Vineyard people like to pretend we don’t notice when a celebritywell-known person passes us on Main Street, shows up at the same movie, or is eating two tables over at the same café. We’re sure the ones who gawk and point are all day-trippers or clueless summer people. To some extent this is still true, at least among longtimers.

But it totally went to hell when the First Family first vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard in August 1993.

Some of my chronically unimpressed friends who’d lived on MV much longer than I — I was then at the very beginning of my ninth year-round year — were among the crowds at the airport when the Clintons first arrived.

Since I was at the time the features editor for the Martha’s Vineyard Times, I had a front-row seat for some of the crazy. The Times office at Five Corners was easy to find if you’d just got off the boat. Much easier than the Vineyard Gazette office, which is in the heart of Edgartown. The ferry that docks nearby only goes to Chappaquiddick and back, a distance of some 527 feet.¹

I hadn’t seen “pack journalism” in action before. Did these reporters have nothing else to do? We in the Times office fielded questions, by phone, fax, or in person (this was a few years before email), many of which were unanswerable. The Clintons stayed at a summer home on the south shore owned by former defense secretary Robert McNamara. It was not readily accessible, and needless to say, the Secret Service and law enforcement were everywhere.

My favorite was the guy who blew in, he said, from London to track down some rumor or another. I can’t remember what the rumor was. I do remember he was wearing what looked like an Australian bush hat. Do journalists routinely jump on planes and cross oceans to track down rumors? It was a glimpse into a whole other world.

The Clintons did show up at the Ag Fair and various other places. The president played golf at Farm Neck. Mostly the family enjoyed their R&R on the south shore. Clearly they enjoyed their stay, because they came back several more summers while Bill was president. Unlike the Obamas, I don’t think they ever bought property here, but I could be wrong about that.

Here’s the front side of the Basement Designs shirt:

Note the self-promotional reference to the Dead Dog T-shirt.

The “Ernie” referred to is New England car magnate Ernie Boch, who died in 2003. His huge house on Edgartown harbor was a bit of a scandal when it was built in the early 1980s. He turned out to be a pretty good, philanthropically minded neighbor, and likewise his son, Ernie Jr., who’s still around.

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NOTE

1. That Chappaquiddick story was 24 years old by this point. Passé. Very, very old news. Anyone who showed interest in it was almost certainly a right-wing crank. Then as now right-wing cranks are scarce on Martha’s Vineyard. These days they’re more easily found on Nantucket. ↩︎