What do you think of when you hear the term Ladies Night? Discounted drinks and free hors d’oeuvres at your local bar? On Little Cranberry Island the term Ladies Night specifically refers to a potluck dinner at an island home where the hostess provides a main dish and other female guests bring a variety of side dishes and desserts to share. 

Recently, Jeri Spurling hosted just such a dinner at her house on Islesford to celebrate Karen Smallwood’s week-long mid-winter visit to the island. Karen grew up here and lives here for six months out of the year and she always makes an effort to revive this increasingly rare activity when she is on the island.

Every time, the event brings up memories of Ladies Nights gone by, and how much it used to be part of our off season entertainment and survival. Twenty years ago, the Internet, Netflix, video streaming, FaceBooking, e-mailing, Googling, texting, and blogging were unimaginable and unreal. Instead, many island women took the time to share great food and fill the need to connect with each other. 

For a number of years (except in the summer) we met regularly. It was usually determined who would host the next Ladies Night before any of us departed the one we were attending. Two weeks later a sign would be posted on the door at the store with the name of the hostess and what she would be serving.

Almost everyone brought knitting on those nights, and if you didn’t knit it was a good place to learn. Seasoned knitters had advice for those of us who were stumbling through our first fishermen’s vests. We ordered yarn in bulk from catalogs to save money and inspire us for our next knitting project. Men and young children were not invited. These evenings were meant to be a break for women from home and hearth, and they were. Nursing babies were allowed to be there, but the mothers still got a break because so many of us were anxious for our turn to hold the little ones.

Men wondered what we talked about, though they might have been disappointed in how rarely they were a topic of conversation. There were discussions of childbirth, recipes, laundry (“How do you fold a fitted sheet?”) and school issues.

One time we talked about height and perceived height resulting in everyone measuring how tall they were. We were surprised that all but two of the group were in the 5-foot, 3-inch to 5-foot, 5-inch range. “I thought you were taller!” was a common comment.

There was the time one of the women’s magazines sponsored a contest for a group makeover in New York City. Of course we applied. We thought we were a shoo-in with our diverse group that included a scuba diver, a weaver, a postmistress, a teacher, a caterer, a jeweler and so on. And of course we lived (“were stuck”) on an island with no bridge. If we didn’t rate a trip to New York City as a fun loving group then who did?

The makeover was awarded to a group of flight attendants who were serving soldiers returning home from the first Gulf war. Oh well.

Another time, in the home of Joanne Thormann, we were all admiring the infants Jamie and Christina, the second born of our hostess and Margaret Blank, respectively. While Joanne was in the kitchen, someone had the brilliant idea to switch the clothes on the babies. When Joanne returned to the living room, she knew something was wrong but it took her a minute to figure out what it was. She felt like she had entered some bizarro world while the rest of us were enjoying our harmless entertainment.

Then there was the time when Sonja Moser and Bill McGuinnes had just arrived on the island to spend their first night in the CIRT house. Bravely, Sonja ventured up the block to Karen’s house to meet a whole batch of island women at once. One of the topics from that night still stands out in my mind, “Which would you rather give up, sex or chocolate?” Quite the introduction.

Tales from Ladies Night have woven their way into island folklore. “Were you there when Lawrence Hadlock shaved his legs and wore a skirt so he could join us for dinner?” (We let him stay.) Or, perhaps the most memorable occasion was when a nursing mother ran out of cow’s milk to make her planned dessert. Creative cook that she was, she used what she had on hand. Talk about putting yourself into your cooking!  

I would love to see the Islesford Ladies Nights make a comeback. Maybe they will. April can be such a dreary month that these dinners might be just the thing to help us get through it. After all, how can we create future folklore if we’re not getting together to make things happen?

Barbara Fernald lives on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island) where she makes jewelry.