The first time I ever came to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard, I had never heard of it, and nobody I knew had ever heard of it. That was sixty-plus years ago, in 1946. Today, it is surprising to meet anyone in the world who has never heard of it.
In 1991, I was in a tiny hotel in Cusco, Peru, the morning that an earthquake shook the city. When I was sure the tremors were over, I went up to the fourth floor for breakfast, where I chatted with a young couple, who were the only others who hadn’t fled the building. When they found out I was from Martha’s Vineyard, they said, “Tell us: What is the significance of those T-shirts with a black dog on them? We see them everywhere we go!” Then in Llangollen, Wales, in 1995, in an amphitheater seating 5,000 people, I spotted one of those Black Dog T-shirts.
I’ve never worn one, but I’ve carried a small canvas bag with a Martha’s Vineyard logo by Edgartown artist Dana Gaines emblazoned on the front. While wandering around at a Native American powwow in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1999, I realized people not only know the Vineyard, an amazing number of them even know me or people I know. When a middle-aged couple noticed my bag, they engaged me in conversation:
“Do you actually live on Martha’s Vineyard?” they asked, and when I nodded, they eagerly told me of their daughter who lives in Edgartown. “She’s married to Brad Fligor,” they informed me, “and teaches in the Edgartown School.”
“Well,” I said, to their delight, “I taught in the Edgartown School for twenty years, and Brad Fligor was one of my students.”
In 1985, I went to the island of Antigua in the Caribbean for a week with a friend. We had been there a few days when we decided to sign up for a day-trip picnic to Great Bird Island, a small island to the lee of Antigua. As we sat on the boat waiting for it to fill up, a young couple climbed aboard. The young man paused as he started to pass me, looked down, and asked, “Martha’s Vineyard?”
Startled, I replied, “Yes.”
Then he asked, “West Tisbury?” and I again answered yes, and again when he said, “Music Street?”
Finally he said, “Mrs. Mayhew!” and I discovered that it was Orland Donald, who had been in my daughter Sarah’s class in the high school.
On another trip around the same time, I arrived in Paucartambo, Peru, a remote village nestled in the Andes, where I saw two young men sorting potatoes and marking them. They didn’t look like Peruvians, so I asked where they were from.
One looked up, smiled, and replied, “I’m from Davis, California.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s a coincidence: My daughter lives in Davis.”
“Oh, yeah, what’s her name?” he asked.
“Sarah Mayhew,” I replied.
“Oh, well, I know Sarah,” he said. “She’s a friend of my girlfriend.”
They were in Peru doing potato research for the University of California.
The best connection I have made happened in Arusha, Tanzania, in 1982. Both my daughters, Deborah and Sarah, and I had just joined a group at a hotel to go on safari the next day. After dinner, our young Australian guide Peter left to spend the evening with friends. We retired to our rooms and were getting ready for bed when the telephone rang. I almost didn’t answer it: Who could be calling us in Arusha, Tanzania? It must be a wrong number. On the third ring, I picked up the phone. It was Peter, who laughed and said, “I have someone here who wants to speak to you.” I sat down on the bed as a male voice spoke through the phone, “Hi, my name is John Scherlis and I am from West Tisbury.”
Peter got back on the phone and invited the three of us to his house, where he and a couple friends were having a beer. We rushed to get dressed, and we all wore our West Tisbury and Martha’s Vineyard T-shirts. Later we found out that Peter had been showing his friends the list with names and addresses of people who were going on safari with him. West Tisbury jumped out at John – though it turns out he wasn’t exactly from West Tisbury; it was very close to his heart as he had spent every summer living on Ice House Pond, behind Nip ’n Tuck Farm. When we arrived at the house, John, dressed in an Agricultural Fair T-shirt, greeted us with, “Hey, how’s Fred Fisher?” and “What’s John Alley doing these days?”
John Scherlis was there working on his doctorate, studying elephants in Lake Manyara National Park. He later moved to the Island year-round, and now lives in Washington, D.C., but we met in Tanzania.
