But, slowly and surely, over time Mashnee’s inhabitants returned to their normal, peaceful, mundane, uneventful summer lives, cherishing their wonderful island and leaving the real world far behind, once more, without a worry in the world.
But for those of us involved in the biggest event to ever hit Mashnee ...nothing would ever match the thrills and chills of that summer, from then on simply referred to as, THE Summer!
Chapter 65
Peace
Not surprisingly the next summer we returned to find The Hut gutted and dismantled. Reduced to an unsightly pile of discarded ruble. Honestly, we weren’t overly bummed out. The way we figured it, we were lucky it lasted as long as it did and were proud of that accomplishment. Although we would never build another Hut, we still enjoyed partying on the hallowed strip of sand that once served as our private domain and retelling our amazing stories from that summer over and over and over again!
While no summer would ever match the excitement of 1970; I mean, how could it? Every summer on Mashnee was totally far-out, groovy and rad (my tribute to Chris Jones). Not a bad one in the bunch!
While the outside world was rapidly changing, everything becoming bigger, faster, homogenized, impersonal, and more complex, Mashnee, for decades upon decades, remained fundamentally unaffected by progress, somehow stemming the tides of change. From the 1950s right through early 2000s, the island remained miraculously frozen in a bygone era of kindness and simplicity, somehow spared from the ills of progress and modernization. Our land of “Honalee.”
Here, strangers greeted each other with genuine warmth, their smiles reflecting the sincere care woven into the fabric of their community. Acts of generosity flowed like the gentle currents of the surrounding sea, binding hearts and lives together in a shared tapestry of humanity.
I was truly blessed when my parents (finally) bought a small, quaint cottage on Wianno Road, making our family full-fledged Mashnee Island residents!
Year after year, summer after summer I returned to a place still unfazed by its age. I was certainly changing, maturing, as were my friends, but thank goodness not my island. Despite the passage of the calendar, life on Mashnee remained the last basin of yesteryear, the way things were, the way things were supposed to be, the way things will never be again. Unchanged. Unflappable. Undaunted. From the windy roads, to the speed bump, to the colorfully painted mailboxes to the ballfield, the playground, the beaches, and The Club, it was all there to welcome me back every summer.
Point being, whatever stage of life I was at, Mashnee was there with me.
Certainly, some of the iconic physical features amended over time, but not that significantly. The Boat ’n Bottle Bar changed hands a few times and expanded its dining area adding a large covered deck with rows of picnic benches. Eventually the clubhouse was painted an extraordinarily distasteful shade of Folsom Prison Gray (who’s idea was this!). Not very summery!
Slowly but surely, some of the cottages were renovated or expanded into larger, more expensive homes, but for years on end Reginald G. Knight, Senior enforced extremely stringent building restrictions, keeping expansion in any direction to a minimum and thereby maintaining the “picturesque” look and feel of the island. He’s owed a lot of credit for holding the line. Despite his intolerance for kids with long hair!
In the course of time, the clubhouse and bar staff was supplanted by a new cast of (not nearly as interesting) characters and the Lumps on the Bump were replaced with different Lumps. Most of the island’s lifeguards and maintenance workers changed over as did the off-island vendors. Even then, for every one thing that did change, there were twenty that thankfully didn’t.
But “Nothing lasts forever,” isn’t just a catchy phrase or slick advertising jingle; it’s painfully true. Even in Paradise.
In the early fall of 2001, I received an unforgettable phone call from my dad with “Big News” straight from hell. This news, other than to announce a disease or death, was far and away the worst I’d ever heard, or would ever hear. The details are difficult to revisit, their edges still sharp.
My dad… “James (oh, oh, here it comes), I’m so sorry, son. I know you’re gonna take this hard, and I understand, but, some people made us a big offer for the cape house. A huge offer really (for what? I thought nothing was for sale...). It’s life-changing money or we would never have considered selling it…so, Buddy Boy ... not sure how to tell you, but, your mother and I are selling Mashnee…”
“Bla bla flippin’ bla.”
I went deaf. Or died. Or wish I had.
Nothing he said after that mattered. Nothing he said for the next year mattered. Nothing the year after too. Painfully, nothing I said mattered either.
It was Robert Johnson at the Crossroads. The Boston Red Sox selling Babe Ruth. A deal with the Devil. So, for the first summer since I was ten years old, I would not be going back to Mashnee. Not then. Not ever. My contact with the island summarily reduced to once-a-summer walkabouts around the island’s perimeter, perhaps a jog over to Hog Island, and multiple trips down memory lane.
But there’s one constant.
Each time I speed down that causeway, look out at the island I so love, cross The Bump (slowly, not to hit my head!) and glance over at those joyfull mailboxes, I feel home.
By right if not by ownership. Nothing is foreign. Nothing is strange. Nothing’s new or modern or overbuilt or different or changed. I see what I want to see through the vibrantly colored membrane of what was, and I’m at peace.
You can’t choose The Island.
~The Island chooses You.~
THE END
—
Epilogue
In the fall of 2014, thirteen years after my parents sold our house on Mashnee, I received a phone call from an old buddy with four heart-stopping words.
“They’re tearing down Mashnee.”
I jumped in my car and drove at ridiculous speeds to the cape, a trip I’ve made thousands of times and could make blindfolded. I flew over The Bourne Bridge, pissed past the familiar Bourne State Troopers Barracks, zoomed by Aptucxet Trading Place Museum, Bourne High School, Grey Gables Market, zipped past the intersection where my buddy, Tommy Bourdon, blew the stop sign and smacked a Bourne cop car, buzzed by the old cemetery, railroad tracks, and “the triangle” where we sometimes played wiffle ball—there were no kids there but it still looked full to me—and squealed my way around all the twists and turns that lead to the causeway. The road I had spent half my life running up and down.
Then floored it, to Neverland.
I proceeded to bottom out, screeching over The Bump, going airborne, and hitting my head on the roof like a rookie. Just to my left, past the now-absent ballfield, I caught a glimpse of ungodly carnage. I looped around to the front parking lot and sat there stunned—the happenings too surreal to fathom. The Club’s parking lot was no longer a lot, but a combat zone packed with weapons of mass destruction. Heavy-duty trucks, dump trucks, front-end loaders, flatbeds, excavators, cranes, and the worst of the worst—The Devil Himself—a five-ton Tyrannosaurus Rex of a wrecking ball. Working together, they feasted on the defenseless buildings. Repeatedly slamming, crushing, banging, gouging, biting, swallowing and digesting my childhood. Chunk by chunk. The Snack Bar. Board by board. The Bar. Inch by inch. The Lounge. Block by block. The Pool. Tile by tile. The Ping-Pong Room. Until it was all, Gone.
Shooting me would have been less painful.
My heart pounded and raced, just like that day way back when Crazy Eddie’s car flipped on the dike, though this time there was no place to run and too many memories to save.
Perhaps if I turned around right this second and retraced my every step, I could somehow turn the clock backward, a familiarly naive ten-year-old’s voice shot through my head. Or maybe if I could will-myself back in time this would STOP!
But no.
I pulled my car into the one tiny spot not occupied by the evil militia and parked. And sat. And watched. The voice of Jimmyrocket was now screaming his guts out inside my head. “Do Something! Stop them!! Call the guys! Run for help! Save The Club! Think of something Jimmyrocket! G-ddammit!!”
