Read Online Time & Tide by Frank Conroy - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Frank Conroy
Tags: nonfiction
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hours and fly back to the mainland before the sun sets. This has been going on for some time, and could only happen in a place where getting a plumber, a carpenter, a house painter can be sufficiently complex as to cause at least one rich and famous woman (who shall remain nameless) to scandalize practically everyone by offering triple time to workmen who would show up to do the work
now,
so the new house would be ready for guests in time for the start of the season. Given the high cost of skilled labor to begin with, this was wretched excess indeed.
Who lives in the big houses? One day I saw a uniformed maid in a large hardware/lumber/department store called Marine Home Center holding a shopping list presumably drawn up by her employer. She wanted thirty-five plastic garment bags, forty complete sets of bed linen (from Ireland), a set of Sheffield china her mistress had previously selected, a Weber grill, and twenty lightbulbsâand put it in the black Lexus SUV outside, please. I actually overheard this, and I proceeded to have a fantasy about the people paying for it all.
Their house is on the high ground with a view of the harbor. They paid three and a half million for it, and it is the wifeâs job, with the help of her staff, to keep it up and running. The garden is a particular pleasure of hers, as are the relaxed lunches with friends at the Chanticleer in âSconset, or 21 Federal, or The Galley by the water. She has children and there is a nanny. She enjoys sailing, swimming, and horseback riding. She keeps busy.
The husband works on Wall Street but comes up every Thursday afternoon in his co-leased private jet (forty minutesâ flight time) and doesnât leave till Monday morning. On Nantucket he has paid three hundred thousand dollars for a golf club membership (I kid you not), where he plays a good game and gets a lot of business done with his peers or special guests heâs brought with him from the city. In an odd way neither the husband nor the wife has much of a connection to Nantucket, which is simply the luxurious setting for their summertime activities.
I should mention that they have a cat, Ramses, upon whom they dote. At the end of the season, when they leave in a blue Ford Expedition to catch the ferry (having reserved space six months earlier), Ramses is nowhere to be found. The cat has understood the significance of all the suitcases, of the pink cat box, and has taken off into the scrub. After a good deal of discussion, the husband convinces the wife that they have no choiceâthey have to catch the ferry and leave Ramses behind. They will alert the caretaker to keep an eye out for the animal. Quite a few cats suffer this fate every year.
Ramses undergoes some severe life-style changes, by the way. From Tender Vittles, his diet changes, first to frogs, garter snakes, and small birds, but eventually, as the cat becomes feral and grows to seventeen pounds, to squirrels, pheasants, and rabbits. Feral cats are considered a dangerous nuisance by islanders, and they are legally shot and killed by the sometime game warden, deer hunters, and duck hunters. Ramses is one of ninety cats so dispatched that particular winter. It is, in fact, the caretaker who finishes him off with his shotgun, while out flushing game birds.
I LOVE AIRPORT NOISE
Itâs true. Thereâs an awful lot more than there used to be. Jets and props all day long.
PIPING PLOVERS TASTE LIKE CHICKEN
In protest to closing four-wheel-drive access
to Great Point because the birds nested in
the tire tracks.
20 IS PLENTY IN âSCONSET
Twenty miles per hour. Good advice because
the streets are narrow, and many of the
cottages are inches away from the berm.
Some natives change the sticker with Magic
Markers to read:
80 IS PLENTY IN âSCONSET
Since the town is almost completely summer
people. (Often spotted behind a beer and
shots bar called the Chicken Box.)
The Pace Quickens
SOMETIME IN THE SEVENTIES I
now,
so the new house would be ready for guests in time for the start of the season. Given the high cost of skilled labor to begin with, this was wretched excess indeed.
Who lives in the big houses? One day I saw a uniformed maid in a large hardware/lumber/department store called Marine Home Center holding a shopping list presumably drawn up by her employer. She wanted thirty-five plastic garment bags, forty complete sets of bed linen (from Ireland), a set of Sheffield china her mistress had previously selected, a Weber grill, and twenty lightbulbsâand put it in the black Lexus SUV outside, please. I actually overheard this, and I proceeded to have a fantasy about the people paying for it all.
Their house is on the high ground with a view of the harbor. They paid three and a half million for it, and it is the wifeâs job, with the help of her staff, to keep it up and running. The garden is a particular pleasure of hers, as are the relaxed lunches with friends at the Chanticleer in âSconset, or 21 Federal, or The Galley by the water. She has children and there is a nanny. She enjoys sailing, swimming, and horseback riding. She keeps busy.
The husband works on Wall Street but comes up every Thursday afternoon in his co-leased private jet (forty minutesâ flight time) and doesnât leave till Monday morning. On Nantucket he has paid three hundred thousand dollars for a golf club membership (I kid you not), where he plays a good game and gets a lot of business done with his peers or special guests heâs brought with him from the city. In an odd way neither the husband nor the wife has much of a connection to Nantucket, which is simply the luxurious setting for their summertime activities.
I should mention that they have a cat, Ramses, upon whom they dote. At the end of the season, when they leave in a blue Ford Expedition to catch the ferry (having reserved space six months earlier), Ramses is nowhere to be found. The cat has understood the significance of all the suitcases, of the pink cat box, and has taken off into the scrub. After a good deal of discussion, the husband convinces the wife that they have no choiceâthey have to catch the ferry and leave Ramses behind. They will alert the caretaker to keep an eye out for the animal. Quite a few cats suffer this fate every year.
Ramses undergoes some severe life-style changes, by the way. From Tender Vittles, his diet changes, first to frogs, garter snakes, and small birds, but eventually, as the cat becomes feral and grows to seventeen pounds, to squirrels, pheasants, and rabbits. Feral cats are considered a dangerous nuisance by islanders, and they are legally shot and killed by the sometime game warden, deer hunters, and duck hunters. Ramses is one of ninety cats so dispatched that particular winter. It is, in fact, the caretaker who finishes him off with his shotgun, while out flushing game birds.
I LOVE AIRPORT NOISE
Itâs true. Thereâs an awful lot more than there used to be. Jets and props all day long.
PIPING PLOVERS TASTE LIKE CHICKEN
In protest to closing four-wheel-drive access
to Great Point because the birds nested in
the tire tracks.
20 IS PLENTY IN âSCONSET
Twenty miles per hour. Good advice because
the streets are narrow, and many of the
cottages are inches away from the berm.
Some natives change the sticker with Magic
Markers to read:
80 IS PLENTY IN âSCONSET
Since the town is almost completely summer
people. (Often spotted behind a beer and
shots bar called the Chicken Box.)
The Pace Quickens
SOMETIME IN THE SEVENTIES I
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