It happens every summer, like clockwork. The days get longer and I load up the car with beach buckets, surf rods, towels, sandals and wine and head north to the Cape. The kids busy playing away on their Game Boys. My wife is fast asleep, which usually occurs as soon as I start playing the Grateful Dead somewhere in Stamford. CT. The yearly vacation back home.
I grew up in Monument Beach which is a sleepy little village 3 miles off of the Bourne Bridge.
The good thing about Mo Beach is there is no traffic. The back ups on Rt 28 and Rt 6A seem worlds away. One quick turn off of the Bourne Rotary and I am out of the summer traffic, at least for a little while. Each summer, I make a quick run through the old stomping grounds before heading down Cape. The salt air still smells the same, the trees along Shore Road are a little bigger and the town still looks like it did in 1985.
I pass the oldest store in the United States, the Aptucxet Trading Post, and head down Bell Road, beneath the Train Bridge to watch the canal current cruise out towards Buzzards Bay. Cormorants and wood ducks enjoying the ride.
Next stop is Mo Beach where I spent my days swimming and getting chased off of Bassets Island by some crazy old fisherman. This is the place where I learned horseshoe crabs had green blood.
I head down to Patuisset and cruise along Circuit Ave, checking out all of the houses we used to party in as invincible teenagers. I can still see my old Toyota pick up with all four wheels stuck in the sand and my friends pushing me out… and into a ditch next to a cranberry bog. Thanks guys.
I usually end my trip at Mashnee Island which sits outside the western side of the Cape Cod Canal. I slowly drive through with the water lapping on both sides of the narrow road that runs the length of the island. Mashnee was always known for its nuclear poison ivy. The worst I have ever seen. The leaves were dark green and waxy and had little red horns and a pitched fork. This stuff was evil. It took a trip to the doctor to get rid of it. It laughed at calamine lotion.
I head north on Waterhouse Road passed Bourne High School, passing the Cape Cod League’s Bourne Braves baseball field and back out to the rotary. Back towards the places where the vacationers go… I just look back and see myself as once again… Bourne Again!
