The trip to Nantucket took 2 1/2 hours. Got there about quarter to three. Wandered around the waterfront for a while looking at the new (to me) marina. It was a lot larger than I had expected. Packed with boats. There were a zillion boats at moorings, too. We went to the marina office out of curiosity to find out what they charged. Not unexpectedly, they charge $2.50 a foot plus $6.50 per night for electricity.
In our wanderings, we found a chandlery that has a good, large-
scale chart of Nantucket Harbor, so we'll buy one before we leave.
The traffic in Nantucket is horrendous! Cars, people, mopeds, and bicycles everywhere. We walked our bikes through the crowds and then rode to Monomoy. There are many more paved roads than there used to be and a new traffic circle where the roads to Surfside, Madaket, 'Sconset, and the airport come together with the road from the Town of Nantucket. Found our way around it with considerable trepidation and then rode out to Monomoy.
The lot where Aunty Margarethe's houses used to stand is all overgrown with poison ivy, wild roses, small bushes, and weeds. The only remnant we found was the cement slab that used to be the Palace (garage) floor. Roy found that. Even the fences and trees are gone.
The trail to the beach is now open to the public, so we walked down there. The old pier is gone and there are zillions of small boats at anchor or moorings, but other than that the beach looked pretty much the same. We wandered down to the creeks. They change their configuration every year, but they're still there, and I found what I think was the Million Dollar Pool. (That's what we called a deep area near the mouth of the creek. We sometimes swam there when I was little.)
I recognized the Prentice house, the Henderson cottage, the Burt house, the Lovelace house, and a lot of other houses, but there are a great many new houses, too, including a cross-wise one near the beach path. I used to play with Jane Burt, so I was tempted to knock on the door of her house and see if she was still there, but the name on the mailbox was R. L. Matthews, so I lost my nerve.
I actually had a hard time finding the road to Surfside. It used to be a dirt road running next to the pine woods. Now the woods is gone and the road is paved. In fact, there are lots of paved roads and a zillion houses that weren't there before. There's even a nice paved bike path going to Surfside.
Eventually we got there and found the AYH hostel, which used to be a Life Saving Station and was right at the edge of the beach. It's now about a quarter-mile from the water, because every winter, the storms bring in more sand and expand the beach. Roy thought the building had been moved; he wouldn't believe me when I told him the building was in the same place it had always been--it was the beach that had changed. The hostel manager said the same thing, so then Roy believed.
We signed up for three nights, chose our bunks, emptied our packs, and set off for the nearest grocery store, which was a Finast about two miles away. Had no trouble finding it. Bought a bunch of stuff for supper and breakfast, rode back to the hostel, ate, showered and went to bed.
Phil Murray turned out to be a rotund, bald, genial gentleman. He greeted us cordially and told us what he knew. He remembered Aunty Margarethe's green houses and had even bought a rowboat from her for $5. He told us the houses had been torn down, but he didn't remember the year. He tried to phone a number of other people, but no one was home until he phoned his uncle, Franklin Chadwick, who also lives in Monomoy. Chadwick's mother had read a paper on the history of Monomoy a few years ago. I talked with her and learned a lot of interesting things. She told me the roof had blown off one of Aunty Margarethe's houses during the hurricane of 1954, and her linens had blown all over the countryside. Aunty Margarethe had had the roof rebuilt. I hadn't known anything about that. What a terrifying experience that must have been for Aunty Margarethe and John, in that house during a hurricane! But it shows how well built the houses were. They could withstand the force of a hurricane, with only the loss of a roof. It's such a shame that sturdy buildings that could stand through hurricanes were destroyed by man.
Mrs. Chadwick and her son remembered the houses being torn down in the late 50's or early 60's, which agrees with the previous information I had gathered. She didn't have a copy of the paper there in Monomoy, but she said it didn't contain anything about Aunty Margarethe or her houses.
Several people we talked with remembered Aunty Margarethe walking to town with John a few feet behind her. That was quite a walk for people in their eighties--two miles each way. Obviously, Aunty Margarethe was doing fine until John died. He had cooked for her for half a century or more. Aunty Margarethe had always had servants, so she didn't know how to cook for herself. After John died, she starved. One of her friends found her lying unconscious on the floor of her bedroom in 1957. She was rushed to a hospital and restored to health. But then she was declared insane, committed to Butler Hospital, placed under a guardian, and her property was placed under the trusteeship of the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company, which promptly sold her Nantucket property to Mrs. Elphinstone for $50,000. (A waterfront house not far from where Aunty Margarethe's stood now rents for $35,000 a month!)
I refuse to believe that Aunty Margarethe was actually insane. She was eccentric, but not crazy, although I suppose most people would say a wealthy person who went without eating when she could easily have hired another cook or gone to restaurants has a few missing marbles. I just wish I'd been in Providence then to help her. And I hope she never knew that her beloved Nantucket cottages had been sold to Mrs. Elphinstone and demolished.
Roy and I thanked Mr. Murray, bought some groceries, and returned to the boat. After putting the groceries away, we paddled to the creeks, where Roy salvaged a stainless-steel port light from an old wrecked boat. Then we returned to what had been Aunty Margarethe's property for one last look, probably the last time I'll ever see it. A cottontail rabbit bounded into the bushes, just as his great-great-great granddaddy did when I was a child. The houses now exist only in my memory, but what golden memories! The happiest days of my childhood were spent there. Even if the houses were still standing, it wouldn't be the same. Aunty Margarethe wouldn't be there; John wouldn't be there; Daddy wouldn't be there; I wouldn't be a child. Everything changes. But cottontail bunnies still hop across the yard.
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