Read Online Time & Tide by Frank Conroy - Free Book Online Page B

HAD A TALK with a local minister about the island. He was worried about a lot of things, but most particularly about the laundering of drug money in Nantucket real estate. He did not tell me his sources of information, nor did he mention any names, but it seemed to me, in that age of cocaine, to be quite possible. In fact it was not long after our talk that a guy I knew—I’ll call him Swifty—was arrested (and not by local law enforcement) for trafficking heroin. Swifty had a T-shirt store downtown which provided a light rinse for his ill-gotten gains, which were finally laundered in the purchase of an expensive cottage in ’Sconset. The cottage was confiscated and Swifty went to jail, but he’d come close to getting away with it. Nantucket operated on money from off island, and no one seemed to worry too much about where the money came from. (Heroin continues to be a problem even today. There seems to be something about island life— not just on Nantucket—that makes people susceptible to alcohol and drugs. The per capita consumption of booze on Nantucket is the highest in the state. Heroin users on the island are not like users in the cities. They are, for the most part, working men, often with families, and not easily spotted by straight people. I have known two men from the trades who have died of drug overdoses, for instance, and I was truly surprised in both instances.)
    The minister was also worried that the town was losing its soul, so to speak, as more money and more houses and more people became more important than “the courtesy and manners that are critical to the texture of life in a small town,” as David Halberstam, a longtime summer resident, phrased it in
Town and
Country.
The center could not hold, said the minister, as the island lost its identity even to its own sons and daughters.
    Rich men have affected the island in many ways for many years, and quite often to the good. Old money has protected ’Sconset, for instance—well-to-do summer residents closing ranks to protect the village. Islanders remember Roy Larsen with fondness (at least those interested in conservation and preservation), for starting the Conservation Foundation and for donating large parcels of open land. A far-seeing gentleman, to be sure.
    At the risk of appearing snobbish, I cannot help but compare the character of the philanthropists of the sixties and seventies, even of the eighties, with some of those of the nineties and the aught. Dennis Kozlowski, for example, under indictment for milking $600 million (along with two other men) from Tyco while he was CEO. There is a mural in the anteroom of the ER at Nantucket Cottage Hospital celebrating Kozlowski, his boat, and his status as angel. No one worried about where the money came from. No one probably knew the man well enough to be able to foresee what would come out in the criminal investigation—that, even in small matters, he spent crassly: $2,900 for hangers, $6,300 for a sewing kit, $15,000 for an umbrella stand, $17,000 for an antique toilet kit, $6,000 for a shower curtain, and so on. Kozlowski apparently took Nantucket more seriously than the couple with the cat. He wanted to buy his way in through civic good works, through giving money away. He succeeded, at least until the year 2002 when the Enron, Tyco, and other scandals finally broke. But did he really? Or was David Halberstam correct when he observed, “Many of the true pleasures of Nantucket are not easily gained and cannot be purchased on demand . . . they have to be like everything else in life, earned.” It’s hard to imagine that Mr. Kozlowski would understand the true pleasures Halberstam refers to.
    PEOPLE CONSIDERING A visit to Nantucket should know that they are welcome, that they are needed, truth be told. A long time ago when the year-round population was three and a half thousand, the island lived off a ten-week summer season. But now the population