From the August 18, 1950 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:
The crowd that assembled at the Oak Bluffs town bathing beach yesterday morning may have believed that pirate treasure had been uncovered. In any event several hundred persons assembled to watch John Viera, superintendent of streets, and his crew, as they uncovered and eventually removed a huge safe from the sands.
The safe contained no treasure, however, and probably very little of anything else save scanty memorials of the old bath-houses which formerly stood on this site.
In those days the safe, a monstrous affair estimated to weigh two tons, stood in the bath-house office and was used for the safe-keeping of valuables of bathers while they were on the beach. The hurricane of 1944, which demolished the bathhouses, washed the building from underneath the safe, dropping it to the sands below, where the action of the sea buried it deeply.
Recently, however, the same tidal action uncovered part of the safe and it became a nuisance to bathers, and it was ordered removed.
Despite wars and rumors of wars, mutterings of a slow season and all other human troubles, the attendance at the annual Illumination Night at the Oak Bluffs camp ground of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association was close to a record for the past quarter century. The tabernacle, holding more than 2,000, was filled, and a probable additional thousand milled around in the grove outside. It was an enthusiastic gathering which entered wholeheartedly into the community singing led by George Arkwell, and which stood uncovered, to the last tiny child, when the Vineyard Haven Band opened the program with the Star Spangled Banner.
Never did this band play with more verve and spirit, the professional touch of their new leader, Rudolf Fiebich, being plainly discernible in the smooth rendering of some of the rapid orchestrations given, and the audience was delighted. There was no speaking, a brief address of welcome being given by Dr. Ira W. LeBaron, president of the association.
As usual through the passage of a century and more, the Chinese lantern display had been arranged in readiness long before dark, and as the shadows deepened, some 2,000 of the gay illuminators were lighted and hung until the whole grove glowed with color and light. The lantern display was even finer than usual, a large number of imported lanterns, many of them of silk, having been brought to Oak Bluffs this year by Frank Yan Ng of China House.
The verandas of the cottages surrounding the tabernacle were thickly hung with lanterns while the grounds themselves were covered with a network of wires from which hung many more.
So impressive was this display that at the end of the program of music and song it seemed as if the majority of the gathering was circling the grounds to look at the lanterns. The beautiful display brought to old-timers a nostalgic touch as a flood of memories of the old days welled up and the realization came of change and that the olden days come not again.
The old-timers remembered the procession, the frock-coated, silk-hatted men who walked slowly along this walk, entering the tabernacle by the main entrance while the band played, and who were seated on the speakers’ platform.
They recalled the addresses of governors, lieutenant-governors and all lesser officials of the state, and they somehow missed this older touch, the feature of those programs of other days.
It does not matter that some of these old officials were criticized for shortcomings or errors in judgment. It is immaterial that many of their speeches were designed, subtly or not, to win support for themselves and their friends in elections looming in the near future.
All that is water under the bridge. But here, for a brief moment, stood the dignity and prestige of the government of the Commonwealth, and the massed assembly which looked upon it in the flesh was impressed by its substantial superiority and the depth of its apparent wisdom and they felt a pride that sang and shouted through their subconsciousness: "Massachusetts, there she stands!"
Such old-timers realized on Wednesday night that the association had done well in providing its program as it has done since the annual Governor’s Day ceased to be. The younger people, and they were in the great majority, missed nothing, being unable to remember those other days. Perhaps that is as it should be.
Perhaps it is a sign of advancing age when men speak of the “good, old days.” Perhaps it signifies a general leveling of social and political distinctions when government descends from its traditional pedestal to figuratively barn-dance with the masses. But just perhaps, it also means that the cloak of dignity and honor has worn irreparably thin and, if so, it is just as well that few remember what it was like when bright and flawless, the object of admiration and respect.
Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
library@vineyardgazette.com
