‘Drive the white folks crazy’

Gingerbread Cottages at Wesleyan Grove, in Oak Bluffs.

— Photo by LisaHendricks

“We were always stared at. Whenever we went outside the neighborhood that knew us, we were inspected like specimens under glass. My mother prepared us. As she marched us down our front stairs, she would say what our smiles were on tiptoe to hear, ‘Come on, children, let’s go out and drive the white folks crazy.”’

— From African-American writer Dorothy West’s (1907-1998) book The Richer, the Poorer (1995). Here, she’s remembering summering in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard.

Read before renting on the Vineyard

Gingerbread summer cottages in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard.

“A danger exists of confusing the Vineyard with my children’s childhood, which time has swallowed, or with Paradise, from which we have been debarred by well-known angels. Let’s not forget the rainy days, the dull days, the cranky-making crowding, and the moldy smell summer furniture gives off when breezes don’t blow through the screen door that one keeps meaning to fix, though it’s the landlord’s responsibility.’’

From “Going Barefoot,’’ by John Updike (1932-2009), an essay in Peter Simon’s On the Vineyard II (1989)