Yo Momma’s So Fat, But Even She Can't Fit Around The Rotary

We were blissfully unaware, taking our walks in the sweet fragrant air, in whatever season. Even on our most casual errands, we beheld beauty on all sides – on the way to the supermarket, a saltwater inlet to the right, Nantucket Sound to the left, on the drive home from Menemsha, an ancient stone wall bounded by open fields and, in the distance, a doe and Bambi.

Then . . . in a room somewhere, under fluorescent lights, town officials began to play with an idea for a quaint-sounding “roundabout” that would ease drivers through an intersection that sometimes jams up in the summer. And in another fluorescent-lit room in our capital city, state officials began to assemble suitcases of money.

Beware government dollars. They come with a price. The price in this case is an offer to build a charming-sounding “roundabout,” but no effort has been made to design one befitting our Island’s scenic qualities. Oh no. Someone opened a file cabinet and pulled out a blueprint for, I'm guessing, a recent beaut of a rotary constructed in, oh, let’s say Pawtucket (with apologies to citizens of Pawtucket, it’s just a funny name and, from what I gather, a bit of an industrial eyesore in places such as the spot where this hypothetical rotary was popped in).

H. L. Mencken said it best. In the early 1920s, on the train ride from New York to Philly which whisked him past warehouses, billboards, dilapidated buildings, and feed lots, he wrote, “Americans have a positive libido for the ugly.”

Meanwhile. our town officials who have made this jolly “roundabout” their baby, and our Martha’s Vineyard Commissioners who are supposed to protect us from aesthetic horrors, and certainly the state engineers, all of these guys and gals possess this above-mentioned libido aplenty, so much so that I’m wondering what Sigmund Freud would have surmised about misdirected sexual energies.  

But I digress.

So here we are, euphoric for having grown up here or moved to this edenic place. We’re thrilled, most of us, to live free from strip malls and McDonalds and massive highway structures. Some of us spin sugarplum visions of turning our island into a place where pedestrian malls can flourish, and bike lanes grace the streets, and where travelers feel free and delighted to visit without their cars.

A year or so ago, we got a peek in the papers at the grand design. 

I realize I exaggerate. I dramatize. But here’s my description of the roundabout, hereinafter known as the rotary: It looks like it could land a 747, as long as that jumbo jet, as it hits the tarmac, twirls in a pretzel pattern. Meandering concrete walls could accommodate all the Island’s avid roller-bladers in the ten months that this monolith stands empty. In the center spaces, landscapers are providing us with garden plots so trim and municipal-looking that Polly Hill, rest her precious soul, would take one look at them and be reminded not of her arboretum’s acres, but of her Falmouth periodentist’s courtyard where he and his assistants nip out to grab a smoke.

I feel like Cassandra howling at the gods for sending a 10-story-high wooden horse to the gates of Troy, and having those nincompoops take it in.

How did this happen?               

Last spring 75% of town voters said, basically about the proposed rotary: shudder the thought. All voters, that is to say, except those of Oak Bluffs. No, in O.B., where this lovely idea was hatched, the selectmen comported themselves like strongmen in a Soviet bloc country circa 1970. They ix-nayed the rotary question on the town ballot. Why? Well, it really didn't matter how our opinions shook out: A big whacking majority of the rest of the island had already expressed a big fat "NO" to the project, but those few people with their fingers on this button are mad to press it.              

What can we do?

Many of us may have protested stuff back in the day, but we long ago hung up our spurs, and we’re here on the Vineyard to be kind to each other, or at the very least, civil, and to breathe in the beauty. We'd also love to go on dreaming the dream that thousands of ton of concrete and rebar and big glops of something resembling pink slime in hamburger meat set in clear plastic, could never be imposed on us.

But it is being imposed, like it or not. It’s official. It’s coming. The woman whose property is being seized by that dubious, even nefarious law of imminent domain is taking the land grab to court. This might give us a stay of execution. Execution of our sense and sensibility.

But, I fear, my friends, it will happen.

Unless . . . unless we can pull together an island-wide protest. Unless anyone has a better idea (and most people do), may I suggest we gather at the Blinking Lights at noon on December 26th, Boxing Day, as Lord Grantham would call it. Bring your left-over egg nog and Aunt Cici’s cookies, and bring Aunt Cici too, and Grandma and the kids and the dogs. Let’s fill up that intersection amid surrounding woods as far as the eye can see. We can hold up signs such as “WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ STATE DOLLARS” and “WHAT’S WRONG WITH A SIMPLE STOP-LIGHT WITH AN OFF SWITCH FOR THE WINTER?”

I’ll be there. December 26, my homies. Even if it’s just me and my own silly sign, and maybe my silly dog. But if you’re not joining me, can you drop off Aunt Cici’s cookies anyway?