I love history ergo I love Historical Societies. Whenever I travel somewhere I don’t bother with the tourist information center. They usually just want to send you to places where you can blow your money. Nothing wrong with that but you can miss out of the best parts of where ever you happen to be, If you really want to find out about a place go to a library and find a librarian, preferably an elder one. He or she will probably know everything there is worth knowing and a lot of stuff that probably isn’t worth knowing but is still cool. Another great place to go after the library is the local Historical Society. The Cuttyhunk Historical Society is surprising large and well supplied considering there aren’t any people on the island. All right, some people but not a whole lot. I guess the people that do live on the island love history. The island is so cool that this makes sense. The building itself is old and quaint with a neat porch that will most likely have a stinky but friendly dog on it and an old fog bell outside. Once inside you will discover several exhibitions. One is on the fragile ecology of Cuttyhunk and how capricious and mutable islands are and another exhibition of the history of fishing. This one has lots of old lures and displays of the local fish. On the walls are lots of cool old maps and there is a great little gift shop with a nice selection of books that probably can’t be found anywhere else. Of course they also sell the ubiquitous crummy t-shirts and hats and of course I bought one of each. There is no admission charge so I had to waste some money somehow. My wife ended up buying a real cool cross-stitch pattern of the Griswold Monument that they sell. The people inside were friendly, knowledgeable and very eccentric. Just the way someone that works in a historical society should be. So forget the tourist info center. If you really want to find out the cool stuff about a place, find an old librarian or visit the local historical society.
