By Peggy Sturdivant

Within 24 hours of disembarking from the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, along with the girl’s lacrosse team, I felt chewed up and spit back out by the fast pace of small town life. “How about a column on the difference between life on the island and the city?” my father said from the front seat of the car my mother was driving well below the speed limit.

For a person who claims that since his stroke he can’t read, can’t walk and can’t speak he’s a pretty good mind reader.

I have been to this island off the coast of Massachusetts every year of my life, but the higher the number of years the harder it seems to switch from Ballard to Oak Bluffs. This year I didn’t bring the one pair of shoes that I need or the right notebook for this week’s column deadline. Further confusing is my father, who could at least reliably hear cannot comprehend a word I say, proving that I don’t even speak the language.

The Vineyard is very proud of the fact that it doesn’t have a single stoplight, which doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a good idea. The rules of pushing through an intersection known as Five Corners (think about whether that makes sense) are fluid. Speaking of fluid, the two inches of rain that rapidly followed my arrival caused the usual flooding. There’s a new sidewalk along the repaved road, but the same old drainage problems. (See also, my father’s ears).

Those on the island at any given time follow into certain categories. There is islander (born here), washashore (moved here on a permanent basis), seasonal (as in fair weather resident) and daytripper/tourists. I try hard to pass as a “washashore.” Within two hours the next-door neighbors announced they’d seen me acting like a tourist. I wasn’t staring at the skunk in surprise; it was just an unusual looking skunk.

I tried to make myself useful before even carrying my suitcase up the cottage stairs. I helped a friend write a letter about a car purchased on Nantucket (major high school football rival) that had proved to be not as advertised (37,000 miles more on odometer). Eighty-seven thousand miles is a bit much, even for an island car. I took notes, struggling to get the facts straight.

Facts may or may not have helped when my parents offered to take me to dinner at the new bowling alley. It was trivia night and our team finished last. Then my mother gave me instructions before bed about where to fetch the car in the morning (it was Scrabble day at the Senior Center) and left me her credit card and shopping card in order to fill up the empty gas tank. She was very specific about where I should gas the car in order to save 20 cents per gallon, given that fuel is $1.00 more than off-island. Then there was the issue of fish.

The annual fishing derby is in progress. After the weigh-in some of the fish gets donated and distributed to the Senior Center on Friday morning. When I went to fetch the car at 9 a.m. I’d never seen so many people in the senior center. It was like seeing giant cats responding to the sound of a can-opener. There was barely room for the folks who gather to play cards, play Scrabble or do yoga. Rumor had it they’d been lined up since before seven o’clock. For bluefish!

I tried to do right by the fuel instructions and knew I had a 50/50 chance of guessing the correct side for my mother’s gas tank. “Wrong side,” the man at the pump said (my first clue that it wasn’t self-serve). Then I produced the grocery card. “We don’t take that,” he said. “That’s the Shell in Vineyard Haven.”

Failed. Failed at trivia, too late for fish. Perhaps I could at least get my father to go to a walk-in clinic to unplug his ears. The right gas station was on the way there. How hard could it be for me to handle one thing? But why was there so much traffic even before Five Corners, and why did the flashing lights of police and fire department seem to have a roadblock directly before the Shell Station? And the police line tape around the whole station?

All the gas stations on the island, but my mom’s is the one with the gas leak. By now my mother had reclaimed possession of her car and accepted that she’d have to fuel up elsewhere. “The gas tank is on the driver’s side,” I told her, and then decided to slink out of sight for the rest of the visit. The island always wins.