Clam: Fond Memories of Cuttyhunk Island

Fond Memories of Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, in the 1960s and 1970s.


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The Potters used to have a bakery in the house in front of the Coast Guard house (a little to the right facing out from the C.G.), right on the pond. It was fun to go there for bakery treats.


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How great Potter (Allan Potter) was. He would pick up the freight at the Alert (the ferry), and could fix anything. He delivered the bottled gas and picked up the trash. He wore overalls, drove a very comfortable, old, pick up truck, and smoked a lot of cigarettes. He had a merry twinkle in his eye. He and his wife, Mildred, were honored at a picnic at the Moore's Cuttyhunk Fishing Flub in the mid-1980s, I think. Potter wore a golden, paper crown, and he and Mildred sat in aluminum folding chairs. Alec Brown inflated helium balloons for everyone, as he had done for years for Cuttyhunk gatherings. Martin Libero's unpublished novel lionizes Potter as its main character, as an example of a Billy Budd type workman (from a Marxian perspective).

Many of the kids working on Cuttyhunk wanted to work with Potter. Doing so was one of the most desirable jobs. Going to the dump on the garbage run at the west end, when working with him, brought a kind of closure to the day. And a lot of us did, including myself, worked for him for part of one summer.



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Sunrise breakfast and evening cookouts at Barges' beach with the Rectors (a professor of speech, at a good institution), with a lot of singing, campfire food (sometimes quite innovative, like 'egg on a rock'), and good cheer around the fire.


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My brother and I sleeping in two, different tents (in which we could stand upright) over multiple (1968 - possibly 1987) summer's behind our Walpole cottage, because the house was too small. The smell of the grasses on Cuttyhunk are very sweet in the summer.


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The charm of the house we rented for years. The pine (it was called Piney's house) in it, the books, particularly new plays at the time (Piney Wheeler was an English teacher, and the dean of Pine Manor school for Girls, in Wellesley, for years), the mulitiple penguin dishes, glasses, plates, the tiny kitchen like a ship's galley, the antiques, the hedgerow path which everyone walked through to get from the road below our house to the tennis court, and through to the road, again, skipping a steep part of the hill, liverwurst and tomato sandwiches on good, local bread with mayonnaise, our two dogs' enjoyment (Penny, a small, standard black poodle, and Angie, a yellow lab) of Cuttyhunk (they enjoyed Cuttyhunk a lot, - it's a very alive world for a dog), the brown and green paint of our house, the porch where we ate so many lunches, and so much more.


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The delight of coming to Cuttyhunk from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on my own, on the Greyhound bus as a teenager from around 1974 to 1979, of teaching sailing as well as working on Cuttyhunk in those years, of knowing everyone - in pretty open, very friendly, ways - in the context of the openness and creativity which was in the air vis-a-vis the 1970s, the social changes 'in the air,' and the friendliness of summers on Cuttyhunk. It was also fun to wake up really early in the morning while living in Hamden (near New Haven), Connecticut, to get to the old, wooden, orange and white MV Alert ferry, with lovely lines. And it was fun to drive from Bethesda, Maryland (near Washington DC), when my father worked for the department of Health, Education and Welfare, for 2 years.


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Going for camp outs with yacht club at Cuttyhunk's deserted west end, and on Penikese Island, and playing games, doing cook outs, eating somemores, knowing the feel of the land of these islands.

Feeling free and able to go anywhere on Cuttyhunk - on the rock or on the water - and on and around the last few of the Elizabeth Islands (Penikese, Nashawena, Pasque), because I knew them, and everybody.


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Working in Mugsy Thompson's store. Mugsy was entertaining and had a friendly way with people, hiring many kids on Cuttyhunk in at least the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Serving ice cream, doing freight, or working at the counter in a friendly small town were all part of it. He had been in the Navy and smoked a lot of cigarettes. Flo, his wife, was very loving. When the store moved down the hill one house, Steve Baldwin, a skillful sign maker, who visited in the summers, made a perfect sign for the new store which was at the back of the home. It said: "Abaft the Store."


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Engaging the radical, and literary, thinking of the Liberos, while living in their basement for a few summers, as well as their generosity and compassion, in the context of the 1970s, and as a teenager. They thought of me for awhile as an example of the 'new man,' (in a Marxian reconceiving of masculine subjectivity, I think) in my early twenties, because I was thoughtful, caring, and independent-minded, and was open to engaging feminist thought, for example.



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The radiance, warmth, fun and engagement with people, especially in the summer of 1979, (but all through the 70s and beyond), when I was the head yacht club instructor at the Cuttyhunk Yacht Club, and I also organized a talent show that summer in the evenings, which was very, very fun, bringing the island together, summer and winter folks, rich and poor, to create a kind of communitas (that is, a kind of warm, creative togetherness).

And since I knew all of the kids in yacht club, and was 19 years old, I felt a kind of rose of youth and creativity much of the time, I think. I also initiated building a little dinghy for the Cuttyhunk Yacht Club, as an afternoon class that summer, and Eb Wincott (who named it 'Watermelon,' painting it green outside and pink inside) did much of the building, and the Liberos and other adults and some kids in yacht club, attended it. The yacht club had needed a dinghy for years. And it was an interesting teaching and learning opportunity, which I could initiate as the head instructor of the yacht club. Besides eliciting creativity in others via the Talent Show that summer, this is another instance of how the milieu of Cuttyhunk brings out creativity in me; I'm not sure why.

I experienced a kind of loving bliss 'in the air' that summer.


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Playing tennis with a long-time friend simply to keep the ball going, as a kind of 'flow' experience, instead of to 'win,' - on one of the two clay, slightly weathered, summer only, courts on Cuttyhunk.


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Visiting one particular family who had 3 girls and a boy, very often in the evenings to play Yachtzee (a spelling game with letter dice) and tea ... early crushes


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Freedom of being on dinghies (small boats), and sailboats, as well as an ease on the water, thanks to the Cuttyhunk Yacht Club from 1966 through 1979 (when I was the head instructor), and well beyond ....


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An island where radical, loving and creative thinking, and idea-exchange were possible ...


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'Games' in the evenings ("Red rover, red rover, send Phillip over ..." "Simon says ..." and "Capture the Flag"), in a yard at the end of one road, and on other islands around ...



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The freedom (and cleanness) to walk barefoot all over this little island, and also living close to natural world in the summers, - produced a lot of happiness.

So many people went barefoot. My father, a physician, didn't want us to, because of the risks. This was frustrating because everyone else did.


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Staying in the Bosworth House in 1966 or 1967, or both. It's now a private residence. And staying in the Allen House in 1968 (with its guest cottages 'Fair play,' 'Foul play,' and 'Horse play'), - also now a private residence.


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The warmth and generosity of Granny Moore, who introduced us to the former owner of the house we stayed in, and the openness of her home - its blue room with the long, shell-identifying tables, its kitchen, pantry, and the New Englandy front rooms, - for decades - at the "Cuttyhunk Fishing Club."


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Knowing Wilfred Tilton, who had grown up on Cuttyhunk, gone to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), had a really nice aesthetic, and loved to joke around, and dance, had served in the navy, loved flowers, and although he never went to Church, and always arranged the flowers for the Church. He put the sign "Hermit" on his garden gate for the last few decades of his life (perhaps to avoid the latent fractiousness that can exist on Cuttyhunk). He had set up a pottery near three corners, in a large garden, after returning from RISD, and worked a little with Cuttyhunk clay, but I don't think the pottery ever went anywhere.


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The kind of creativity and art that Wilfred's working with Cuttyhunk clay is an example of ... there was a lot of this, especially in the milieu of the 1960s and 70s.


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First summer loves ... :)


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Going up the hill to smoke near the schoolhouse and in the grove.


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Hanging out on the wall near the store in the evenings during the second half of the 70s, with all the other kids. Blue jean jacket's were cool then. (And you needed to wear two or three layers in the 1970s in the evening. In the past 2 decades, I've only needed to wear one layer. Global climate change?)


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The presence of my folks when they were on the island. They were great, - my father a smart and skillful interlocutor with ideas, with a quick mind, and helpful as a doctor to many people. {My father loved this island a lot}.


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A wedding in the back of the garbage truck ...

A wedding part way in the water at Church's beach ...

{reflecting a kind of hippie (kind of cultural reversal) or Cuttyhunk way of thinking ... }


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singing, and harmonizing, in the summer - at the beach, hymns ....


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Face painting on the steps of the Town Hall to start the Talent Show in 1979. I was very engaged that summer ~ lots of 'flow' experiences of very enjoyable kinds, coming together as a whole in the summer.