Windmills of My Mind
It’s still 1960, we four are still on Nantucket, and as we make our Pilgrims’ progress up through the hilly town, we’re happy Mom decided against bikes and curious about why all the houses are grey.
Twenty twenty-four: We just spent the weekend here in the Northeast struggling for the end zone of this early-summer heat wave. Boston broke a century-old record, I saw on the news, and weathercasters from Eastport to Tom’s River were besides themselves with excitement, all a-sweat like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News. I spent a while trying to figure out this new (or had I missed it?) “Heat Dome” concept. I was telling Luci how it was always a learning curve on the Enviro Beat at the magazine when a new term — either scientific or manufactured by TV folks trying to juice their newshour ratings with fresh causes for alarm — when these new terms kept bubbling up. “I remember when there was Global Warming, then Climate Change, and, y’know, it turned out there was a nuanced difference, I guess — I remember Climate Change as the overarching term, and it certainly seems the leader in the clubhouse today. Convection had something to do with something about the difference, and Global Warming seemed more specific to the old Greenhouse Gas Effect, while Climate Change had to do with not only carbon emissions — always carbon emissions! — but everything also, y’know, like not only cars and trucks and farting cows, but deforestation and overpopulation and the whole transitory nature of populations shifting, and development schemes and . . . Then we had to learn what Fracking was all about and you had to be careful when you were writing your piece not to present Fracking simplistically like some sort of next-gen Strip Mining or . . .” I had lost myself and certainly had lost my immediate audience, as Luci said at this point or an earlier one, “I think I should get in my walk now before it gets too hot.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek and was away.
That sent lonely me back to my emails and I saw that Killer had Texted some new pics to a few of us: Photos of himself and Gloria behind frosty drinks on Nantucket. “Wish You Were Here.”
I told Killer the timing was perfect. What with the advent of summer, I’d just been thinking about Nantucket.
He said he knew this. He’d read the recent Posts, enjoyed them, and he said he was holding for me a book specific to Frederick Douglass’s visits to the island. “For next time you and Luci visit.” I said thanks and he said he was eager for the continuation of “Dad’s Nantucket Story”. The was yesterday, and I replied to Killer, “Tomorrow” — and here it comes — “Dad’s Story II”, as we time travel again to 1960, way before Nantucket became today’s Nantucket, We’re back with the docking of a ferry that has just, at this moment, been secured to its moorings and opened its yawning mouth, a lot a la that memorable scene in Spielberg’s Jaws but far less rambunctious and without John Williams music. Ours, in 1960, is releasing its three dozen or so passengers to their island adventures on what persists as an overcast, muggy New England Saturday. So, to continue:
Kevin and I skipped off the boat and onto the dock. Nantucket didn’t exactly spread out before us. It sort of poked through the greyness here and there—the marina, a chowder shack, a bike-rental shack, a dry goods shack, a shack that just seemed to be a shack, a bunch of beat-up old boards that might once have been a shack, an unassuming five-and-dime whaling museum shack on Broad Street (which today is the big-as-an-Antarctic-Blue Whaling Museum on Broad Street, of which Montauk or Disney might be proud. I love spending time in there; check it out for sure if you go.).
We walked a block to get away from the aroma of the port. I always welcome the smell of salt spray and/or fried clams, but this had more than a dash of benzene in the brew. We headed uphill with no particular place to go. Mom had heard that biking was tougher on Nantucket than, for instance, Martha’s Vineyard, so we had nixed that option. Kevin and I were eight and six in ’60, and Dad, not having a clue as to what “tougher than Martha’s Vineyard” could possibly mean, nonetheless could spot a bad idea a mile away. We would hike.
I mentioned Lowell, Mom and Dad’s hardbitten home city, in the last Post.
Kevin and I, too, were already, as kids, well familiar with Lowell, which after all had for two centuries before its 19th century founding been just the easternmost sector of our own town, Chelmsford (founded 1654), and was still, in 1960, the place where Mom and Dad both went to work, and where we all sometimes went for Disney movies at the Keith or Strand. Lowell had a couple of cobblestone alleys remaining in 1960, so Nantucket’s thoroughfares weren’t foreign to either Kevin or me, but they were seemingly more authentic, having been trod, no doubt, by Aha in his day, trod today by Ahab’s grandsons or great-grandsons (Ahab had unknown heirs? Unlikely? I’ll ask Nat Philbrick next time we meet.)
These cobblestones had to be different than Lowell’s, I figured. We were on an island, so the road had to be paved with cobblestones, yes? Because there was nothing else available out here. Right? Isn’t that why?
That’s authenticity, kiddo! Lowell could tar over its straggling streets whenever it wanted to (and no doubt would do soon enough, if it could find the money) but Nantucket, well, there’s simply no asphalt on an island. Right? Isn’t that it? Yer not in Lowell anymore, me maties.
You concoct your own mythologies to entertain or at least satisfy yourself and your audience. It’s what I do, anyway. I figure, this is pretty much what mythologies are all about: Good stories with correct or faulty information in them, entertainingly told. Campbell said as much, in a way. More often than not, a mythology has some moral at the end. Cave dwellers did this. Homer did it. The Romans chased his Greeks with the habit. All cultures have done it since all of those so-called Ancients. Religions did it bigtime and still do. Clubs do it. The Masons did it. QAnon, a religion or a cult or a club, whatever, tried it (what’s up with QAnon these days?). The Red Sox do it; the BLOHARDS, our Red Sox fan club in New York City, does it; nations do it; birds do it; bees do it; cold Cape Cod clams ’gainst their wish do it; lazy jellyfish, constantly; Geoffrey of Monmouth did it; Stan Lee did it; Kavalier & Clay did it; Tolkien did it; Lucas and his pal Spielberg did it and others now do it in their names: in their “series” and “offshoots” and comic-book versions. It might be sacrilege for a Sullivan to say so, but Saint Paul probably did more than his fair share of it. Ask a Philippian.
Kevin and I did it. We were still in the process of mythologizing our personal Lowells and our views of, say, Dad’s Part in World War II, and now we became engaged in mythologizing Our Nantucket.
It’s fun, today, to think of how closely the “Nantucket” fancified by Kevin and me in 1960 came to be the Colonial Williamsburgian Ye Olde Nantucket that has been so successful in the 21st century. Someone else besides us saw just how beautiful this place was and could continue to be, and in the fine weather months, then with a bigger hospital, better schools and the addition of a Christmas Stroll and even a film fest, Nantucket climbed higher year after year as the years progressed.
I like to think it was destiny: There really was something special in the Nantucket air, something even kids from Chelmsford could sense blowing on the breeze, fairy dusted, back when Nantucket was very hard up. I’ve never read an Elin Hilderbrand novel so I don’t know if it’s in there, but I do think it exists in the island’s nature. It’s a bless-ed isle. Every time I go out there I feel this when walking some empty beach at dawn, or when glimpsing the tip-top of the windmill on the horizon.
(Fun facts for me and Luci and I hope you: I know Hilderbrand got married at the Chanticleer in ’Sconset sometime in the 1990s. Get this: Luci was in Beth’s wedding out there in that same period and the rehearsal dinner was at the Chanticleer! The fun goes on and on: In 1980, when Nantucket was well embarked on its own latest rehab ascent from Legendary Whaling Port to Erstwhile Whaling Port to Truly Down and Out to 21st Century Marvel, the grumpy, ex U.S. President Richard Nixon, in the sixth year of his own enforced Next Chapter, slipped onto the island from some buddy’s yacht for needed R&R and, alongside his ever-loyal sidekick Bebe Rebozo, rode a limo cross-island and, after a few paces on the ’Sconset Bluff Walk, enjoyed (as much as Nixon could enjoy anything) what was no doubt a splendid dinner at the Chanticleer. Nantucketers, fingers always to the wind, knew he was on-island and most wished him well when they spotted him. One Beantown smartass yelled when he saw Nixon in town, “Where’s Checkers?”)
Nantucket’s cobblestones are still in roughly the same places in the 2020s as they were 60 years past. Without question, however, in the present day there are billions of Nantucket-affiliated dollars and plentiful stores of asphalt ready —eager — to bubble forth as from Kileuea’s cone and pave everything over, literally and metaphorically fill in the cracks.
But the cobblestones have grown to be “charming” in their ever-older age as they continue to break the ankles of successive human generations of tourists, and so they are indispensable line-items in the Nantucket Master Plan—2024 spreadsheet.
Lowell’s cobblestones, as was hoped for by a parade of mayors, were gone as soon as fiscally possible and Lowell herself — unfortunately or not — went through an extended period of forsaking much of its mythology. Today it likes to talk about “the mills” and Kerouac, and some civic booster will mention that Dickens once visited and wrote positively about the place. Whistler may come up in the conversation, or Bette Davis or Ed McMahon or Olympia Dukakis or Paul Tsongas or Mickey Ward or Michael Chiklis. But there’s often a hint of apology to much of it. Lowell sometimes seems to be trying to make amends for past urban-planning mishits. Few talk of An Wang anymore few know who he was. Lowellians have been famously torn about Kerouac, even, although Jack seems to finally be winning the day as, on Merrimack Street, there’s a perceptible tilt towards “Proud.”
Like anyplace, Lowell, like Nantucket, would like to be proud of itself, and dress nicely for dinner. (I still love that city, or my personal mythology of it, God help me.)
On Nantucket, we Sullivans made our way, haltingly, carefully, gingerly uphill. I sensed that Dad was thinking about what in the world he had been thinking about when he suggested this trip. Mom was certainly wondering what Dad had been thinking. Kevin and I were looking for something to see beyond the Grey Lady’s grey-shingled houses, which seemed to us in need of paint. But we were already miles beyond happy with the progress of the day. We were constantly but quietly bursting with joy.
Now, we boys were apparently misunderstanding about the grey houses needing paint. They may have been wanting paint, but . . .
Y’see, according to my friend, John (aka Killer), who lives in Providence and has a place on the island, his and Glo’s property being situated about a half-mile inland from the harbor, there is — at least there is now — a civic regulation — something firmer than a tradition — that Nantucket homeowners in scores of designated old houses or specific neighborhoods cannot paint their Nantucket-grade (not Kennebunkport-grade) white-cedar (not red-cedar) shingles any old color. He or she must choose a subdued shade and more or less leave the shingles’ visual fate and eventual rustic/severe/sage coloration to a proscribed communal hue, fashioned as much by wind and weather as Sherman Williams. Such civic well-being has long been the Colonially Williamsburgian way, and it’s Nantucket’s way, too. I’m betting that there was no such community rule in 1960, but I don’t know this. I’m betting that, back then, colorful paint on the island was an afterthought along with asphalt, for many of the same practical and economic reasons. An enforced code stipulating that everyone must leave his or her shingles relatively un-spruced might have been greeted with a Portuguese- or Greek- or Southie-accented, “Youse gotta be shittin’ me? Why, for chrissakes? I got this leftover red from the boat, and I’m paintin’ it. Screw you. Wasn’t even gonna paint it till you tol’ me . . . ” That’s not the same language a prominent Nantucket realtor now uses online in its info section, trying to explain the 2024 situation: “Some people describe the [uniform] color as gloomy due to its dull hue. However, if you stay longer on the island, you will appreciate the artistry employed in the color scheme . . .” That’s verbatim, and fact-checked.
Suddenly, to our left on the near horizon as we stumbled along, there loomed something great, something worthwhile, something new, something like nothing I’d ever seen in my life . . . This was the glimpse I mentioned earlier and remember now as well as I remember it the dozens more times I’ve glimpsed it since . . . the first glimpse of the windmill.
It hove into view like a ship on another horizon. It grew (it was so much bigger then, when I was six, than it seems now, 64 summers later). It was large and it was grey — I’m betting by neglect rather than edict. It was stoic. It wasn’t in motion, but I was sure that it had been in industrious motion in days of yore.
I was only six but I thought I understood windmills, at least a little. I had probably picked up something from Hans Christian Andersen. Thumbelina might have bumped into a windmill once upon a time; I can’t remember. Now, here before me was, irrefutably, an actual specimen. Dad had put the Olds on Rte. 495 in Lowell, headed southbound for the Cape. We had taken a ferry from Woods Hole to a Massachusetts island and somehow landed in Holland, and in the pages of a storybook.
“A windmill!” I exclaimed. And so we went left, climbed a bit more, and looked at the windmill up close. Then someone, probably Mom, said something that probably went like, “Let’s see what else we can find!”
I’ve got a theme to this Nantucket trip. Indulge me in this, please.
Let me further this theme along in these next few paragraphs by telling you what I now know about Nantucket’s windmill at its rising. The theme is, clearly: Then and Now. It’s one of my same old, as-ever, going-to-the-well themes, as our kids know from their mandatory “Another of Dad’s Stories” sessions at Thanksgiving, which they seem to tune out more readily at they’ve crept into young-adulthood. Then and Now is my companion to Ever Thus, a variation on, or elaboration of, the same ‘ol theme.
In this particular Then and Now Lecture I hope to wind my way to concluding that we (and in this case, Nantucket too) were in 1960 much the same as we are today, although we seem to present as so very different. We have changed, sure, but not really. This is simple and obvious material to grasp. How many celebrities have you heard say in interviews, “In my head, I’m still 25.” And if we can’t trust our celebrities, then who . . .
It's a bonehead’s theme, perhaps, but maybe there’s something to it? Just look at us — Luci, Kevin, Gail, me — 64 years later. Time has passed, taking its toll, yes, but also filling out the picture as intended in our American mothers’ and fathers’ paint-by-numbers kits. There has been progress and regress, successful details added, and mistakes made when straying outside the lines. But generally, life has gone on, as the country has hurt itself and healed itself around us, just as the world has hurt itself and healed itself and hurt itself again, sickness has ebbed and flowed around us. Look at where just America has traveled and landed since Kevin and I boarded that ferry — to the moon, back to the moon, to Globally Warmed and Climate Changed weather, to Vietnam, to the Middle East and via its weaponry to Ukraine and into Russia . . . Us, to all those Sox and Pats championships, and the C’s 18th(!) — All of us, to and not yet through Covid-19, from the Pettis Bridge and the assassinations of ’68 to Rodney King through George Floyd . . . From Bobby Kennedy to Bobby Jr. and how’d that happen? Where was Eunice? . . . to a hundred million weddings and a hundred million wakes, to the births of 200 million children, to spreading ghettoes in many precincts and sacrosanct shingles becoming law in others . . . to Margaritaville as an enclave in Florida, a state where the governor has busied himself in the last few days signing laws that disallow slow driving in the left lane and also make it legal to kill “Crack Bears,” should a Floridian happen to encounter one in Margaritaville, Disney World, the Everglades, Daytona or anywhere else from Key West to Panama City . . . Margaritaville, a retirement community rather than a harmless ditty that peaked at Number Eight in 1977 on the Billboard Hot 100, when I was already a fan, happy for Jimmy haing a Top Ten but thinking the song not a patch on “A Pirate Looks at Forty” . . . to this 2024 election season we’re saddled with, and you tell me what to think about that, and I guess you will . . . And yet we roll on, those of us who are left, and some of us think a thought, as I just did, and feel we’re still 25, or six.
We members of our family have been damned lucky in this, sure. Nantucket, were it able, would no doubt think the same about itself, but of course an island is lacking those crucial human synapses that allow for reflection, also self-regard, introspection, wonder, appreciation, regret. Therein lies my metaphor, which is why I dwell on Nantucket so much — in my head if not my home. Nantucket and us: Lucky Massachusetts bastards for sure. I mean, really: Look at Nantucket today. Holy Canoli, right?
The windmill is known as The Old Mill. It was known to the Quakers as the brand new mill in 1746, when Nathan Wilbur, one of the not-unusual Nantucket sailors who experienced Holland in his journeys, took inspiration from the Dutch and had it erected not far from the propitious site where the Round-Top Mill was already taking advantage of prevailing winds just above town. There would eventually be four so-called smock mills up there near what is now New North Cemetery.
A smock mill was a single building with all machinery housed within and a capacity, via a rotating cap, to turn its sails into the wind. The Old Mill, when new and for decades thereafter, was by accounts a well-performing smock mill. But by 1828, the Old Mill was truly old and decrepit. It sold that year for twenty dollars. The generally presumed intention was that purchaser Jared Gardner would scrap the mill for firewood, but he had bolder plans. He renovated, innovated and got the warhorse up and running again to grind corn. This it did for decades more. Then it stood idle until tourist boards were formed.
The mill still whirls today for the edification of visitors whenever the wind does blow during the summer months, which it does pretty much daily. The Old Mill stands, happily enough, and we assume (granting it those anthropoidal synapses for a moment) proudly enough, as a kind of offshore Plimoth Plantation attraction, minus waistcoats, funny hats and musketry. This mill, the only survivor of the quartet that once congregated on Nantucket’s highest hilltop, is said to be the oldest continuously operating windmill in America, and in 1992 it was designated an American Society of Mechanical Engineering Landmark — no small honor.
In 1960, Kevin and I could go up and touch the lonely old thing, which stood completely undesignated and attracted no crowds. Kevin or I might’ve taken a splinter to the finger. Today, we would take a tour, as Luci and I did a summer ago or the summer before that, of a mill that has dressed for dinner.
And 64 years from now? Who knows, regarding the mill? My bet is, it will still be up there, buttressed in miracle fibers. Nantucket will be smaller, tighter island, the sea rising every year, ‘Sconset long gone, those old houses built in the 2030s threatened next. Some people — you? Spielberg or Lucas? — might bet that the Old Mill will be gazing upon its greatest great-great-grandchildren: massive wind-farm turbines cropping up from the sea like corn stalks, a new horizon stretching beyond New England’s once lonely islands.
I guess I’ll be 134 then, still typing this stuff 64 summers into my crusade to resist AI’s assistance, which no doubt could’ve have helped me (and you!) long ago to clean this up . . . A hundred thirty-four, trying to think my own next thought, remarking to myself how much this new notion resembles one I had at 70, or 25, or six.
More from Dad’s odd trip, and mine, anon.
Sull
Thanks for the call out!
Learned a lot.
It had a Melville ess tone.
Look forward to your next trip to ACK.
Killer