A fifth-generation Islander, Joe Santos (name changed at subject’s request), disdains the little luxuries that most of us consider necessities — no flashy furniture to supplement the La-Z-Boy facing his TV set, no scented soaps or sushi — but he does, in many ways, live like a millionaire.

Captain Santos has several boats. They’re rusty and missing parts, but they’re stashed all over the Island, and there’s always one in the vicinity of wherever he feels like going fishing. All of his livelihoods make him his own boss, so if he has an urge to knock off for a few hours at Foxwoods or for a couple of months on the west coast of Florida, the only person standing in his way is the clerk at the Steamship Authority reservation desk.

As they say on Wall Street, he’s fully diversified, only in his case, his portfolio is based on solid assets: he’s a scalloper, a fisherman, a contractor and carpenter, a caretaker, property manager, and he maintains his captain’s license which makes him available to take the helm on such vessels as the Chappy ferry.

“A recession doesn’t really affect the Island,” is Captain Santos’s assessment of the woeful economy out there beyond Vineyard Sound.

There are also Islanders of similar flexibility whose stock in trade is more artistic. Take Joyce Maxner of West Tisbury, composer, singer and music teacher. Recently she and her husband, Steve, also a musician, turned their one-and-a-half-acre property into a mini-farm to supply the needs of their family of five grown kids and grandchildren, with 600 square feet of raised beds for crops, a covey of chickens, and two goats for the production of milk and cheese.

Vineyarders are accustomed to the concept of sluggish financial periods, especially in the winter when they might require extra part-time salaries, maybe behind the counter of a commercial enterprise. Yet job seekers find that the mom and pop store that they hoped might hire them is currently staffed solely by the mom and pop, and even the mom and pop are probably slogging away for extra income, developing a Web site for their wares or fattening up a flock of sheep to shear in the spring.

It has always been this way: Whether we were born on Island or migrated here, if we remain, we remain for the uncommonly strong bonds of community, for the unspoiled beauty, both natural and architectural, and yet to support ourselves here involves becoming a jack of all the trades within our own capacities. As the late author and psychiatrist Milton Mazer wrote in his groundbreaking 1976 book, People And Predicaments: Of Life And Distress on Martha’s Vineyard: “When the weather gets too cold for the easy use of mortar or cement, the mason may be seen in the uniform of a police officer directing traffic for a road-building operation. As fall and the scallop season approach, a taxi operator may put up his cab and tidy up his scalloping gear. Since it remains a preindustrial enclave, the Island holds to the old mix of occupations.”

An important feature of Island culture is that far fewer status points accrue to given professions. Therefore a supremely talented rhythm and blues musician like the late Maynard Silva was enjoyed as much for his raffish charm as for his foot-stomping performances. “I paint signs for a living,” he used to say, in person and in interviews. If you were to transplant a Maynard Silva to a metropolitan center, he would need to come up with fancier toys and tools to project the same aura of success — a major record label, an entourage, a limo — and if he painted signs to help with the bills, he would probably keep that information under wraps.

Most of those who migrate here do so not to change this place but to adapt themselves to what they perceive as a healthier lifestyle, which includes, first and foremost, jumping out of the rat race. If this means working as a school teacher for three-quarters of the year, and selling homemade jams and cleaning houses during the summer, so be it.

Because fuel, food and housing are more expensive on-Island but wages tend to be lower, Vineyarders are constantly struggling to make ends meet. And yet the pioneer spirit that brought them here keeps them constantly alert for new outlets for their talents and capabilities. Thus fashion designer Keren Tonnesen, whose Vital Sign garments have adorned Island women for years, has recently pursued the manufacture of, and fitness classes for, her own brand of hula hoops; her thriving new business is called Hoop Group.

Gwyn McAllister, Web site coordinator formerly for MVOL and Plum TV, now works as a freelance journalist and as a publicist. She recently has devoted her weekends to trips to Bridgewater State College to educate herself as a paralegal.

Some other lively examples are Robert and Wendy Culbert, who run an ecology consulting firm; Wendy also works at the Oak Bluffs library and Robert is expanding his Island-based birding tours. Lisa Vanderhoop of Aquinnah, who for many years has helped her husband, Buddy, in his sport fishing business, has developed a niche for herself as a photographer of photogenic pooches: Her Island Seadogs calendar has been flying off retail shelves for the past three years.

I myself once had a business card printed up that read Writer/Real Estate Agent/Ghost Hunter. These three professions had perhaps never been grouped under one masthead, although the fields constantly overlapped. Sometimes I rented vacation homes that I knew provided ghosts along with Sub-zero refrigerators, and the single property I ever sold as a real estate broker, a tumbledown old manor on Eastville Beach, I first had to exorcise: its nasty spirits kept sending out spoilers to the signing of a purchase and sale agreement. And of course I wrote a story about it.

Vineyarders are also well accustomed to trading goods for services: a farmer might swap a bottle of homemade wine for a haircut. Recently when my bicycle needed repair, I asked Cycle Works’s John Stevenson if I could post-date my check by seven days. I also offered, since I figured he, too, was financially strapped, to make him a sandwich, although I warned him it would have to be peanut butter and jelly. “I like raspberry jelly,” he replied, and the deal was sealed.

So there’s a monster recession raging out there in the big bad world. It’s scary for all of us, even Vineyarders, but most of us who live here year-round are used to being broke, to making do, and to mustering the fortitude to “Stay Calm And Carry On” as the British used to say during World War II.

Maybe, for mainland dwellers, Vineyarders could conduct one big workshop on How to Be Poor Without Being Too Wretchedly Unhappy? It might generate extra wampum for all of us.