QUARTERBOARDS

These wooden signs are everywhere in Nantucket. Home and businesses are all named something or other. The tradition comes from the naming of 19th century whaling and other kinds of ships. While I do not own a house in Nantucket where I can put my own quarterboard, I do have a house on Siesta Key that has been unnamed for 30 years. We keep threatening to name it but it never seems to happen. Commonly, house names are a combination of the husband and wife's names. Ours could be Rockitty for Rocky+Kitty, a portmanteau for sure. My father in law's house was named Samal. he was by no means a cool guy but he had his house named and here we are 30 years later still living in an unnamed house. Clearly he was cooler than we are.

I was thinking that I would commission a sign carver up here to make me a quarterboard with our home's name on it. IF we could only decide on a name. Some names just don't work. For example, if we tried to use Siesta (Siesta Key) plus ACK (for Nantucket) our two islands combined, we would have Siestack which sounds like the house belongs to some Polish guy. Ignatz Siestack. It's a real enigma.

Anyhow, We will come up with a name, have a sign made and bring it home to attach somewhere on our house. It will be a short name because these sign makers charge $50 a letter for a standard sized hand carved sign. Too bad we are not Canadian like my neighbors. We could name the house "EH?" $150 out the door, or on the wall, whatever.