I'd grown up with the Dyke Bridge closed since Teddy had managed to drunkenly run his car off of it killing Mary Jo Kopechne. I knew that the Kennedy boys were womanizers and drunks and that being a Kennedy was the equivalent of a get out of jail free card.

I�d seen Jackie�s huge estate and knew of the parties and various celebrity related gatherings that took place there. I even knew that she kept a telephone pole on her property so that the decimated by DDT population of ospreys could nest there and try to rebuild their species from the ground up. My mother once served the former Mrs. Kennedy a brownie at Back Alley�s, the little food shop behind the old general store where I used to have to go to pick up my mail in the first grade. I would be lying if I said that we weren�t saddened when Jackie died, but at least she hadn�t died in our midst.

I, one of the children of Martha�s Vineyard, can regale you of the tales of meeting celebrities. I gave a fright to Dan Aykroyd while working at the local haunted house, I played with Elizabeth Shue�s baby without knowing it was even her until after I had left, I routinely trespassed on Billy Joel�s property walking to the Menemsha Bite, I did the same with Spike Lee to get to the beach near my house, and I spent a great deal of time with John Belushi�s widow Judy. Some of us were even guilty of being related to them. My best friend in the first grade is the niece of James Taylor and Carly Simon and the not always nice stoner kid a grade beneath me was the cousin of Tara Lipinski.

Some are kind and have something to give back to the community in which they choose to spend their summers idly shopping our shops and sunbathing on their beautiful stretches of private beach. Some are not so kind and instead choose to mar the tribal lands with garish trophy houses that give no nod to the beautiful unadulterated ground upon which they sit. Most just regarded the year rounders as service people. We served their meals and sold them t-shirts; we kept their homes clean and kept our mouths shut.

What I cannot do is regale you of the sadness that plagued us when celebrities did die in our midst because we had none. Instead I had a resentment of them for daring to bring further publicity to our already crowded and overpublicized home. Deaths on the island were supposed to be a very private affair. The entire island mourned when we lost boys and their fathers to the angry seas of the Nantucket Sound in freak squalls. We formed lines out the door to get one last look at our classmates while they lay in open caskets in our one and only funeral home. We packed into churches to see our peers off, and for those of us who couldn�t fit into the church, we set up loudspeakers in order for all to be included and allowed to grieve.

Truth be told, I�m tired of explaining about where I�m from. People either know nothing about the island (off the coast of Massachusetts, near Nantucket) or presume to know. I�m tired of explaining that I didn�t grow up as a privileged rich kid, but that year-round residents of Martha�s Vineyard have the lowest per capita income in the entire state and that I had Christmas courtesy of the Red Stocking Fund and dinner courtesy of the food pantry in Vineyard Haven. I�m also tired of saying that, yes, there are cars and stores, but you won�t find a McDonald�s or a Best Buy on those 180 square miles of rapidly eroding land.

My friends tell me that in the two years since I�ve last set foot on that tiny island, it has changed completely; that the acres of forest are all but gone and homes have popped up everywhere. They also tell me that, like me, they�d never want to live there again. �It�s nice to visit,� we say, �but I�d never live there again.� We know all too well the alcoholism, the loneliness, the crazies, and the suicides. Yes, we grew up in a beautiful place, but most beautiful places are pretty dysfunctional upon closer inspection.