AB1 Tour 2014 - Week 17 - Cape Cod, MA

Sometimes you have to fool Penny, our erstwhile yet often stubborn GPS.  In order to get us out of the ravages of Jersey City, NJ, on Sunday, July 20, she kept trying to send us through the Holland Tunnel right in the heart of the busiest downtown in the country.  The toll people, in their infinite wisdom, wouldn’t let us go through the tunnel.  Penny thought otherwise; she just kept sending us back there.  So knowing I was at least as smart as a computer (Atari model, 1989), I told Penny we had changed our minds and were actually going to Seton Hall University, a location in the other direction from New York City.
     “Really, Penny,” I pleaded, “that’s where we want to go.”
     She was taken in by my clever ruse and very agreeably said, “Oh, I can get you to Seton Hall,  easy-peasy.”
     She can be folksy like that.
     So she takes us to Seton Hall which gets us to the freeway we originally wanted, the one that would NOT go right through the city.  But the ruse is not yet over.
     “Penny,” I says, “I guess we’re not going to Seton Hall.  We’ve decided to go to that RV park in Bourne, MA.”
     She gives me that funny look all kids do when they think their parents are being total doofuses, then shrugs her shoulders (I think, since I can’t really tell if she has shoulders.)
     “Whatever,” she yawns.  “I can get you there.”
     In the battle of wits between the GPS and me, well, I’d have to say I came out on top … although it did take us 2 hours, 15 minutes to go around NYC and accomplish the same six miles it would have taken going through the Holland Tunnel, so it’s hard to say which of us was the more clever.  Let’s call it a tie.
     Due to some miscommunication with the campground, our reservation was for six (their claim) rather than seven (our claim) days.  Now, we’re certainly flexible.  But what we’re not is indestructible … AB1, that is.
      Yes, we had an accident.  Don’t worry, it wasn’t a big one.  No cops were called, no insurance info was exchanged with another driver, mainly because there was no other driver.  Just a few miles from the campground, we had to cross one last, VERY narrow bridge.  Being the driver, I was watching the left side, trying to stay near the middle white stripe while avoiding oncoming cars.  Diedre’s side, on the other hand, was doing battle with staying away from the bridge’s all-too-near cement curbing, about two feet high.
     Diedre’s side lost.
     For a second, maybe two, our right side scraped the bridge’s curbing, creating an awful “SCREECH!”  I quickly overcorrected, narrowly missing a Greyhound Bus traveling in the opposite direction on the all-too-narrow roadway.
     It turned out the scraping was only along the wheel well protrusions, not the whole length of AB1.  And since we figure we weren’t going to get rich anyway selling the old girl (AB1, not Diedre) in 10 years, we tried to shake it off.
     But it wasn’t easy to forget.  New AB1 rules now call for me to alert Diedre at impending meetings with bridges.  She is then to go on heightened alert as head of “Bridge Patrol” duty.
     So far, so good. 

You probably remember (and you’d better because this stuff’s going to be on the quiz) that I lost a molar-crown on my last night in New York City.   Well, on Tuesday I (Diedre) found a dentist less than a mile away.  Dr. Glavin did a great job getting my crown back in place; I think he used a staple gun.
     Whatever.
     

    From the crisis of dentistry central we made our way on to Hyannis, MA, and the home of the President John F. Kennedy Legacy Trail.  This was a ten-stop walk through a most bucolic little town that highlighted many aspects of JFK’s life.  I enjoyed imagining just how electric the feeling was in 1960 as we stood in front of the Hyannis Armory where JFK gave his acceptance speech the night he was elected president.  I lucked out and was able to have my picture taken with the Kennedy family.  I have no idea what they were all doing skulking around that alleyway. 

     We also walked the waterfront to where the JFK Memorial was` located on Veterans’ Beach and followed it up with the first of what would be many lobster roll lunches.  It was “go-od!”
     
Of all people, Diedre then noticed a sign for a Cape Cod Summer Wood-Bat Baseball League game at McKeon Park in Hyannis that night and suggested we go.  I think she was just trying to even things up as theatre now led baseball games 17-12.  The league, started in 1985, is for college players who have pro potential.  It’s really a nice set-up and the games are free.
     Tonight’s game gimmick was “Christmas in July,” so, of course, they got the big guy, Santa Claus, to jet in from his summer home in the Adirondacks to throw out the first pitch.  He brought the heat (baseball-speak), throwing high and outside, then settled back to watch the Hyannis Harbor Hawks play the Wareham Gatemen.  A kid pitching for the Hawks was from Eden Prairie, MN, where I worked for five years as the city’s athletic director from 1981-86.  I wondered if the kid knows who I am … then it dawned on me: I was gone SEVEN years from that job before this kid was even born … and he’s practically in Major League Baseball.
     I AM getting old and forgetful … I think … I can’t remember.
     The Hawks won 7-0.  Their pitcher from Stanford University, Marcus Brakeman, was dominant giving up just four hits and striking out ten in seven shut-out innings.  He helped run our record to 9-4.
     After a day off, we designated Thursday as “Road Trip Day.”  On our way, we passed through the little burg of Sandwich, MA, home of the Sandwich Glass Museum which my mother had dragged us to (willingly, right, Mom?) 51 years ago.  We didn’t stop this time, although we did see that in Sandwich, they had a little place called “The Sandwich Breakfast Place.”  Of course we stopped just so I could order a “Sandwich Breakfast Place Breakfast Sandwich.”  Is that a palindrome?
   

 Our first stop was in Wellfleet, a historical site I was almost as excited about seeing as Kitty Hawk, NC ... almost.  We stood on the actual location where Gugliemo Marconi (his friends called him “Googy”) made communications history from this seaside cliff by sending the first wireless message to Great Britain.  Marconi had vigorously studied the accomplishments of Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison which helped his greatest accomplishment hugely.
     This was the site of the first U.S. transatlantic telegraph station built in 1901-02.  Googy then started the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America, the predecessor of RCA.  The epic first message was sent January 19, 1903, just 10 months before the Wright Brothers flew.  The message was one from President Teddy Roosevelt to the King of England.  As you all remember from your grade school history books, Teddy famously said, “S’up?”  Years later in 1912, the station operator at the Marconi station heard the distress call from the Titanic.
     From there, we headed north with our goal to make it all the way to Provincetown at the end of the Cape Cod peninsula.  We soon stopped again, this time in Truro, MA, at the legendary “Corn Hill.”  Way back on November 16, 1620, sixteen “Truro” Pilgrims, led by Miles Standish, “found” some precious Indian corn on a spot they appropriately dubbed “Corn Hill.”  It saved them from starvation that first year.  It’s also where the Pilgrims took their first drink of spring water in the new world.  They were sure it must have been God’s providence (the Native Americans called it something else: “larceny” comes to mind), else they did not know how they would survive.
     NOTE: Upon arriving in the hugely charming little town of Provincetown, a woman’s cell phone was ringing.  She almost apologetically said to Diedre, “I’m not taking phone calls.  I’m on vacation.  Don’t’ you agree? ”
     “Oh, I’m not on vacation,” DK replied, “this is my life.”

     Provincetown’s huge Pilgrim’s landing monument cost $12/person to tour.  I wonder if the Pilgrims are still getting their cut of the proceeds.  No matter to us; we avoided paying the $24 to see it, and instead snapped a picture of it from the street.  Provincetown claims their monument commemorates the Pilgrims’ FIRST landing in America (not Plymouth Rock) when the Mayflower made landfall in Provincetown Harbor on November 21, 1620, after 67 days at sea.
     Hmmm …
     Perhaps I should have reminded them of a little place called … CORN HILL!
   
  Provincetown’s main street, just off the ocean, was a marvel to walk.  Diedre decided to do a little fishing.  Here she is with “the catch of the day.”  It was mighty good eatin’.
     On the way home that night, we stopped in the charming little town of Chatham (NOTE: all little towns in Cape Cod are “charming.”  It’s the law!)  We were trying to avoid the plodding traffic by taking in a movie.  “Chef” was one we had both wanted to see (I love science fiction movies while Diedre prefers the ones about food.  I’m not sure what this one was.)
     On our last night “on the Cod” (other people like to say “on the Cape,” although I think my version will resonate more with the kids and the fisherman), we got tickets to see the Old Jersey Boy himself, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, at something called “The Cape Cod Melody Tent.”  It turned out to be an actual tent, although a big one.  They’ve been in business the last 60 years, so I guess it’s a pretty strong tent.  They bring in a lot of big name performers: Huey Lewis & The News, The Temptations, Boz Scaggs, The Moody Blues, and Greg Allman.  They finish this season with comic legend Bill Cosby.
   

 We were pretty stoked to see Frankie who would be performing that night at the age of 80 … again, are we really getting that old?  Fifty years ago, his group released “Dawn, Go Away,” “Silence Is Golden,” and “Rag Doll.”  That was a big year for them, but judging by tonight’s show, they’re still going strong.  Of course, Frankie is the only one still performing from the original group.
     The Melody Tent was set up in a theatre-in-the-round configuration with a revolving stage that allowed everybody to have 50-yard line seats part of the time.  Plus, no seat was more than 50’ from the stage.  Sweet!
     OK, because of our scheduling problems (see paragraph 1), we were on the road early the next morning, Saturday, July 26.  We had decided to spend the night in Exeter, New Hampshire, where we would have dinner with my uncle Judd (my dad’s younger brother and the father of cousin Duncan whom you met in last week’s blog), my wonderful Aunt Theo who has dutifully put up with Judd for all these many years, and their daughter, my cousin, and Duncan’s older sister, Morah.  Because this was an unscheduled visit and because we’re slated to visit them anew August 3-5, I’ll save all that good stuff for two weeks down the line.
     So now, it’s on to Maine, home of the ambrosia of the sea: steamed lobster.
     “URP!”