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' 64 RESTITUTION - t . <br /> recent} voted to brie in a professional planner—a development that : :because I kT <br /> Y g <br /> t: Vernon Pocknett finds ironic, Since it was unbridled land development :going to be <br /> z' <br /> that led the Mashpees to brie their lawsuit in the first lace. r s:. Vernon <br /> h p g p <br /> �r <br /> p Toward the end of our drive, Vernon and I turned off'Waquoit yin his apart i <br /> Road onto a dirt track that led a mile or so through some deep woods had lost the <br /> to Punkhorn Point, a remote peninsula near the mouth of the Mashpee Y1,;real feelings <br /> River where Vernon had beached his fishing boat to repair its hull. °-:'depth of thr <br /> i <br /> A quarter of a mile or so across Popponesset Bay lay Daniels Island, ._-they would. <br /> z where Earl Mills' father, Ferdinand, had found the tomahawk head 1A;{vie aren't gr <br /> it is now the site for a number of expensive summer homes and -hair. Now I <br /> beyond the is}and was Popponesset Beach and Nantucket Sound. "My room. Thfi,ti <br /> father, Willard Pocknett, Jr., and I used to fish for t)ystEsrs aro uttcl fatl�csr fiat} f <br /> a { <br /> }sere,"Vernon said. "Ile drowned over in Wa(Im it I3tty after sitf e.ring 1�`=,be here fiW <br /> ;y <br /> a heart attack and falling out of his boat. That was its 1948, when I <br /> t. was tally about fifteen years old, ])ut he had already told me that one <br /> day we would be fighting l()r the land in Mashpee. The first time he gK <br /> told the was during the war, when we were Staying down at our}hinting <br /> and fishing camp, just behind South Cape Beach. We got up one <br /> ' <br /> morning and walked out on the beach, and saw a young fellow and a <br /> girl, who were surfeasting. It was the first time we had ever seen <br /> on that beach who wasn't from Mashpee, and I can still re- <br /> anyonep <br /> member what my father said. He said, `Well, they're here, and that's <br /> s. <br /> going to be the end of this place. At the time, I couldn't believe he <br /> °? meant it, but not long afterward, outsiders were able to acquire prac- <br /> tically all of South Cape Beach. Then, during the early fifties, an outfit <br /> called Field's Point Manufacturing Company, from Providence, came <br /> 1= in and dredged Popponesset Creek, filled in the marshland, pumped <br /> sand up on the spits, built some summer cottages, and put in a marina. <br /> A few years later, the New Seabury Corporation, which was formed <br /> r , <br /> by some of the Field's Point people, acquired several thousand acres <br /> in South Mashpee and built two sprawling golf courses,, where we x _ <br /> used to.hunt our deer, and Cod only knows how many fancy houses. <br /> In no time at all, some of the people who bought into these new <br /> coin munities decided to ignore the fact that we'd been around these <br /> ?` parts for several thousand years, and started running us off their beaches. <br /> One day in the early nineteen-sixties, when I was bullraking oysters <br /> r: from m boat on Popponesset Creek, a lady came out on her porch <br /> f Y pp <br /> and hollered at me to beat the band. 'Get out of here}' she yelled. <br /> 1 <br /> `And don't let me see your kind around here again!' I didn't say' any- <br /> thinto her. I just ke t bullraking away. I didn't need to say anything, - <br /> ' g p <br /> k <br /> h <br /> i <br /> t <br /> s. <br /> r. <br />-u <br /> r <br /> 1 <br /> 5iS7 <br />