Through a lengthy and somewhat tenuous thread of coincidence, I find myself
hosting the E2 Chief Editor, his gal Sal, and her father, hereafter known
as 'Papa Bear.' They're here on Cape Cod for a long
weekend visit and staying at a small rental cottage in nearby New Silver
Beach.
I consider it a rare privilege to get to know dem bones. He has consistently impressed me with his ability to
make the right call under pressure, time and time again. He's also got a
wry and prickly wit and a finely honed sense of irony. In
short, bones is an interesting fellow and it
should be fun to kick it with him.
He's also, of course somewhat of a sacred relic in the cultural venue of
Our Little Town. I dunno about you all, but after a few
years of hanging around here, I'm still trying to get a handle on how it works
and what it means. E2 is one of the most unique collaborative associations
I've ever observed. The reasons it works so well, and the subtle dynamics that
drive it have been an endless source of fascination and puzzlement to me. So, perhaps, I can do some kind of
Vulcan Mind Meld with Bones and unravel the DNA of E2 in the course of
partying with him this weekend. But even if I do, that's not what
I'm thinking of sharing with you all. You wouldn't believe me anyway, and
that's the kind of thing you've got to unravel for
yourselves.
What I am thinking of doing however is having some fun with all this by
chronicling the events of the visit for your amusement in
the form of a few daylog entries beginning with this one. Hey that's what
daylogs is for, n'est ce pas?
Coby's dad took the humane approach to getting here from Michigan, a two day
roadtrip that took in the Finger Lakes area in upstate New York, followed
by a leisurely trip down to the Cape and an afternoon arrival.
He and I sat on the deck at my place and sipped some wine in the rusty orange
light of a "Smoky Sou'west" wind pulling up Buzzards Bay.
Papa really is a big friendly bear of a man. He seems to fill up the
room with a pleasant attention. You get the feeling that he's hunching his
head a bit, the way that really tall people do, as if in the sincere hope of
avoiding contact with door frames and low ceiling fans. He certainly is
tall, but well proportioned, like a former athlete. Nice smile.
We hit it off immediately and settled into a comfortable discussion of the
life and times. In short order we were faced with the inevitable 'Six
Degrees of Separation' connections dance. I think we both realized at
once that the events that had led both of us to my house on this sunny afternoon
revolved around a person that I'd never even spoken to on the phone
before. I had to smile at the pleasant oddness of that.
As the wine bottle emptied, Papa Bear and I deemed it prudent
to migrate over to the cottage where he and the rest of the 'Bones Party' will
reside during their vacation here. The cottage is a couple of miles from
my home in a classic little community called New Silver Beach and with Papa Bear
following doggedly behind, I led the way and we soon had parked the cars and
were wandering toward the sandy shoreline.
The cottage is a modest little place that supports itself with a small income
from annual summer rentals and is otherwise used for friends and family
visits. The bottom floor is a concrete block garage and 'bunkhouse' that
has hosted generations of teenagers banished by the adults from the upstairs
apartment. The first floor is 'expendable by design' in recognition of the
hurricane that will someday come blowing through its
doors. Living on the Cape these monster storms are inevitable and it's a
matter of when, not whether, the next one will come marching up Buzzards Bay.
The second floor is a simple two bedroom place with all the usual
facilities. The nicest amenity is probably the view from the living room
of the beach and water. New Silver Beach has had a very interesting
history in its first hundred years of existence. In the late 1800's Silver
Beach and the adjacent Wing's Neck was the home of a summer camp for young
ladies. From the pictures, it must have been a veritable paradise of
swimming, boating, picnics and clambakes, with afternoon readings from the
classics on the sugar sand beach.
In the early 1900's, the camp was closed and the land purchased by a group of
Boston-Based developers. These gentlemen formed the first Silver Beach
Association, and gridded out the area with plans for a grand hotel and a hundred
summer homes. The brochures for the develop show a dozen designs for
immaculate little Victorian and Craftsman homes with prices ranging between
$500 and $1500. Hey, I'll take two of those and one of those and one each
of these two...
I got Papa Bear settled and headed home again to await the arrival of Bones and Coby sometime close to midnight. The phone rang twice
last night, once when they arrive in Boston, an hour and a half late due to bad weather, and a second time way past midnight when they finally pulled into my
driveway. "You poor guys," I said as I strode
towards them, my hand outstretched. I engulfed Coby in a hug and gave Bones the
Manly Man handshake. The first thing I noticed about him is
that he has a really nice voice.
To be continued...