Block Island

Ballard's Inn: The beach, great food, bar, nightly entertainment, and comfortable rooms for your stay on Block Island.

Just steps away from the ferry landing, you can catch the rays and party the night away. Ballard's runs full blast from May through October.

42 Water Street, Block Island, RI 2807

Get a map to Ballard's Inn in Block Island, RI

Phone: 466-2231 

Explore Ballards new menu to discover seafood like you’ve never tasted. Enjoy our famous Family Style Lobster, succulent Baked Stuffed Shrimp or the Scallops and Shrimp Kabobs, our chef’s latest creations are sure to tantalize your taste buds. And, of course, all your traditional seafood favorites are waiting on you, too.

Enjoy your lunch or dinner at our beachside patio, harbor patio or in our traditional dining hall.

http://www.ballardsinn.com/documents/Ballards_%20Menu_2007.pdf

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The summer between our junior year and our senior year at the College of St. Catherine three of us friends applied for and got jobs at Ballard's Inn as waitresses/bar maids.  Getting those jobs required us to lie about 1) having prior experience as a waitress in a "fine dining establishment" and 2) being 21 years' old, the legal age to drink and the legal age to serve liquor.  We were all 20 years' old and none of us had done anything more than set the table in our respective homes. Without a second thought we checked the required boxes attesting to our being at least 21 years' old and having prior waitress experience.  Apparently attending a religious college does not in and of itself improve one's morals.   

Armed with my waitress uniform, a couple of swimsuits and my mesh brush rollers, (OMG! You can still buy them on Amazon!) 

I arrived on the island via the Block Island Ferry from Point Judith, RI.  I remember nothing about the ferry ride except that I spent the entire time in a stall in the ladies' room admiring the porcelain throne.  I don't know why I forgot that I get sea sick before the boat has ever left the dock. 

First stop was checking in at Ballards where I was given directions to the "employee hotel" where all of us 21 year old professional wait people would be staying.  Walking up the street to the hotel I wondered why on earth a hotel would be devoted to employees who would be staying there for free instead of being rented out for all the summer visitors soon to arrive?   When I found the building and realized it was missing its front door I got a clearer picture.  Calling that hotel a dive would be besmirching dives.  The bathrooms were so disgusting we used them without turning on the lights so that we could imagine them as something other than the slimy, mildewed, filthy places they were.  For all of our disgust, none of us ever cleaned them.  We must have decided that the bathrooms were part of the experience.      

The first night in the "employee hotel" the three of us huddled together in a single bed in the furthest bedroom of the two adjoining bedrooms we had commandeered attempting to remain calm as the obnoxiously drunken cooks who roomed across the hall kept hammering on our door, threatening to break it down if we didn't let them in.  I can't remember which one of the three of us brought a Swiss Army knife but it was the three of us and that knife tucked in together that night. 

The next day on the QT one of the friends sneaked off, found a phone and got a different job back home in the midwest far away from the lunatics who were working on Block Island for the Fillipe brothers, owners of Ballards and most of the rest of the main street of Block Island.   So now we were two.

It is that summer that cemented Stevie's and my friendship.  We were the two derring do's. The entire summer was just a rollercoaster.  I know I have never laughed so hard and so long and I know that I have never experienced more bouts of high anxiety than we did that summer.   

Here are just a very few samples of life on the island for Stevie and me: 

.  Ballard's head chef developed a crush on me and over some incident involving me that I can't remember, quit,  stomped out and left the island. It may have had something to do with the island's married State Trooper for whom I had developed a crush.  (He swore he wasn't married by the way and that was good enough for me!  After all he was an officer of the law.  Fact:  Officers of the law lie.) So the restaurant , famous for its chef,  was without him in the high season.  That's a fine howdy do.  Of course, there were always the drunken cooks to fill in!  (The chef was eventually begged back proving once again that everyone has his price.) 

.  The owner of Ballards Inn brother, who was old enough to be her father, developed a huge crush on Stevie, nicknamed her "peek-a-boo" and followed her around like a sappy puppy dog.  He even spotted  her in an ice cream parlor once and crawled through the window to get to her!  Ewww.  

.  One of the other 21 year old professional waitresses in our "employee hotel" painted her apparently not depressing enough already room black.  Ceiling, walls, floor and...............windows.  She took out all the furniture and slept on a pallet on the floor.  We never got to be close.

.  The maitre d' was on parole and in the custody of the owner of Ballards, or so the story went.  We heard he strangled somebody to death.   Every time he turned his back someone would mimic a stranglehold and we would all turn blue from trying not to laugh out loud.  

That summer wasn't rowdy enough; when it came time to head back home and return to school Stevie decided to take the fork in the road.  Instead of going home,  she invited her boyfriend to come and join her on Martha's Vineyard for a week or so and they could go back to Minnesota on her boyfriend's motorcycle!   And, that they did while I, the dutiful one, returned to school.   

Hanging out in the dorm one evening not long after I got back to school, there was a tap on my door by the nun who was our floor matron.  There was a sheriff downstairs to see me.  He wanted to talk about Stevie's whereabouts as her father has filed an arrest warrant for her in the seven states leading back from Rhode Island to Minnesota.  I hoped that her dad would be satisfied with the truth, that she was on her way back, or would be shortly, on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle after a little R&R in Martha's Vineyard.  I would have loved to have been able to say that she was at a religious retreat but alas.... 

Stevie eventually got back safe and sound.  She and I spent a lot of our senior year keeping each other company because none of our other friends had any interest at all in watching us shriek and double over in laughter with tears streaming down our cheeks, as we played "Oh my God, remember when..." .    

Although a lot of summers have come close I don't think any have matched the year that my friend Stevie and I were 21 year old professional waitresses at Ballards Inn on Block Island, Rhode Island. 

By the way, everyone needs to do whatever it takes to have a summer like that one.  I guarantee it.