Season of the sharks

Post by Grubb.

The last time we enjoyed an extensive visit with Marc and Judi was when we were in Oaxaca during the Christmas holidays in 2018. That was when Marc, bent on introducing Ella to the world of mescal, gave us the rambling go-for-the-worm dark doorway bar tour that prepared us for joining the throng at the carved radish festival. Wednesday, after leaving Barry and Deidra’s, we arrived at Marc and Judi’s house in Harwich. I was told Harwich is on the south side of the lower Cape, but you could have fooled me. I’ve been lost in one large seaside forest since we pulled into Barnstable on Saturday. I frankly don’t know how anybody who lives here distinguishes one woodsy town from another unless it pops up on their GPS coordinates while they’re driving. There is nothing up front about the houses; set back behind protective trees, they’re just a white-shingled flash as you pass by. And the uniformity of architecture doesn’t help. I have nothing against the Cape Cod style; it’s cute and cozy-looking, and has a certain low-profile, Puritan simplicity, but the lack of differentiation in structure and color makes it hard to get my bearings.

So Wednesday afternoon at Marc and Judi’s we sat on on a deck overlooking the treetops in the backyard enjoying another leafy bower that is part of the paradise that makes up Cape Cod.

Thursday, as Marc drove us to South beach, we passed through the tourist trap of Chatham where the ghost of Bill Richardson haunts the ice cream shops. Former Governor of New Mexico, famous for looking uncomfortable in ill-fitting suits, bulky, slope-shouldered Bill preferred Chatham as his permanent home. In New Mexico, Bill rarely strayed from Santa Fe; judging from the elite layout of Chatham, Bill favored the ambience of a boutique town. He died a couple weeks ago in Chatham and his body was shipped to Santa Fe for the funeral. Who knows where he’ll be buried? His wife Barbara lives in Chatham and nobody’s talking.

At South Beach the warning signs indicated it was the height of white shark season.

Apparently the sharks like to chase the migrating seals that have increasingly shown up on the shores of Cape Cod. We stopped at the Chatham Fish Pier where I relaxed in a lobster cage chair to watch the shark meat feed on the minnows swarming below.

In Chatham, we paid a short visit to Marc’s parents, Irwin and Helen, both in their early nineties. I stood in envy of Irwin’s collected golf equipment. He quit golfing at 91. By that time he had made 5 hole-in-ones. I told him I had made a hole-in-one years ago. He said, “That’s a good start.”