So Block Island

Through a life on Block Island, Vin McAloon Has Done it All

An islander since day seven, Vin McAloon has been an entrepreneur, police chief and a cabbie

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In 1939, Vin McAloon was so much as seven days old when he first landed on Block Island. Back then, land was open and affordable, fishermen worked from the new Government Harbor and tourism was just beginning to take hold of the economy. Through the ‘40s, when families could rent a summer house for just $500 with an extra charge of $25 if they wanted to stay through September, his parents bought a home on Old Town Road only to discover a house behind them had been built on their new property. An old Baptist parsonage, it was owned by fisherman Spencer Smith, his wife and seven children. “I have the papers right here,” his father Leo told the suspicious islander, before selling him the house and land for one dollar. Vin remembers, “never being without lobsters after that.”

After his time at St. Raphael’s in Pawtucket, setting track records at URI and running some mainland businesses, he moved back home. Through the years he has co-owned The Yellow Kittens and The National Hotel but it was the Neptune House in the ‘70s, where his prime rib dinner on a winter’s night with snow banging hard against old tall windows, that was the stuff of memories. His father was the island’s undertaker, his sister Sheila was Miss Block Island 1957 and in 1974 while serving as Chief of Police, one of Vin’s four daughters was born on the island at the end of Labor Day weekend. The doctor, contracted only from Memorial Day through Labor Day, was technically off-duty and, as the story goes, had “had a couple,” leaving Vin to deliver Meredith before succumbing to the pressure and winding up on the floor.

Old Harbor Point may be his favorite spot as it reminds him of how special and rare it is now to see land and sea every day. For 15 years he lived on his boat, Innsfail, safe in a back corner of The Hog Pen, only abandoning ship once, on Christmas Day 2010 as winds reached 108 mph, frozen dock pilings came free, 22” of water swallowed streets and his daughters came to the rescue. Over the last 12 years, he has run McAloon’s Taxi, driving countless visitors to beaches, bars and rental homes year round.

One fare persistently bragged about his dog. “I don’t like dogs. I don’t even like hot dogs, I told him,” just as the dog bit the head off a fire extinguisher, explosively blanketing the new interior, his glasses and the black dog, with sticky white powder.  Vin turned to the whitewashed owner yelling, “Well, captain, how’s that damned dog now?” He occasionally ferries partygoers between two neighboring nightclubs, even though they are just 182 steps apart. Pondering such a quick fare instead of a three minute walk, he shows his trademark smirk, surmising the customers typically either, “Didn’t want to walk or just couldn’t.” Now he lives up on The Plains, still overlooking land and sea.

This year, Vin will share the job of Grand Marshall for the Fourth of July Parade with four other retired island police chiefs. Seventy-seven years on, he still hears Spencer’s dry advice as they occasionally passed each other in the dim light of morning, Vin racing home from the joys of being young on Block Island, Spencer walking to the harbor to spend a day hauling traps: “You better keep going.” 

todd corayer, vin mcaloon, McAloon’s Taxi, block island, so block island, so rhode island, The Yellow Kittens, The National Hotel, Neptune House

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