Day 6 - Long Island

Day 6 – Hers Another day of ticking off ‘things we have to do’ – most of which seemed to involve a hammer for Rob, golf clubs for James and Grandpa, and a bottle of suntan lotion for Steph. We started off though with the annual huge breakfast at the Coronet diner in town. The Coronet has been serving pancakes and eggs ‘over easy’ with homefries and coffee to Greenport fishermen since 1949. Now it is mostly full of tourists who can’t face breakfast on their bobbing yachts. My father always gives us the history of who owned it when and my mother - who remembers it when it was new – gently corrects any misinformation. Rob tried to order half a ‘hungry man’ breakfast which really seemed to throw the staff – so he just ordered one of everything a la carte and still faced a mountain of food. We then discovered that two enterprising young men are having a go at re-establishing the Arcade – a shop that sells everything you could possibly want but nothing you actually need. In my mother’s youth, it was one of only two shops in town that were open all year. We went in and duly purchased some things we didn’t need, paying more than we would have anywhere else – supporting local businesses like good tourists should. The evening was spent adding detail to the family history, going through boxes of old photographs and mementos – including a ferrotype featuring an unidentified woman with a clutch of kids and a marriage certificate from 1865 that confirmed some of my earlier guesswork. The letters from my grandfather and aunt written home on childhood visits provided much hilarity – as did my father’s (sparse!) notes from one of his college courses. My father’s commentary added a lot of ‘colour’ that he wouldn’t allow us yet to record for public viewing. An evening of enlightenment!