The rain that we woke up to made it very much feel like we were in New England. Cape Cod, with its shingles and weathervanes, curving roads and bodies of water -- small and large -- is a very special place.
First on the agenda was grabbing breakfast at the Optimist Cafe -- a restored house from 1849. The Boy is in charge of the gnome on this trip (we have been so neglectful of him during the scheme for some reason!), and so he looked for many photo opportunities throughout the day. (He also insisted that we take a picture of the silly whale in front of the cafe.)
Parnassus Book Service alone was worth the drive from NYC. Not just because it has amazing books (I'll share what we bought some other time), but because of the guy working there. The original owner who passed away last year was friends with Edward Gorey, and the Jack of Jack's Outback, and and by all reports was a character... but he couldn't have been any more of a character than Paul, the gentleman who greets customers now. Holy smokes. As we walked in he popped out of the side room that looks like a hoarders haven, and with his nicotine stained mustache, cat hair all over his sweats, and a bandaid on his forehead he croaked, "Ah. Children. Terrible things." Being as these particular terrible things love Roald Dahl, this type of humor was greatly appreciated. While we all wandered about he sidled up to us individually and chatted. In this way he somehow managed to pull more personal information out of the five of us then our neighbors know, and so by the time he was packaging our books he was also sharing all kinds of random tidbits about things like New York City, and Mormons. He looked at The Girl and said, "I see that dimple. I know it means chaos and mischief -- at least on occasion." Her dimples deepened. As we left he told the children: "You are wretched, wretched children. God bless you."
An old New England house crammed full of books, AND a sweet Darby O'Gill-esque fellow all on a magical rainy day? God already blessed us, my fantastical friend, now keep yourself well so you're here when we come again.
From Parnassus we headed to the Edward Gorey house. We've been before, and yet every detail was just as quirky and enjoyable. Edward Gorey is the antidote to an Orwellian society.
Last time we noticed that there was a scavenger hunt for all of the Gashlycrumb Tinies and we found quite a few of the tokens that represented those poor children's unfortunate ends. This time we actually all did the scavenger hunt and found all 26.
"H is for Hector done in by a thug."
"G is for George smothered under a rug."
Lest it appear that the entire family is macabre, I should record that The Girl does not think this alphabetical cautionary tale is funny at all. However, she does like the story of Gorey's man furs: he apparently had quite a few of them, and then one day had a great change of heart and decided to be done with them, and aside from the one that he continued to wear (with jeans and boat shoes... when he would go garage-sale-ing), he chucked them up in his attic. When a family of raccoons was discovered nesting up there, rather than having an exterminator come, he let them stay for as long as they wanted... Further, when he died he left his estate, including all future royalties, to be divided between four different animal charities.
Gorey lived on 38th Street in NYC and loved watching the Balanchine ballets. On a picture of his apartment hanging up he wrote at the bottom that his apartment was about a 40 minute walk to Lincoln Center. It was interesting to think of him walking past our apartment building. I asked the man, named Rick, working at the front desk about the note (he had been a close friend of Gorey's). He explained that Gorey "never missed" a Balanchine ballet, and in fact would stay in the city throughout the season, only coming out to the Cape when the season concluded for the year. The year Balanchine retired was the year Gorey moved permanently to Cape Cod.
Gorey said that Dracula bought him his house on Cape Cod. He did the setting design and costume design for the Broadway production of Dracula, and was nominated for a Tony for both (he won for costume design). The Gorey-Dracula franchise boomed.
I'm glad that it did. The house is a fabulous thing to experience. For a magazine spread he was once asked where his favorite place was, and he answered something like: at home, looking out my window. So they took a picture of him looking out his window. And we looked out the same window. I told the kids: "Look, we are standing right where he sat for this picture." Having considered the house as a museum so totally, it was a cool reminder that he lived and created there.
I remember being a kid and seeing the beginning of Mystery! one Sunday on PBS, and thinking it was really weird, but awesome. And then the actual show started, and I was like: What the what?!? Then a couple of Sundays later: same thing. Finally, I figured out that I wasn't catching the end of something amazing, but rather the amazing beginning of something that didn't interest me. So I would happily watch the one-minute intro, and then turn the channel.
Whether The Girl is a full-appreciator or not, I'm glad that my kids have had way more EG exposure then I did... namely, the same-minute snatch that I saw on Sundays, and the cover of the Freaky Friday novel that he illustrated (and I checked out of my elementary school library).
By the time we were finished at the house the rain stopped. We headed to the Cape Cod National Seashore to get us some Junior Ranger booklets. As it turned out, today was Marconi day, so we were able to attend a demonstration focused on morse code and radio waves, etc.
We rented bikes and rode about nine or ten miles down to Coast Guard Beach, and along the Rail Trail. The tandem bikes were perfect for the areas when the hills were aggressive (perfect in that the hills were a bit much for the kids to do alone, not so perfect on my quads).
It was really fun, though there was the sad moment when The Girl was sure that she had seen a dead dolphin. We rode back to the area where she thought she saw it, and were all surprised that she was right. Somehow it must have washed into the bay during high tide, and stayed, marooned, in the marshy area off to the side of the Cape Cod Rail Trail. We knew that the visitor's center would be closing up, but we pumped our 10 collective legs as fast as we could to get our bikes returned and ourselves over to try to report what we had seen to the ranger. We were lucky -- even though the visitor center was locked, the ranger was just walking out to her car. She gave us the local number for IFAW and The Boy so maturely called them and gave them all of the information. He had told The Girl earlier, as we were racing back after she showed us the dolphin, "I'm so glad that you're here." And she was glad that he was there to make the call. We told them that they had made a difference, for telling the right folks about the dolphin might help other dolphins in the future. Still, it was clearly hard on my sensitive-hearted animal lover.
We saw where Marconi's station was set-up, and then went on to Race Point Beach by Provincetown. We walked along the beach, The Boy buried the gnome, we ran down some dunes, and the kids rolled the gnome down some dunes. The sand was nicely packed and in some places still unbroken from being pelted smooth by the long rain last night and this morning.
The pilgrims landed on Cape Cod first, stole some corn from the native people (I'm told that in fairness, they were pillaging out of desperation, and left some trinkets...), and then continued on to Plymouth. We drove through Provincetown and saw the Pilgrim Memorial, but couldn't find a place to eat (sometimes we go down really cranky rabbit holes when we're trying to decide on a place to eat while on trips), so we turned back and then just kept driving...
Eventually we ended up at some random restaurant, and allegedly while The Girl and I were in the restroom a man in a chicken costume walked by the table and into the back room. The Sister sprinted to the car to get her phone to take a picture, but he never came back out. Shoot.
