Chris Baer teaches photography and graphic design at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. He’s been collecting vintage photographs for many years.
Benjamin Dexter — known by most as “Ben Chuck” — ran an ice cream “saloon” and confectionary in 1880s Vineyard Haven, in the corner shop which Mad Martha’s now occupies (and until recently, Café Moxie.) A childhood illness had left Dexter deaf and his speech unintelligible to those who didn’t know him well, so he relied on an attendant to sell his popular coconut cakes. He lived in a tiny lean-to behind his store.
But he was a genius with a jackknife. He carved animals and elaborate model ships which he would display in his store window (one of which is now in the collection of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.) He also carved oddities, like wooden cages carved with a wooden ball inside. His “won’t-come-outs” were impossible wooden puzzles, like a large wooden ball inside a narrow-necked glass bottle, or “grotesque whittled curios” like a wooden form impossibly fitted through an old bone using a hole much smaller than the wood that went through it. Atop five grassy mounds of earth in his backyard garden, he placed five life-size carved and painted human figures which remained there for decades and drew the wonder of all the neighborhood kids.
When the great fire of 1883 burned down the town — including Dexter’s ice cream saloon — Ben stood at the front door with an axe, keeping looters away. An alarm went up when human figures were seen burning inside his shop, but to the relief of the town they were discovered to be made only of wood.