There are 2 people Westporters always wonder about.
Who was “Staples,” they ask.*
And, equally importantly, who is “Fiona”?
For several years a sign — “Fiona’s Disappearing Island” — stood at the corner of Soundview Drive and Hillspoint Road. An “island” indeed appears and disappears near the Schlaet’s Point jetty, changing with the tide, but no one knew where the sign came from, or who named the spot.
Then the sign disappeared.
Now it’s back — as sea-like and jangly as ever.
No one still knows who Fiona is — though, I’m told, an inscription on the back of the new sign refers to “a gypsy who loved the sea.” (It’s pretty high up — presumably to thwart thieves. Yao Ming would find it hard to read the back.)
Meanwhile, here’s a closeup of the front:
How’d I get it?
Let’s just say “Fiona works in mysterious ways.”
(* Horace Staples — a very wealthy banker/businessman/merchant/farmer — founded Westport’s high school in 1884, age 80. He’s a fascinating man. But if you’d read my book on the history of Staples High School, you’d know all that.)
It used to be called “Treasure Island” when I went to the Compo Summer Day Camp.
We would go out to the island at low tide and look for Treasure (Sea Shells, etc.0
Interesting … I’m curious if anyone remembers two items that were painted on the rocks of the jetty that runs from where the cannons are at Compo Beach — one was a large yellow sun, and the other a poem that read “Upon the mountain of despair / lies my sticky underwear!” …
Jarred – I absolutely remember that little ditty, painted on the flat-faced rock in the area of the cannons – it was there in 1972, when I first remember reading it and thinking it amusing and a bit racy (I was 9 years old in ’72.) I am now wondering when it was removed, it surely hasn’t been there for years. Thanks for the jog down memory lane.
The sign first appeared the same night a party was being thrown for a child living in one of those new homes on Blue Water Lane that overlooks the jettie .I guess some people in this town feel their children are entitled enough to name public property as their own…sign of the times in this town.
That jettie belongs to all the kids in Westport…not just Fiona.