A deep-freeze and four inches of snow settle over the Island on Christmas morning, 1977. We stoke our Home Herald wood stove and pile our family of four into my ‘53 Chevy pickup and head to Tashmoo Farm where our seven-year-old daughter Jessica worked as an after-school barn hand. She wants to check on her favorite, an Arab pony named Dinari.

We skid into the driveway to find Donald DeSorcy, owner of the farm, smashing ice with a splitting maul to clear the water troughs. Blanketed horses stomp in their stalls and snort clouds of vapor through cold wet noses. We pitch in, fill the outside troughs and place full water buckets in the stalls along with breakfasts of oats and hay.

Then we head home for our breakfast of poached eggs and pancakes, and the dynamic bedlam of Jessica and her younger sister Signe opening presents under the alert monitoring by Pam’s patient mother, Onnie.

Bob and Charlene Douglass had invited us for Christmas dinner so we make ourselves presentable and arrive midday at their 19th-century rambling sea captain’s home on the Vineyard Haven waterfront. We’re greeted by exuberant dogs and the aroma of roasting turkeys, eggnog and cider, hemlock wreaths and cedar boughs, bubbling pots and steaming kettles. Red-bowed presents under a handsome spruce, shimmering lights and glass ornaments. Sprigs of holly and mistletoe, glowing candles in polished brass candlesticks, and waxed mahogany furniture supporting ships in glass cases.

Half models stand alongside paintings of great schooners. Dogs sprawl on Persian rugs by blazing hearths. Captain Bob in a heritage waistcoat, his sharp eyes beaming like Father Christmas. Charlene, elegant in velvet and wool and long-haired boys, Robbie, Jamie, Morgan, and Brooke, each decked out like a little lord Fauntleroy. Glen and Marcella Provost are there too, with well-scrubbed kids Suzanne and Michael. The young vanish to hide and seek in the attic till the bell sounds for dinner. After too many desserts, we sled down Owen Park until the falling mercury drives us home, fingers numb and noses red.

Ray Ewing

Ray Ewing

We retire to the parlor for hot chocolate, coffee and a shot of something stronger. Glen and I sit with Bob and watch the harbor dim, the sea torpid with sea smoke rising. Shenandoah, flagship of our port, swings to her mooring, a Christmas tree atop each mast. The derelict pilot schooner, Alabama, mast-less and bleeding rust, on hold for another 20 years before shipwright Gary Maynard and his crew of Island craftsmen rebuild her.

Raider, Venture, Violet and Fair Wind and a few other moored wooden vessels tether to blocks in the mud, brumating till the warmth of spring will release them. In weeks ahead, the harbor will freeze a foot thick allowing us to walk or skate from boat to boat. Only the ferry channel will be kept open for navigation. Ponds came alive with hockey games and ice boating, families pulling sleds, and dogs spastic on useless paws.

It was a real Vineyard winter, our drafty old house better insulated by snow. Stacked cordwood diminished as days grew longer and colder. Then, in February, the Great Blizzard of ‘78. Google it.

Captain Bob is gone now, along it seems, with cold winters. But the waterfront he inspired teems with vitality and tradition, and his spirit of a Vineyard Christmas carries on, finest kind.

Nat Benjamin is the co-founder of Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway. He lives in Vineyard Haven.