Perry is readying himself for the launch of his soon-to-be-published book, “Becoming Gandhi: My Experiment Living the Mahatma’s Moral Truths in Immoral Times.” He hopes to be back next summer to participate in some of the Island’s book events. I’m taking a sentimental respite, seeing old friends and familiar places,” he said. “Being here is like a personal literary walking tour. Perry Garfinkel is in town, staying at his old digs off Music Street, where he had lived in the mid-2000s. He and his mother turned it into a website displaying various wares sporting superhero Milo. Milo won an art prize at the Ag Fair this summer for a drawing of himself wearing a superhero cape made of cod. Hannah brought us gifts from Cape Made of Cod, the online store of Milo Agnew, son of Ezra Agnew and Kelley DeBettencourt. What a funny memory to hold dear, but at age 5 or 6 it seemed momentous. I remember standing on the tailgate of my father’s Chevrolet station wagon and heaving bags into a smoldering pit. It sounds so antiseptic and uninteresting. What began this conversation was disgust at the amount of litter along the roadsides and the carelessness of people with their recyclables at the transfer station. All of us were the grateful recipients of Janice’s keen eye.

Hannah said that Janice retrieved a Harris tweed jacket she gave to Hannah’s father, Bud it fit him perfectly. Hannah remembered her wearing high rubber boots when she went to the dump, so she could easily climb down into the pit when she spotted something. Mike’s father, Richard, was famous for getting rid of things, but Aunt Janice was the treasure hunter sine qua non. Mike remembers having to rescue his snow tires from the dump after one of his father’s purges.

Of course, there were mistakes, too, like the time Mike’s father threw out his mother’s Lenox dessert plates, and was forced to go back to retrieve them. Many of us built and furnished our houses in some part with someone else’s discards.

Building codes were somewhat looser, and recycling and Yankee ingenuity were put to good use. Those were the days when there were treasures to be had just for the picking. Mike and I were reminiscing with his cousin, Hannah Beecher, about going to the old West Tisbury dump. There will be donated fish for seniors at the Howes House on Thursdays. Hopefully, they will be happy, too, with a fish to be weighed in. Expect avid fishing friends to be exhausted after being up all night on a beach. The Derby began at 12:01 on Sunday morning.

Instaling CherryTree 1.0.0.0