Small Worlds

Several years ago while on vacation, I took a walk in the Block Island cemetery to pass time while Karen, Ted, Alice, and Dylan played tennis at the nearby public courts. A cold front the night before had swept out hazy, hot and humid weather, replacing it with crisp, dry air. As I passed through the headstones I could hear halyards dinging off masts in the nearby harbor. It was a beautiful morning.

I came over a rise and saw an elderly gentlemen also walking among the headstones. Our paths intersected, we said hello, and we started talking, first about the weather but then other things. We decided to walk together and eventually found ourselves back at his truck which he’d parked next to his wife’s headstone: one, he said, he would eventually share with her. I read the headstone – Dorothy Leslie. He asked me who I visited in the cemetery and I recall waving vaguely to a headstone not too far from where we stood. “A distant relative,” I said, “My wife’s family.” We chatted for a few more minutes, I learned his name – Frank – and we said goodbye.

For the next few days, I joined the tennis players on their daily trip to the courts, and while they played I strolled around the cemetery and talked with Frank, whose routine of breakfast at a local diner followed by a visit to talk to Dorothy, coincided with the morning tennis. Frank made quite an impression on me. I enjoyed his company and our conversations, his outlook on the world, and his thoughts about life on Block Island. He’d lived on the island for several decades and once had owned a farm, keeping some horses, raising some beef, and growing vegetables that he and Dorothy would put up for winter or sell at the market. He was an interesting man. A year or so later I learned that Frank had passed away.

Fast-forward a few years to 2021 and I am having a conversation with a friend, Tom, at the office. Tom also frequents Block Island. His wife’s family lives on the island, “has always lived on the island” (Tom’s words), and he visits them regularly. Her parents are probably in their seventies and though we talk about the general eccentricities of parents, the challenges of living on an island, I never ask their names or exactly where they live until one day it comes up that Karen’s grandparents, Georgina and Eugene Hotchkiss, had a house on the island. Tom asks where it was. I pull up an image on Google Earth and, finding Southeast Light, then working my way up the road, find the house that I am almost certain is the right one and point to it. “Wait a minute,” Tom says, “that house is next door to Sara’s parents’ house.” He points to another house on the computer screen. The two houses are separated only by a small yard and an overgrown hedge.

That night I mention the conversation to Karen, who immediately takes a trip down Memory Lane. She recalls being very young girl, walking with her grandmother who would have been in her sixties, maybe seventies, through a break in the hedge to visit an elderly woman named Georgie Ball next door. “I remember she was really old and had so many cats! They were all over the place.” Karen remembers she could stand at Georgie’s house and look out across a big field with a few horses in it and out to the ocean.

I send a quick text to Tom: “Did your in-laws know Georgie Ball?” It isn’t long before we establish that Tom’s wife’s great grandmother was Georgie Ball. Sara’s parents inherited Georgie’s house when Georgie passed away and have lived in it more or less since. Small world.

A day or two later, Tom and I are again talking about Block Island, and for some reason I mention Frank Leslie.

“I know that name,” Tom says. “He was my in-laws’ neighbor for years. I used to see him at picnics. He was a great man.” We bring up the map of the island and he points to his in-laws’ house, and then to another house next door. “That was Frank’s house.”

I look at the map of the island on my computer screen, and the three houses – Georgie Ball’s, Frank Leslie’s, and Georgina and Eugene Hotchkiss’ – form a triangle of abutting properties. Three houses not fifty yards from each another. I do a little math and figure that in the 1970s, when Karen was probably around five or ten years old and she visited Georgie Ball’s house, her views across the fields and pasture were those of Frank’s farm. Small world.

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Karen, Charlotte and I have lunch with Chris, a friend of ours, on the porch of her Block Island cottage. Chris is Karen’s age and has, like Karen, been coming to Block Island her whole life. It is mid-May, and one of those days that tells you summer is right around the corner. Before us is an unobstructed view to the east over nothing but ocean.

As we work our way through sandwiches, Chris tells us that as a kid in the 1970s, she worked at the Block Island Club, where, among other duties, she was paid by an elderly gentleman to hit balls with him on the tennis courts. “When there wasn’t anyone else to play,” she says, “he’d say ‘C’mon Chris, hit with me.’ And he’d pay me to rally with him for an hour. He was the nicest old man.” Gesturing to the cottage directly behind her she adds, “His granddaughter lives right there.”

“Wait a minute,” Karen says, “Was he a doctor? Did he have a southern accent?”

“Yes!, Dr. Gary. Dupont Gary!”

At which point Karen launches into a story that, if you have been around Karen’s family for any length of time, you’ve heard more than once. As a kid, maybe she was ten or so, she was playing tennis at the Block Island Club on a hot summer day (who she was playing with is secondary to the story but it was probably Ted) and her father was playing doubles on a nearby court with Dupont Gary and two other men. It was so hot, in fact, that Karen ended up collapsing, and then lay there on the hot court hearing voices.

“Hey Dick,” a man said, “I think your daughter’s passed out.”

“Oh, she’s fine,“ Dick replied. “She does that all the time. Let’s keep playing.”

Karen recalls thinking, “Why am I lying on the ground? How did I get here?” and she recalls saying to herself “no, Dad, I do not pass out all the time.”

Karen remembers the shadow of a man standing over her and a southern doctor’s voice saying “C’mon honey, you’re okay,” as he slapped her cheek a little harder than she might have liked, trying to wake her.

Chris laughs, “That’s the guy! Dr. Dupont Gary! His granddaughter lives right there!”

‘Right there’ is a cottage, now winterized, which sits at the top of a hill directly behind Chris’ cottage. It commands the same spectacular views of the ocean. Dupont Gary’s great grandson, Elliot, is in the first grade at the Block Island School where Charlotte teaches. Elliot is in Miss Charlotte’s class. With summer approaching, Elliot’s parents will be renting their house to vacationers. In return for helping manage the rental, overseeing the weekly changeovers, watering the plants, and washing the sheets, Charlotte will get free accommodations in a finished shed next to the house.

Charlotte’s summer home, one she will share her friend Lily, is tiny. There is a place to sleep and a small dining area, but calling it a cottage is a stretch. There is an outdoor shower, and the outhouse is a short walk down a path. But there it is. Charlotte is living in a cottage owned by the granddaughter of Dr. Dupont Gary, the man who hit tennis balls with Chris and slapped Karen into consciousness on a hot summer day forty or fifty years ago. Small world.

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I’ve told Tom that I am resolved to meet his in-laws the next time I visit the island. I am not sure why but it seems that to close the small-world circle I need to walk up to their doorstep and introduce myself. I need to wonder what the house, which according to Tom still looks like it did years ago, would have been like with dozens of cats running around and an old woman tending flowers in her yard. I need to walk to what I suspect is now an overgrown hedge and to try to see the house that Karen’s grandparents once owned, though I know it’s been significantly renovated if not totally rebuilt. I need to stand in their yard and look across what was Frank’s field and out to the ocean. I need to wonder what the place was like fifty years ago.

I wonder what would have happened a couple years ago if, instead of telling Frank that I visited “a distant relative,” I had instead mentioned Karen’s grandmother by name. “My wife’s grandparents, Georgina and Eugene Hotchkiss, they had a place on the island years ago.” I wonder if our conversation would have gone in a different direction. Would Frank have clammed up? Sometimes people are more open and forthcoming with strangers, as I was in the moment, than they are when there is a connection. Or maybe Frank would have remembered the name. “Well, I’ll be damned, I remember Georgia very well! I remember she would bring her granddaughter to the farm….” Maybe he would have been able to tell me about a little girl coming to visit Georgie Ball and saying hello to the his horses in their pasture. Maybe he would have said “Small world.”

Photo credit - the last photo was taken by a teacher in the Block Island School and appears on Georgia's Instagram feed.