When Island blues guitarist and singer Maynard Silva, 56, developed cancer two years ago, his son Milo, 20, returned from college to care for him, and then, as he recovered, to sing with him when Maynard couldn't.

Interviews by Mike Seccombe

Maynard: "He had to take care of me while I was sick. And it was a tough thing for an 18 year-old kid to be dealing with a guy who was in the kind of shape I was at the time.

The evening easily could have been confused with a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. The grill staff at P.J.'s Café sang along to Love Train and Don't Stop Believin' as they flipped mini burgers, pressed them in between golden buns and handed them off to hungry, fashionably clad patrons. Across the way, the pastry chef at Soigne wore a wide smile as she piled a cake rack high with mini cupcakes. "I noticed some of the restaurant people dancing in their booths," Christopher Scott, executive director of the Martha's Vineyard Preservation Trust said yesterday.

Traffic was up, sales were up and spirits were up to match as business owners across the board reported a generally busy Memorial Day weekend and a healthy start to the season this year.

Steamship Authority traffic to the Vineyard between Thursday and Saturday was up four per cent for passenger traffic and two and a half per cent for car traffic over last year. And Saturday alone saw a 19 per cent increase in passenger traffic from the previous year.

As of Wednesday this week, the Steamship Authority was booked solid for seven straight days. With sunny days and warmer weather, traffic already has begun piling up at the Bourne Bridge. "It's a big hurrah for the season," said Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs terminal manager Bridget Tobin. "It's a prime weekend to open houses."

Chilmark poet and stonemason John Maloney can understand why some people might wrongly think one job is a metaphor for the other.

"I know, it seems a perfect metaphor - fitting words, fitting stone," he acknowledged. "But that's not really the way it works."