GeekForce

…is the third-to-last ‘out’ protrusion of land that the Long Island Sound group-of-island-chain offers to the sun these post-Messazoic days.

(the second-to-last being Martha’s Vineyard, RI, and the final protrusion is the nine-square-mile ‘jutting bump and her hump’ the legendary Block Island. On her rocky shale-based, uh, “downtown” area, that may as well boast “you found us, we think anyway!” lettered on a (steel rod) post, sits rests her/our tiny satellite branch of the 225-yr-old Washington Trust Co. the Baker anscestral workplace, where if a teller calls in sick, she’s hurled headlong into the chilly and HELLACIOUSLY churning, swirling, ruthless abyss of stunning azure-lavender water, unlike, and I’m serious, any color I’ve seen of water elsewhere in our hemisphere (or in my glances at/of/in the Mediteranian and/or North Sea bodies). My grandpa Baker was stationed there for a 4-month duration of 1916-17’s bone-chilling winter while the Jamistown Boatyard, RI (exhausted and overworked war-weary craftsmen came to weld the damaged hull of his anti-sub attack destroyer, who was glanced (only glanced, thank God!) by a U-Boat’s errantly shot torpedo 700 miles-or-so eastward in October-or-so ‘16. Grandpa lived, so I then gratefully breathe air and make numerous typos anc continually relish my native tongue’s writing-of-stuff).

So…where were we? Oh. I digressed a smidgeon. Oops. I brain continues to endure the rigors of atrophic effect..

On Nantucket, trolleys bustle about on (mostly) ash-colored dirt roads in the NE portion of her, and the S and SW regions of the (relatively “large”) island contain stamped concrete thruways where the mansions rest. Mrs. Heintz and Mr. Kerry are known to shop at the ‘mini mart’ type (except for wooden floors, a la Rudolf’s Dry Goods Store (1920-2002) in Webster Groves), and the shoppes are, well, um, ‘pricey’.

Splash go the waves (which are a tad chilly all months except mid-August; this is Rhode Island), she’s surrounded by sand and heat suprisingly intense…and oh, bring your wallets. I’m thinking you’ll need one or two..

We’re staying at the island’s oldest intact colonial residential dlwelling, or more accurately, in a house that’s adjacent to the grey clapboard crib. Old stores. A big barn. Ancient wagon tracks buried under sandy loam, breathing fresh sweetness of freedom from the Old Country(s) coal smudged brick and leaning brick workingman shops and slums.

We’re taking, or rather I’m taking, (no, WE’RE taking! Damn!) a lady who I feel rather comfortable with, yet we have spoken person to each exactly four times. I rather hope she enjoys the short ferry hop, albeit amidst HELLACIOUS north Atlantic ‘chop’ that characterizes the summer, and our destination, Martha’s Vineyard Island a mere hop (er, ‘chop’) away. I’ll show her ‘Grandma Mimi’s’ crib of seventy years or so. She’s my mom’s grandma, who helped raise her (and me, and my sisters, and her daughter, who also helped raise me and my sisters, who helped (or at least one did) me.

I hope you enjoy the week here, mi amour’, you’ll be delighted to meet Dave (the author of the piece just below), and all the horses and kings men….and YIKES! I’ll break new ground forthwith as I employ a word for her (see if you can tell)that I perhaps oughtn’t have… but whatever, she’ll need to know the word buried in the next paragraph. I am a risk taker, thus:

….Dramamine, sweetie! GET know that word! (which word, you ask? ‘Dramamine’ or ’sweetie’?

No lawd. ‘Fraid not. I ain’t sayin’!

and x