Massachusetts is the Nation’s Newest Basket Case

by Calla Jones Corner

A few years ago, I wrote for the Santa Barbara News-Press about how I came into possession of two Nantucket Baskets – as famous on the East Coast as the Kelly and Birken bags are in Tokyo, Paris, and London.

The straw baskets, with carved sea life on the wooden lids, were recognized for their intrinsic value and reminded me of genteel summer times, of all the village kids waiting for ice-cream in 'Sconset,’ with the sound of tennis balls being whacked at The Casino (now very exclusive with a long waiting list), and the peaceful, tourist-free village, located seven miles from the town of Nantucket.

The author in The Little Nest, 'Sconset 1946.

One of my baskets dates back to 1964 (a gift from my mother-in-law, Tibs) to signify the union of two old Nantucket families with my marriage to her stepson. The other I had made thirty years ago as my first basket was getting frail and too small to carry my flip phone, a wallet, and lipstick.

My many times great-grandfather, Thomas Jones, risked his life in the 1600s to cross the choppy Atlantic to find freedom of religion and, hopefully, make a fortune from fishing. He was heading for the mainland but never made it, stopping at Nantucket, and staying.

Had he made it to mainland Massachusetts and, were he alive today, I wonder what he'd think of Boston mayor Michelle Wu's dust-up with President Trump and Tom Homan over refusing to follow federal law to deport illegal immigrants. Of Mayor Wu expressing sympathy to the family over the death of a knife-wielding maniac threatening hungry customers by an alert off-duty cop in Chick-Fil-A.

My in-laws were large donors to the Democrat party and – out-of-season – part of the Georgetown elite. They didn't hold it against me or my parents that we were committed common sense Republicans. The two families even had friends and golf in common. No one talked politics at the dinner table. No need for cookies and milk or screaming on the beach when one side lost. "Cancelled" was not part of the Island's vocabulary.

Crime in “Sconset” with “Hanoi Jane”

For the past two decades, since my father-in-law's sparsely attended funeral service on the island (most of his close friends and golfing partners had died), there have been no family members – that I know of – still on the ultra-fashionable, expensive, left-leaning island, 25 miles off Cape Cod. Although a recent in-law went to the island to take advantage of Nantucket's famous End-of-January sales in the town's pricey boutiques to wear at her son's wedding this summer in Wyoming.

Next year, Jane Fonda should have a look-see; she might find a great dress for a song when she accepts her next achievement award.

The 87 year-old "Hanoi Jane" did look great, although Kennedy on The Five called the gorgeous pink $10,000-dress Ms. Fonda wore to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, "Lipstick on a commie pig." Many, whose families lost loved ones in the Vietnamese War, will never forget Jane posing in that anti-aircraft gun.

Just what has she achieved except for making some good flics? Knowing how to defy old age and making outrageous comments about "empathy"?

Last November the Biden family spent another freebie on Nantucket, in a mansion of one of its richer donors. I've been wondering if any summer-only Nantucket residents saw the Erik Evan (fireman and year-round resident on the island) interview on FOX over the 2024 holiday about what a basket case Nantucket had become. "Crime has increased dramatically in just the last few years," Mr. Evan opined. He was scared and wondered what would happen to the once charming and exclusive island. “Parents are afraid to let their children walk from school to the boys' and girls' club,” he continued. “I am so happy ICE is here to get rid of some of the bad people who rape girls and women, drive drunk, use illegal drugs, rob houses, and commit domestic violence. Five of the people arrested are members of MS-13 gang."

For the many summers I spent on Nantucket, beginning in 1945, the only crime I remember was the robbery of Nat Benchley's wife, Marge's unique, square Nantucket Basket with a carved scallop shell on the wooden lid. The basket was the only thing taken! The Benchleys were neighbors and close friends of my in-laws. No one locked their doors and the crime column in the local paper barely existed.

The Little Island Getaway Got Big

Owners of Nantucket's myriad of new monied-financed mansions who have sought – for decades – the island's cachet made famous by the “Jaws” and “The Russians are Coming” author and 'Sconset resident, Peter Benchley, have been buying huge mansions and flying in to the Island's once tiny airport. The airport is where my father-in-law, Lou Krauthoff (decorated by the French for teaching the Free French how to fly) kept his Piper Cub, was greatly enlarged decades ago to accommodate all the private jets. The past four Thanksgivings, Air Force One, with Biden and family and hangers on, "graced" the tarmac.

I'm wondering if many of the newly monied mansion owners are reconsidering their dreams of being Nantucket summer residents and cancelling their jet reservations. I’m wondering too if maybe they’re thinking of relocating to our once-little hideaway of Montecito…

My parents rented The Little Nest, a cottage in the center of 'Sconset in 1945 for $100 for July and August, with the hopes of buying it for $1,000 from Burgie (the only island realtor) who babysat for Peter Benchley, and who is one of the main characters in Peter Benchley's novel, “The Off-Islanders.” When Burgie visited the Benchleys on Sutton Place in New York, she met my parents as, they too, lived on Sutton Place.

They are all gone now and would probably be aghast as they look down from a heavenly island-in-the-sky, sipping Bloody Marys, slurping down clams on-the-half-shell, and hearing people "cancelling" jets and summer home leases and cursing Mayor Wu and her ilk for destroying a once idyllic island.

President Trump’s “Border Czar” Tom Homan should take the inexpensive ferry from Hyannis (as old-time off-islanders once did) in the spirit of DOGE and invite Michelle Wu and her government hangers-on to join him in a light lunch with Erik Evan and other fireman and the local police, who may have some stories about the illegal immigration situation.

And maybe they’d invite some mainstream media pundits, who made sure the country knew and witnessed the residents' empathy on neighboring Martha's Vineyard toward illegal immigrants in September 2021. The unwanted visitors were given hugs and brownies as they got off Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's chartered plane and were then hastily shipped back to the mainland.

….

The author sailing in Nantucket (1946).

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