I loved how cool it was inside on a hot summer’s day. There must have been five alleys? Way down at the end of the alley sat the ten duck pins. The East wall of the bowling alley was comprised of large wooden windows/shutters, no glass panes. The wooden windows were propped open in some way. No screens. The breeze came in through the large open sections of wall.

I carefully carried the small, smooth, cool to the touch, marbled balls over to the alley with this kind man’s help and tried very hard to roll the ball, not bounce it, onto the alley, not into the gutter. I watched as it rolled toward the duck pins. No automatic pin resetting. There were kids sitting atop the alleys at the other end. When I rolled my third ball down they would clear the dead wood and reset the pins. I wished I could work in the bowling alley, but I think that wish came later, when I was a teen or pre-teen. No chance of being a pin boy, I was a girl. Girls need not apply. Only boys got to work there. There and at gas stations. Another job I wanted, but couldn’t have due to my gender.

Eventually, years later, I did get to walk down a wooden alley and reset the pins, but not at that bowling alley. The bowling alley where I first bowled was knocked down in the fifties or sixties. Somewhere I have a post card depicting the old green fronted wooden building next to the diner.

I got to reset pins at the other bowling alley in Oak Bluffs, Lenardo’s. (that doesn’t sound right. Was it Leonardo’s?) I wasn’t working there. I think I was allowed to reset pins a couple of times when the automatic machine failed. I was on a bowling team when I was seventeen, the year I spent working at Cronig Brother’s market in Vineyard Haven, waiting to be old enough, 18, to get off of Martha’s Vineyard and into nursing school. But that’s another story for another time. FAN.