Things changed that summer day back in 1963 or was it ’64? When a young cousin who was maybe 13 years old, a member of the Vose family, dropped a watermelon down the stairs on his way to the boathouse for Sunday Hamburger Lunch. There are forty-eight steps – steep ones — from the top of Tower Hill down to the family beach in the Edgartown Harbor and a watermelon dropped from that height and distance makes quite an impression. Most likely, the relatives in attendance, breathed a collective sigh of relief when the fruit finally landed with a thud – broken and busted in the sand. After all, they’d been eating watermelon for dessert on Hamburger Sundays since the late 1940’s.

When Leroy Vose (or Daddy Roy as he’s known) started the tradition of Sunday Hamburgers way back then — his original intent was to give the ladies a day off from cooking one day a week – so he’d instituted a straightforward, simple menu to make it easy on the men. Hamburgers at the boathouse started at noon with drinks and appetizers for the adults: whiskey sours, cheese, crackers and olives and then at one o’clock sharp – the kids were allowed to come in and eat — hamburgers, chips, ginger ale and sliced watermelon for dessert.

Then when Daddy Roy’s son Donald inherited the lunch tradition — things loosened up quite a bit. Donald is a very gregarious kind of guy — he’s President of Edgartown Bank and the Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts. So he’s prone to invite friends and acquaintances that he sees along the way. Over the years, Sunday Hamburgers went from a handful of relatives enjoying a quiet easy lunch with a sail afterwards, to upwards of a hundred people, especially if the weather was good.

As Sunday Hamburgers grew – so did the amount of work. Saturdays became hectic. The A&P didn’t stock enough buns for everyone who might show up so Donald had to make sure to find the Bunny Bread delivery man in order to buy enough for the party. He, his wife Drucille, and other family members, spent hours rolling ground meat into balls so they’d be ready for Donald to cook up the next day. He was a squasher – he’d put a meatball on one of the two, hot electric griddles he had set up side-by-side in the boathouse kitchen and then squash it down with a spatula to make it into a patty. And he’d fill up at least one of those big coffee cans full of fat. It took one outspoken daughter-in-law who was tired of cleaning up that greasy mess to finally speak up – and diplomatically suggest to Donald that he get better meat from the local butcher. Apparently, he still credits her for that helpful bit of advice to ‘buy chuck.’

Some would say that when that watermelon broke fifty-some-years ago – it paved the way to change the boring menu. Because after that, then Debbie could bake Aunt Allison MacKay’s velvet crumb cake (the one with that funny broiled topping – a mixture of Wheaties, brown sugar, nuts and butter). Shirley could make lemon squares, Marion made cream puffs and Dianne could bring her chocolate nut chews. But in the end, it also meant that on Hamburger Sundays, there was work – and much more of it — for the women.

I came across this wonderful food story while doing research about the Vose boathouse for Martha's Vineyard Magazine. Thank you Jamie and Tom!