MADAKET yesterday and today
COVER STORY
BY STEVE SHEPPARD INDEPENDENT WRITER
Here, on the west end of the island, the essence of sea, sand and salt air surrounds an unassuming village where the landscape, simple cottages and way of life still speak of simpler times. You can't help but get sand in your shoes in Madaket, and no one out here minds if a few grains cross the threshold. Madaket still retains the feel of its days as a fishing colony, and it is not hard to imagine horse-drawn wagons traveling down the unpaved side streets towards town.

The nearest reach to the islands of Tuckernuck, Muskeget and, if you must, Martha's Vineyard, Madaket can sometimes seem as removed from the rest of the island as these far-flung outposts.

Nantucket's history is linked to Madaket, where Thomas Macy and Edward Starbuck established the island's first settlements at Warren's Landing and Long Pond in 1659, and where the still existing Madaket Ditch was planned in 1665 as an English- Indian collaboration, according to Nathaniel Philbrick in his Nantucket history "Away Off-Shore." Philbrick discovered in records of the time that the idea was to "dig a trench to drain the Long Pond… with regard to a weir for taking fish. … The work is to be carried on thus: the one half of the work is to be done by the Indians, the other half by the English inhabitants or owners, the Indians to have half the fish so long as they attend the weir carefully."

Centuries later, another historic event occurred in the same waters.

Here, in the winding serenity of Hither Creek, the legendary Madaket Millie speared a 300-pound shark with a pitchfork in the early fall of 1954. As Stan Grossfeld recounted in a 1998 story for Nantucket Magazine, "swells from Hurricane Edna washed a tenfoot, ten-inch blue-nosed shark into Hither Creek." Millie had told Grossfeld of the encounter: "Every time the big critter came for me and the boat, he'd get a darn good jab from the pitchfork. It was the most comical setup you'd hope to see. There was no blood or nothin' like that."

Seasoned by a lifetime of Madaket living, Millie was nothing if not persistent. "The chase took (Millie) all through the creek, to both sides of the bridge, and into the reeds," Grossfeld wrote. "It took the shark an hour and a half to learn something that is common knowledge on Nantucket: You don't mess with Millie."

Although she's been gone since 1990, Millie remains the personification of Madaket. Gruff and a bit scratchy on the outside, but tender beneath the surface, she was as salty as any Nantucketer who lived, and one who fostered lasting friendships with others who shared her life view. The well-known photograph taken by Beverly Hall of Millie and Fred Rogers (television's beloved "Mr. Rogers") reveals the true nature of the Madaket neighborhood - a place where people are taken as they are, and friendships are bonded by mutual respect and not by social standing. "Millie was always the first person I saw when I got on island and the last when I left," Rogers told Grossfeld. "Underneath the gruff exterior she was very shy. But the animals recognized what a tender heart that woman had. Millie had no pretenses; she was close to the earth and people loved her. She always used to do her wash by hand and hang it on the line. One day the people who lived around here chipped in and bought her a washer and dryer. People as different as night and day were crazy about Millie because she treated everybody the same."

That attitude is embodied in the Maddequet Admiralty Club, a clam shell's throw from Millie's, where the only airs are carried on the ever-present wind. With its humble clubhouse, complete with cannon and anchor, the Admiralty prides itself on not being a country club; those types of institutions are for other places, other states of mind. Near the Admiralty, the much used Walter S. Barrett Pier reminds today's boaters of the man who abhorred affectation and knew these foggy waters well.

Madaket harkens to a time when Nantucket truly was the Faraway Island, a place apart where people could comfortably let their hair down. Jackie (Grieder) Jette, whose family has called Madaket home for generations, and whose grandfather was born on Tuckernuck in 1889, remembers carefree summers on the west end. "We used to go to Millie's (whose home doubled as the Coast Guard's West End Command and a small store) and get an ice cream for a nickel." There was also the Penguin (later converted into the Westender restaurant) with its "little foldout window," she recalled.

To give an idea of how removed Madaket seemed when she was growing up, Jette spoke of a billboard perched on the left hand side of the road for years in the 1960s. "It advertised land for $200 an acre, and everybody wondered who would ever buy there because it was on the wrong side of the road." The same price for property in Tristram's Landing today would be a bargain indeed.

She speaks, too, of the "spectacular sunsets, and Hither Creek is just beautiful. Madaket has a big sky and great stars."

And, let's not forget the wind.

"It's not uncommon to have a 60 mile per hour wind in the winter," she

notes. "The deck used to hum at 45." I