It’s almost 7 a.m. The cool breeze in my face brings the pungent smells of the forest that you miss if you drive along North Road. It is quiet except for the distant cry of a catbird back in the trees and the rhythmic whir of my crank and chain. I’m completing the first half of my morning bike ride, pedaling down the hill that leads toward the collection of small buildings at the Vineyard-Sound end of Menemsha harbor. I am damp from the cycling but more so from the ride along the foggy, dripping, tree-lined roads. This early in the morning, the visibility is about a hundred feet.

I come this way to visit the small building that serves as Menemsha’s convenience store, gas station, and harbor master’s shack. I come for the best deal on the Island: hot serve-yourself coffee and powdered-sugar donuts for fifty cents each.

I’m not an easterner; I’m a graying, blond Californian. In this part of the world, Californians are regarded as a race of people from The Coast, whose only contribution to the culture is to have perfected the art of having fun. Worse than not being an easterner, I’m not even a fisherman. On this puritanical Island, this is unforgivable.

I coast past the sailing vessels tied together along the dock, where they wait for the fog to clear and the wind to rise. I pedal by the brooding, blue-gray shapes of forty-five-foot commercial fishing vessels, which are tied up to the wharf near the weathered, gray building at the end of the road. The smell of fish rises from the old wooden pier.

After leaning the bike up against the side of the store where the air hose is, I slowly – almost reverently – walk around it to the dock side where four men already stand with their coffee. I have been coming down to this same building for more than twenty years, but only as a visitor. I observe and appreciate the tight-lipped northeastern culture, but I can’t hope to be part of it – yet. If it weren’t for my friend Dick, who is from Maryland, but who has come here every morning before breakfast all summer – for forty years – I wouldn’t be allowed as close to this Menemsha scene as I am. Except for Dick, these are gnarled, weather-worn men. They are fishermen. They group themselves in front of a sturdy, handmade, six-foot bench against the wall of the store under a fading, hand-painted sign reading Squid Row.

Squid Row is the unofficial town hall, rumor mill, and judge’s platform overlooking Menemsha harbor. The sport these old pros evaluate is boat handling. Every move made on the water, they scrutinize.

Since Dick is one of the men at the bench, I will be able to hang around. I can’t sit on the bench, but I can stand to the side. One of the unspoken rules for organized – or even not-so-organized – groups of men is that the new guy rarely begins the conversation. But out of citified courtesy, I can’t resist mumbling a ‘Good morning’ at Dick, who reluctantly returns the greeting. This exchange is greeted with silence and serious, far-off-horizon squinting by the other three as I pass on my way in the back door of the store to get my coffee.

As I come back out on the deck with my hot paper cup, the two smokers among the Squid Row crew have added clouds of their own to the receding wisps of mist and fog. This emphasizes the lack of conversation and any movement in the group. I sit on the edge of the pier, practice my own far-off-horizon squint, and wait. For four minutes – maybe five – the only sound is the slapping of water against the steel hulls of the commercial boats and the terns squawking and splashing over their breakfast at the entrance to the harbor. It seems like an eternity of silence to me. Then: “Fair tide this morning.”

It is Chuck, the harbor master. He joins the group from his small shack next to the store. If anyone has the right to begin a terse, northeastern-morning conversation on the wharf, it’s Chuck. He has the best red-nosed, leathery-faced, far-off-horizon squint of anyone on Squid Row.

No response. This first attempt at conversation stands as still as a cold outboard motor after the first pull. I desperately want to respond but two things keep me back: New guys wait to be spoken to, and I had not the slightest clue what an acceptable response would be. Finally: “Yep.”

This pearl comes from Ed, the marine-maintenance man, whose work or sea stories are endless when he finally begins either one. Ed’s face is not as weathered as Chuck’s, but he commands respect, in part because he has fished these waters all his life. As the fog lifts slightly to reveal a slice of sunrise, things warm up. There is the crunch of tires on the sand behind me. A car parks near the pier, the first of hundreds that will crowd the wharf during the day. I tell myself not to turn around, for I will be the only one interested in who has just come to the wharf. Wait, I tell myself, wait.

But curiosity gets the best of me, and I take a peek. It is one of the two town police cars. At the wheel is a young cop.

“Hey, Baby Hugo,” says David, the bearded lobsterman-carpenter-guitarist, who is about forty-eight and therefore the youngest man in the crew at Squid Row this morning. The policeman is six feet, six inches tall and weighs 280 pounds, and in the Island tradition, says nothing as he walks by and enters the store. Dick sees my questioning look and explains, “His father is Big Hugo.”

The second car to park near the store is Meredith’s. Meredith’s husband and sons are seamen, so she is the only woman allowed to hover near Squid Row. Though a woman, her station is certainly above my own, and she is therefore allowed to engage in conversation. She is on her way to work at the bank but stops here every morning as straw boss to embarrass the men into leaving for work. Today she has also come to badger David about unfinished work at her house and seizes the opportunity to quiz Ed about why her water heater is still not working. Even she finds it difficult to get a response from Squid Rowers. It’s like talking to the wooden pilings in front of us. Her calm Islander patience pays off, though, and she extracts a commitment from David. Ed begins a long-winded explanation about the problems to do with her water heater, but she stops him with a hand on his thick, sunburned arm: “Ed, just come fix it, eh?” Then she swishes her summer dress around, gets back in her car, and goes to work.

By eight o’clock, the parking lot is half full; people are strolling the beach or jockeying for position to get gas for their cars and boats. The morning judgments and entertainment are about to begin. But first there is a change in the lineup of judges – Chuck the harbor master retreats to his shack, David is replaced by Lyndon (rail thin and tanned to a crisp with an eastern accent I can barely understand), and Dick is replaced by Hen, who leads the stinging critique of almost everything and everyone that moves in the harbor. The most cutting comments are reserved for the “weekend sea clowns,” who begin to rouse themselves and maneuver their boats in to the gas dock or other slips.

A $200,000 New York cabin-cruiser named Sea Witch blusters into the harbor without reservations, berthing directions, or clearance from Chuck. Chuck and the captain exchange three terse bits of information, which we can hear through the open door of Chuck’s shack. The captain’s wife, who could be heard over the radio, is now seen in the stern of the boat, yelling at the small man up at the controls. He isn’t listening to her. He is busy stopping and starting the boat, his propellers thunderously churning up the water in front of Squid Row. The boats in their slips bounce and bang against one another. In the faces of the men, I see signs of shock. For a while, the only sound is the angry growl of the big engines.

In the calm between a pair of forward and reverse growls, Lyndon spits out, “Christ, my six-year-old granddaughter could handle that craft better than that knucklehead.”

The little man at the top of the superstructure boat is no longer talking to Chuck. The radio and the wife are apparently too much for him. He throws the boat around the small space available between moored boats. Chuck comes out of the shack with a microphone whose elastic cord runs back into the shack. He orders: “Shut it down now, and prepare for a pilot to board for docking.” The engines go quiet. The boat wallows before the Squid Row judges. Baby Hugo comes out of the store with his coffee. He looks up at the boat, smiles, and asks quietly, “Hey, Chuck, you want me to shoot ’em?” Chuck gazes at the boat. He turns to the store’s screen door and says, “Billie, come put this guy in No. 6.”

A fourteen-year-old girl, wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball hat backwards, bangs out of the store and skips down to the dock without a word. She jumps into a small rubber raft and motors to the side of the big boat. Billie throws the woman a line and in seconds is on the big boat, up the ladder, and at the wheel. The little man backs away, stunned. With three taps of the throttle, Billie has the huge craft backed into No. 6 and tied off. Billie hands the little man his keys and jumps onto the dock.

Chuck meets the New Yorkers at the stern of their boat. We can’t hear the conversation, but we can see that the long bill of Chuck’s fisherman’s cap is right on the forehead of the little man. Before Chuck is even finished speaking, the New Yorker has his wallet out and is counting out bills. Chuck takes the money and, without taking his eyes from the little man’s face, hands it to Billie. She pockets some of the money, puts the rest in a canvas float bag marked Harbor, jumps into her rubber boat, and motors it back to its slip.

“Quick $25, eh, Billie?” Baby Hugo asks as she runs back into the store to sell more coffee. In Squid Row tradition, she does not answer. Over the next hour, older men and a couple of younger fishing captains replace most of the second-shift crew of Squid Row. The young captains are waiting for their day-tripping clients to arrive. One of these men is never called by name. He brings Bass-ackwards to the dock to pick up his charges for the day.
“Made out yesterday,” he tells the newest Squid Rowers. “Picked up this family from Chicago. Big guy, wife, and two sons.”

“Where’d you take ’em?” asks someone from the Row.

“Well, I was going to Gay Head, but before I got a mile out, all four of them were hanging over the side, feeding the fishes their breakfast. All of ’em green in the face. The wife demanded to come back. The only thing he said when we got back was, ‘Keep the money.’ I went out by myself and caught five blues and a striper.” The men of Squid Row nod and squint.

“Who you got going out with you today?”

“I’m hoping for fishermen, but you never know.”

His party shows up, an overweight man in shorts and loud shirt, and a woman in a matching, lemon-yellow outfit, roughly $1,000 worth of gold jewelry, a huge straw hat, and enormous dark glasses. She leads a tiny dog on a leash. The dog looks like something a bigger dog has coughed up. They do not look like fishermen to me. The captain does not miss a beat. He helps the couple into Bass-ackwards, gives them a short talk on safety, and takes them out to Vineyard Sound.

The older men swap sea stories, share gossip, and pass on rumors. I learn more about the Island in twenty minutes than I have reading the Island papers that week. The radio in Chuck’s shack crackles again. It is a forty-five-foot ketch, motoring into the mouth of the harbor. The man at the helm is wearing a captain’s hat with a shiny black visor. Four or five non-sailors stand with him in the cockpit.

“Too fast,” says Hen under his breath. “Ten bucks says he hits something.”

There are no takers. Everyone on the dock can see that the guy is not really in command. To me, the dangerous part is the bowsprit, an eight-foot-long projection beyond the bow. It seems to wave around the tight cluster of boats docked in the harbor like the stiff finger of doom.

Those who are sitting on the Squid Row bench now rise. Chuck races out of his shack with his microphone, the cord stretched tautly back through the open door: “Ketch Mary Lou, ketch Mary Lou, reverse, reverse, you are coming in too fast.”

We can hear the ketch’s engine rev in reverse, and we can see the man spinning the wheel. All of this is too late. The stern swings around and the bowsprit spears the windshield of the Sea Witch from New York. The two boats crash and scrape and come to rest like two dogs in heat. Nobody moves. Chuck drops the microphone. The coiled, elastic cord snaps the mike back into the shack. He puts a large hand over his face. It is not even nine o’clock.

I think I have seen everything there will be to see on this particular day, but as I prepare to leave, another drama begins to develop. A man motors toward the gas-pump pier in a skiff. Even I can see that this guy will have a hard time climbing up to the wharf now that the tide is out. There is no ladder. As he gets closer, I recognize him as a fairly famous person in the contemporary-music scene. The papers have reported that he and his wife are staying aboard a yacht at Menemsha. The men beside me also recognize the man. Insular as Squid Row is, it will force itself to vanish before it will recognize a celebrity.

The celebrity gets the skiff to the dock but cannot reach anything to tie up to. He peers up at us over the edge of the wharf. No one moves. It is awful to watch. I cannot stand it. I take the line from him and secure his boat, but he is still a few feet below the wharf. Without thinking, I hold on to one of the pilings and extend my hand to the celebrity in the boat. He takes it, and I hoist him up onto the wharf. He thanks me and goes into the store.

Returning to my place at the rim of Squid Row, I can feel a thick, new wave of exclusion breaking over me from the men on the bench. I have pandered to a celebrity. The Californian has fallen in with his kind. Whatever position I had earned through my silent apprenticeship this morning is lost. I can’t even look at them. I go straight for my bike. As I pass Chuck’s door, he looks at me and growls, “Don’t let those guys bother you, son. They’ll get over it in a year or two.”

Thomas L. Turman, an architect and engineer practicing in Berkeley, California, and a summer resident for more than thirty years in Chilmark, recently published “Teacher! Stories to Be Read and Graded by Friday” (Xlibris Corporation, 2006), a group of true stories from thirty years of teaching.