Episode 62 | Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Cape Cod was never on the original itinerary. When I started planning 50 at 60, the Cape wasn’t even on the radar. Just one of those places you always assume you’ll get to eventually, and eventually never quite arrives. Then Massachusetts showed up on the list and someone said go to Chatham, and here I was driving out onto the Cape for the first time in my life, doing a passable Boston accent at a rest stop on Route 6.
The woman at the rest stop information desk heard what I was doing and lit up. She said skip Yarmouth, go straight to Chatham. Something about boats coming in and maybe seals. I said I’d heard something like that, whether I had or hadn’t.
She was right.
Chatham Pier
The fishing pier at Chatham is one of those places that doesn’t advertise itself particularly hard and rewards you for showing up anyway. I stood at the railing watching the boats come in and noticed something moving in the water near the dock. Then I noticed more of them. Five, maybe six seals, big ones, hanging vertical in the water waiting for the fish cleaning to start, completely unconcerned with the humans watching from above.
I struck up a conversation with a man nearby who turned out to have worked these docks years ago. He explained the boats — scallop draggers out there with the outriggers, the ones that go way offshore and drag a ten-thousand-pound metal rack along the ocean floor to scoop up scallops. He knew the difference between every vessel in the harbor. Hadn’t been here in twenty years, he said. Just brought his wife back on a whim.
I watched the lobsters getting unloaded into crates, the fish scraps going into the water, the seals making the most of the situation. There’s a chute built into the pier so the public can see the unloading up close. Someone thought this through. I appreciated it.
I’ve had a recurring vision on this trip of going out on a commercial fishing boat for a day and documenting the whole thing properly. Sunrise to dark, out on the water, everything. Started dreaming about it in Greece in my late twenties watching boats come into harbor on the islands. Still haven’t done it. It stays on the list.
Dinner at Vera
The bed and breakfast owner had recommended a few places for dinner. I forgot both names immediately and stumbled into a restaurant called Vera instead, which turned out to be exactly right. Tomato basil mussels from the local waters, scallops with lemon risotto, an Athletic Brew because that’s where I am these days. The kind of meal that makes you feel like you made good decisions.
Chatham itself is the kind of New England coastal town that looks like it was designed by someone who took the concept seriously. A little theater, a little diner, the main street doing what a main street should do in October in Massachusetts. I walked it until it got dark.
The Boat Captain
Earlier in the day I’d had a conversation at the pier with a boat captain that I didn’t get on camera, which has become a recurring theme on this trip. We talked about the wind turbines — the same debate I’d been seeing signs about since Newport, the offshore wind farms proposed for the Rhode Island and Massachusetts coast. He fished these waters. He had specific concerns about what large-scale offshore construction does to fishing grounds, about whether the companies involved had done their due diligence on environmental impact, about what nobody was being told.
These weren’t the concerns of someone who didn’t believe in renewable energy. These were the concerns of someone whose livelihood depends on what happens below the surface of the water, and who felt like that perspective wasn’t getting into the conversation.
I didn’t get him on camera. He said you have to be careful what you say these days. I understood what he meant and I didn’t push it.
What I keep thinking about is how to do this better. A demo reel, maybe, something I could show someone before I ask to point a camera at them. Here’s who I am, here’s what I’m making, here’s what it looks like. Not a YouTube channel pitch. Just enough to put someone’s mind at ease about what kind of story I’m trying to tell.
I want to tell the story of the American worker, the entrepreneur, the person who does something hard and specific with their hands and has been doing it long enough that it’s just who they are. The fisherman, the blacksmith, the knife sharpener, the leather worker. If you know someone like that — anyone watching this, all forty of you — reach out. Leave a comment. Tell me about your uncle who does something cool.
I’m serious about this.
Sandwich
On the way off the Cape I drove through a town called Sandwich, which is the oldest town on Cape Cod and which I looked for a sandwich in, unsuccessfully but optimistically.
Frank had mentioned recently that I might want to take a meat cleaver to some of these videos the way we did on the Kahana documentary. He’s probably right. But these videos exist whether they’re watched or not. I’d still be making them if they were going to sit on a hard drive and never see the internet. That’s just where I am with it.
The day started on a quiet boardwalk at sunrise. By afternoon the world had gotten louder. By dinner it had quieted back down to mussels and risotto and the sound of the harbor.
New Hampshire next.
