5867-R2_CIC_August2018_Calendar_Web

Marty’s Memories: Accepting Change by Marty Trower

I have had the great good fortune of spending at least part of almost every summer on this island for a little over seventy years. For the past fifteen years I have dwelled year-round in the family cottage on Hamilton Beach, and the best part, I am realizing, is having the time and peace of mind to contemplate the changes that I have absorbed over this time. It is usually from the porch, in all seasons, where the expansive negative space of the water pulls me toward a clutter-free place of understanding. It is not always a solitary thing. It was here, in a March twilight, sitting on top of stacked and noisy tarp-covered furniture, that my partner and I listened to the melting ice move on the water below us and realized, wordlessly, that there was more than a love of islands between us. This June, on the porch, a group of Soule Road neighbors gathered impromptu and celebrated Donny and Norah (Toohey) Alper’s transition from being long-time summer residents to making the island their year- round home. We couldn’t help it, so many of us traced our memories to many generations of summer natives and inevitably we turned to the water and spoke of the boats that used to bemoored in the cove, and the skippers and crew who manned them. We remembered the old days of the beginning of the yacht club: Gardiner Layng and Gordon Trower starting to race their small fiberglass sloops and concocting a little plastic and driftwood trophy for the winner. The yacht club rafting party, so many boats and people, all ages, red in the face from the slanted sun, laughing and wind-blown from

the thrill of the Round-Island race. We all got to know each other.

The hilarious meetings that included speeches from the commodores, the fish house punch, the annual presentation of the Bungle Trophy—a wooden sailboat clock with the CIYC burgee painted on the sail that only ran backward and was a dud wedding gift my father and mother had donated. What a great way to learn how to laugh at yourself and not take those things that go wrong too seriously. We used to carry the yacht club sign Nancy Hubbell had painted from her house to the placeofourmeeting, usually thecommodore’s house. Speaking of the commodore’s house, Paige Richardson once received a call from guests new to the island saying, “We’d like to take you out for dinner at your yacht club. Can you make the reservation?” Well, since my father was commodore at the time, she jokingly called my mother to find out what was on the dinner menu! The boats in the water are different now, but we marvel at them as they gradually appear at their moorings, filling up the cove and bobbing in safety. Fish house punch is still a mainstay at the yacht club meetings. I gave the tiny first trophy for racing to John Layng years ago; I’m probably the only one who still holds a picture of it and its significance in my head. Does the Bungle Trophy still get presented to the best goof of the season? Where is Nancy Hubbell’s sign? Dinner this year at Commodore Michael and Barbara Porter’s?

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AUGUST 2018 CHEBEAGUE ISLAND COUNCIL CALENDAR