My family and I had vacationed on the Cape since the early 1950’s. I remember as a very small child staying at a cottage in Wellfleet, and my brother and I racing down to the Cape Cod railroad tracks to put a penny on the tracks for when the train came by and flattened it! Needless to say, mom was not happy!
My parents decided to retire to the Cape in the mid-70’s. I finished college, and came up to “visit” for a summer. I loved it so much that that “summer” stretched into 27 summers! During my 27 summer stay on Cape Cod, I learned about the history, the “locals”, the flora and fauna, and learned the I was considered a “Washashore”. No one was considered a “native” unless you could trace your ancestry back at least 7 generations or to the Mayflower.
An event that I strongly remember is the summer of ’91 when “Hurricane Bob” came for a visit. “Bob” was a category 1 hurricane, but I had never before experienced a hurricane, so I was excited. We were on the dry side of him and received no rain. I recall sitting in my living room listening for him to hit. It sounded like a locomotive was coming right down the center of my street. The sound was overwhelming. The hurricane did not last long. When he left, a friend and I ventured out to see the damage. Two sights stick with me. One was a tree that landed between a house and a car without touching either one. There was exactly enough space for the tree. An inch or two in either direction and the tree would have demolished the house or the car!
The second sight that I remember is walking through the bike path with a video camera taking video of the locust trees down. As I approached the path near the lake, there was a dead fish in the path, 30 feet away from the water! I was never able to walk that path again without thinking of that poor fish and all the damaged trees.
Submitted by Jim
