Read Online Boys in the Trees: A Memoir by Carly Simon - Free Book Online
Authors: Carly Simon
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books of chord sheets for folk songs.
In the summer of 1956, Martha’s Vineyard was still, as we used to say, in “the olden days.” There were dune buggies and woodies and Jeeps, and filling up water buckets at the local well. For the most part there was electricity, but still, not everywhere. There were Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, Bill and Rose Styron, John and Barbara Hersey, Kingman Brewster, Katharine Cornell, James Cagney, Thomas Hart Benton (and his beautiful daughter Jessie, who was my idol), Yip Harburg, Roger and Evelyn Baldwin, Paul McGhee, Felix Frankfurter, and a whole slew of impressive radical thinkers and educators ready and waiting with their run-down porches and their gin and tonics to welcome you to the island and maybe turn you into a “Commie.” Mostly they lived below the radar.
The Vineyard is famously lovely, compared often to sections of Scotland and Ireland. Plots of land are casually separated by stone walls, like a sentence that doesn’t take the turn you think it will take, but takes another way around. Sagging barns on ponds look over fields and marshland. The island gets a bit flatter on its south side, as the interior ponds and streams advance to the ocean. Turn around and then a path or an inlet leads you to a dock and a pint-size rowboat with a single oar. Scruffy fishing vessels nearly disappear under the large coils of rope used for hauling pails and other traps that bring lobsters in from the deep.
My parents went there almost every summer between 1938 and the late fifties, when my father was less able to travel for a variety of health and business reasons. In the early, halcyon days, my mother was still in love with my father. And during the summer of 1956, the sound that the buoys made against the dock was still the “Daddy and Mommy are in love” sound.
She still idolized him, as far as I could see. Mother was proud of her husband and his aristocratic and romantic sway. She still gave forth a natural and appreciative throaty laugh in response to his famously dry humor. His narrow but shining blue eyes, when they focused on you, were almost too much to take. His tan against his white shirt rolled to the elbow, showing only his Bulova watch, and his smile from the land of the leaders, seemed to keep her happy. Mommy loved to entertain Vineyard style. Just lobsters or clams, corn on the cob, baked potatoes steamed in seaweed in a trash can out on the lawn or the beach, and simple wine. Simple neighbors (or fancy ones acting simple) came for a sunset dinner. They laughed and sang songs and wobbled their way home under the stars.
“Dickie, can I make you a gin and tonic?” Mommy called into the bedroom of the Leventhals’ Menemsha house, which we were borrowing for two weeks. The one that had that long flight of splinter-happy steps leading down to the beach on the North Shore.
“Oh, that would be perfect!” (Oh good, time for cocktails. We would send down to Seward’s soon to get dips and carrots and to Larsen’s to get some shrimp.)
Needing to make a local call, Daddy then called out, “What’s ‘Information’?”
“Just call the operator and ask her to get you whoever you want.” (That was the old Vineyard way.)
Daddy dialed 0.
An operator picked up, and Daddy said, “Would you put me through to the McGhees?”
The operator said, “You’ve reached the operator.”
Daddy asked in a polite, quizzical way, “Can you tell me what Information is, please?”
And the operator sweetly answered, “Well, sir, Information is when you don’t know a telephone number and you have to ask for help.”
Well, times had changed. But just a little.
Next morning, Lucy, my brother Peter, and I made our second little peregrination via a different route to the Menemsha market (Seward’s) to get The New York Times as well as muffins for breakfast. We went down Dutcher Dock, then up a hill, and passed the five little houses sitting prominently on a bluff
In the summer of 1956, Martha’s Vineyard was still, as we used to say, in “the olden days.” There were dune buggies and woodies and Jeeps, and filling up water buckets at the local well. For the most part there was electricity, but still, not everywhere. There were Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, Bill and Rose Styron, John and Barbara Hersey, Kingman Brewster, Katharine Cornell, James Cagney, Thomas Hart Benton (and his beautiful daughter Jessie, who was my idol), Yip Harburg, Roger and Evelyn Baldwin, Paul McGhee, Felix Frankfurter, and a whole slew of impressive radical thinkers and educators ready and waiting with their run-down porches and their gin and tonics to welcome you to the island and maybe turn you into a “Commie.” Mostly they lived below the radar.
The Vineyard is famously lovely, compared often to sections of Scotland and Ireland. Plots of land are casually separated by stone walls, like a sentence that doesn’t take the turn you think it will take, but takes another way around. Sagging barns on ponds look over fields and marshland. The island gets a bit flatter on its south side, as the interior ponds and streams advance to the ocean. Turn around and then a path or an inlet leads you to a dock and a pint-size rowboat with a single oar. Scruffy fishing vessels nearly disappear under the large coils of rope used for hauling pails and other traps that bring lobsters in from the deep.
My parents went there almost every summer between 1938 and the late fifties, when my father was less able to travel for a variety of health and business reasons. In the early, halcyon days, my mother was still in love with my father. And during the summer of 1956, the sound that the buoys made against the dock was still the “Daddy and Mommy are in love” sound.
She still idolized him, as far as I could see. Mother was proud of her husband and his aristocratic and romantic sway. She still gave forth a natural and appreciative throaty laugh in response to his famously dry humor. His narrow but shining blue eyes, when they focused on you, were almost too much to take. His tan against his white shirt rolled to the elbow, showing only his Bulova watch, and his smile from the land of the leaders, seemed to keep her happy. Mommy loved to entertain Vineyard style. Just lobsters or clams, corn on the cob, baked potatoes steamed in seaweed in a trash can out on the lawn or the beach, and simple wine. Simple neighbors (or fancy ones acting simple) came for a sunset dinner. They laughed and sang songs and wobbled their way home under the stars.
“Dickie, can I make you a gin and tonic?” Mommy called into the bedroom of the Leventhals’ Menemsha house, which we were borrowing for two weeks. The one that had that long flight of splinter-happy steps leading down to the beach on the North Shore.
“Oh, that would be perfect!” (Oh good, time for cocktails. We would send down to Seward’s soon to get dips and carrots and to Larsen’s to get some shrimp.)
Needing to make a local call, Daddy then called out, “What’s ‘Information’?”
“Just call the operator and ask her to get you whoever you want.” (That was the old Vineyard way.)
Daddy dialed 0.
An operator picked up, and Daddy said, “Would you put me through to the McGhees?”
The operator said, “You’ve reached the operator.”
Daddy asked in a polite, quizzical way, “Can you tell me what Information is, please?”
And the operator sweetly answered, “Well, sir, Information is when you don’t know a telephone number and you have to ask for help.”
Well, times had changed. But just a little.
Next morning, Lucy, my brother Peter, and I made our second little peregrination via a different route to the Menemsha market (Seward’s) to get The New York Times as well as muffins for breakfast. We went down Dutcher Dock, then up a hill, and passed the five little houses sitting prominently on a bluff
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