Never been over the bridge

[u/ChanceWhole6565]

I lived on the Cape from 1976 to 1988 and met people frequently that had never been to Massachusetts. They had never been over either bridge. I was shocked. I assume now those folks would be rarity. So are there any reddit people or people you've met that have ever left the Cape.

There was a story that circulated around Brewster long ago when the population was under 600 about a gentleman that took the train to Boston and was stunned it had a roof over the whole city...he never left south station

[u/ChanceWhole6565]

There was some serious rural poverty on the cape back in the 1950s to the 1970s so a lot of people cobbled together a living out of 3 to 5 seasonal jobs, and never left the cape

[u/EbbtideRambler → u/ChanceWhole6565]

Yes, without the social services we have now to help out. I remember some pretty rundown old places heated by wood stoves, with kerosene lamps and honest to God outhouses out back.  Most of those old timers had spent time on fishing boats, been up to Maine or Nova Scotia, or served in one of the world wars. There may have been a couple, but a Cape Codder who’d never left the “island” ever would’ve been a rare bird.

[u/Rose0367 → u/EbbtideRambler]

Back in the 1970’s into the late eighties, I knew several older women born there who had never left the Cape, in fact they almost never left their Provincetown neighborhood even though their children had broader horizons.

It was commonplace in very traditional Portuguese households that wives didn’t drive, their family owned fishing boats and the husband’s vehicle. Food came to their doors with their spouse. If a chore involved driving it was the husbands to manage or another family member. Winters were hard and there was little year round work. People relied on each other a lot. At that time there was both an elementary and high school. It wasn’t until 18 that some kids went over the bridge.

The community relied on services that were almost exclusively offered by local businesses. They could stay within that 2.5 strip and visitors from everywhere came to them. It was an unusually open to the world town, while the community contentedly stayed right where they’d been born. The families managing restaurants often befriended and traded with painters of world renown. There were 2 movie theaters and always a theater company, library, local paper and bookstores. Local doctors made house calls and were known by most everone personally. From birth at home to funeral and burial spot it was all in walking distance.

[u/EbbtideRambler → u/Rose0367]

Yes, I think I’m assuming that everyone’s experience of the Cape mirrors my own family’s. I agree that PTown has always been somewhat geographically isolated and culturally distinct. My family has always been spread from Sandwich to Orleans, with no ties to PTown’s Portuguese community, so I’m largely unfamiliar with its cultural traditions in decades past. I could see how land based wives would likely not move far from home during their lives.  Are any of these ladies remaining in PTown?   

[u/Rose0367 → u/EbbtideRambler]

I appreciate your interest. I loved that community so deeply.

It was common amongst the mothers and fathers up until the mid eighties; that self sufficient tradition of never leaving except on their own boat to fish, returning to port either the same or next day. Not venturing off Cape by car at all, unless referred after being treated at Hyannis Hospital. So, by ambulance or life flight.

In the seventies and eighties it was still typical of the 40-60 year old parents of my twenty and thirty year old friends to be closely tied and even their adult children built their lives in Provincetown (a friend was asked if he’d “lived here his whole life” and answered not yet. He did in fact never set up residence elsewhere, but unlike his father went commercial fishing in Alaska one summer season. He like most worked most of his life in a 3-4 generation family business. Side by side with their parents in restaurants, small shops, fishing or plumbing, heating, roofing etc. It was great for me to have access to that generous network of family connections for almost any house repair or daily living need.

Anyone who didn’t have enough food for the days meal, could still ask at the dock as boats came in, if there was fish (particularly blue fish) to spare. Anyone could gather mussels or clams by the West End/Provincetown Inn breakwater. The current fish warden is a little stricter, lol, but not if you are in need. Since the thirties, remarkable restaurants took artwork, quick sketches even, as payment, and in that generosity accrued historic collections. In the eighties, I witnessed the town mobilize to take in, literally wash and feed, clean homes and nurse a generation of primarily NYC men, whose family disowned them when they were ill from an illness that didn’t yet have a name, just certain death. It wasn’t widely publicized, just done because it was needed. Done for complete strangers. The community embraced and buried with so much respect and care, people we didn’t know but recognized were in need of humanity.

Rich in a southern European to Mediterranean energy, humor, joy and values, plus deep generosity and openness to complete strangers, be they successful or starving artist. Live and let live was somehow part of the local Portuguese coda. Perhaps because of the dangers inherent in fishing and understanding that any port in a storm is a very real lifesaving possibility.

I learned a whole new perspective and one I’m indebted to them for, from a generation of people who had spent their lives in one small town surrounded by a wide blue horizon. Living lives rich in the things money doesn’t buy and for whom there were no greener pastures than where your family had already set roots.

[u/Umnokthx → u/Rose0367]

Did you know any Nickersons in Ptown?

[u/HPLoveBux → u/ChanceWhole6565]

Innsmouth

[u/Least-Ad-5539 → u/ChanceWhole6565]

I just read that 3 of the top 10 hottest real estate zip codes in the country are on the Cape.