When I was in college, back in the 1940s, I was not very mature and I hadn’t done any thinking about what I wanted to do with the life that lay ahead of me. I attended Pembroke College, which was the female half of Brown University, and at that time for the first two years we took courses that the college thought we needed to give us a hint about what we might want to study further. A little of this, a little of that — and most of them were wasted on me. I wasn’t interested in math or chemistry or foreign languages or psychology or sociology — what was sociology? My interest in sociology was aroused, but not very much, when I discovered that our textbook would be Middletown, USA.

I discovered that the term sociology referred to the study of a culture, and in the 1920s a pair of sociologists had chosen to study the culture of a typical American city, namely Muncie, Ind. My interest was piqued because that was where both my parents had grown up, and I had grandmothers, aunts and uncles and various other relatives living there. In the book the name of Muncie had been changed to Middletown to disguise the area where the data was found.

That was as far as my interest in sociology went, and everything I learned in that course, as well as chemistry, Spanish, psychology, etc. was quickly forgotten. For a major I finally settled on English literature, for the simple reason that I liked to read. But then, after three years, I quit college and married one of the veterans returning from World War II. The only course that proved valuable to me after all these years was one I took in my sophomore year — music appreciation.

No one in my family was musical or even listened to music. But I was in my teens during the swing band era, and much of that music has stayed with me. During that college course we learned mostly about classical music, and that semester I planned to find out what opera music was all about. During winter vacation I decided to attend an opera in New York city, as my family lived only a 30-minute train ride from Grand Central Station. I talked a friend into going with me and picked out an opera by Richard Wagner. I didn’t realize that Tristan and Isolde would be four hours long in a language I didn’t understand. My friend June was bored — but I was entranced.

I have found no use in my long life for math or science (I tried to remember some Spanish when I went to South America several times in the 1980s). I had renewed interest in psychology in the 1970s when I was teaching language arts to junior high children, and earned an MA in early adolescent psychology. But the course in music appreciation stayed with me all these years.

Two of my three children are musical, and all three of my granddaughters have a great deal of musical talent. It is a source of pride and pleasure for me. I didn’t go to another opera until 1959 when I saw Carmen in New York city, and a friend took me to Boston in the 1960s to see Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. When my third granddaughter, Katie Ann, showed a great talent for singing, I took her to Boston to see Carmen and La Boheme, my two favorite operas.

Never did I expect to hear live operatic music on Martha’s Vineyard, let alone in my small town of West Tisbury. But on Sept. 20 I went to a concert at the Whaling Church in Edgartown to hear Lia Kahler sing, not only arias but spirituals and other songs. Lia is an Island-grown mezzo-soprano who has sung professionally all over the world. It was wonderful and inspiring.

When I heard there would be some operatic music at the West Tisbury library on Oct. 30, I wrote it down in my calendar. It sounded promising — an early evening concert in the McCullough room, live music and free! Daughter Deborah and I decided to go.

On the way in that evening we picked up a program. There were to be three performers: Bethany Worrell, a young soprano; Vincent Turregano, a young baritone (when he let it slip that he had been born in 1987, I realized he is the same age as Lucy, my middle granddaughter); and Diane Katzenberg Braun, who accompanied the singers on the piano. All three are graduates of the New England Conservatory in Boston. What made it even more special for me was that their little group is called The Music Street Musicians — as in Music street, West Tisbury where I lived for 55 years. The Music Street Musicians play for intimate house salons in the Boston area and in Boston’s homeless shelters. We were lucky to get them here.

The program consisted of 11 selections, starting with Vincent Turregano singing an aria from Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck as he sauntered down the center aisle of the room swinging a small jack-o’-lantern. The concert ended with both singers in a duet from Giancarlo Menotti, and the program included arias from Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Stravinsky, Puccini, and a modern one by John Adams (born the year I was married) called Nixon in China.

The singers not only sang the arias in their original language, but acted the scenes as well. Handsome Vincent Turregano ogled beautiful Bethany Worrell as she flirted with him in several duets.

I was especially entranced by Puccini’s aria from La Boheme — O Mio Babbino, Caro. I have a recording of that aria sung by my granddaughter Katie Ann when she was 12 years old.

When I arrived on the Island in 1947, we had a tiny library on Music street with a librarian who wouldn’t allow young people to sign out a book that had swear words in it. Now we have a beautiful, multipurpose library with various programs that serve the entire community — from picture book reading for toddlers to local authors with new books to sell. And we have music, from 12th century troubadours in France to modern jazz to operatic arias. Paintings by local artists hang on the walls of this delightful all purpose room.

I would like to thank Beth Kramer and her wonderful team of librarians as well as Max Skjoldebrand and the library foundation and Susan Wasserman and the volunteer members of the West Tisbury Library Friends for their continuing effort to supply West Tisbury with the finest reading, art and music — and the people of West Tisbury for providing the space to hold these treasures. My life has been enriched by them all.

Shirley Mayhew lives in West Tisbury.