Read before renting on the Vineyard

Gingerbread summer cottages in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard.

“A danger exists of confusing the Vineyard with my children’s childhood, which time has swallowed, or with Paradise, from which we have been debarred by well-known angels. Let’s not forget the rainy days, the dull days, the cranky-making crowding, and the moldy smell summer furniture gives off when breezes don’t blow through the screen door that one keeps meaning to fix, though it’s the landlord’s responsibility.’’

From “Going Barefoot,’’ by John Updike (1932-2009), an essay in Peter Simon’s On the Vineyard II (1989)