'The Cape of Winter

"Nobody goes to the Cape in the winter." The phrase haunts you as you speed down the Southeast Expressway, past the three-deckered homes of South Boston, past the innumerable suburbs. You didn't go skiing and the New York trip some-how fizzled out and you just can't bear Cambridge for one more day; so on a whim you try the Cape--sand dunes covered with snow, tufts of tall, yellow grass peeking out of the white cover--that kind of thing. And you find yourself driving over the canal, anxious for your first look at wintry Cape Cod.

There is nothing more depressing or more charming (depending on your point of view) than a summer resort boarded up for the winter. Even Hyannis, with its fashionable shops and acres of motels, looks forlorn.

There is something incongruous about the meter-lined streets where nobody's walking, the Howard Johnson's where you don't have to wait for a table. But Hyannis is a quick stop, having neither beauty nor excitement to recommended it now, and you speed along to Provincetown.

On the Mid-Cape Highway, the land is low, sparsely covered with sickly shrubs, the snow peeled away by efficient state workers. If you had taken the scenic route, you would have seen the familiar clapboard houses, the mansions, the frozen sand dunes, the cranberry bogs frosted with icy time.

The Provincetown that Eugene O'Neill made popular does not exist in winter. There is no carnival atmosphere, no theatre, no artists of dubious character from Greenwich Village.

The tiny winding streets are empty. The houses of Provincetown, for all their beauty and quaintness, don't quite match their renown. The ridiculous splotches of color on the old New England clapboard make them look garish rather than festive. Lewis' New York Store is closed. About the only scene of activity seems to be the wharf, naturally enough in a fishing town. It's calmer here, on the inside of the tip, and the tide is low, very low. A dinghy stands adrift on the black silt, waiting for the cold waters to come back; the rickety, nearly rotten legs of the wharf opposite are exposed in their spindly starkness to sea gulls, boats, and fishing nets.

Waiting for the tide, Portuguese fishermen, with leathery faces, stand ready by their boats. The loading and packing house is brightly lighted inside, full of crates and tubs of ice (which couldn't possibly melt), and everywhere the odor, the aroma, of fish--cod, of course.

There are no more sunset scenes. The little town is dark now, and even more quiet. You stop for coffee at the Wharf Diner. Fishermen. Parkas. heavy shoes. Army water-repellent coats. Bacon and eggs, Charlie. You boys from Boston? A young man strikes up a conversation. Now, there's nothing to do on the Cape in the winter. I mean, I like it, it's pretty and all that, but not for a single guy, ya know what I mean? It's really dead here now. Signs advertising Beach Plum jelly (a Cape Cod speciality). Outside the town is pitch black, the old. Cape houses warm against the biting wind. As you drive out toward the highway, you see no one, not a soul. The only signs of civilization are the warm yellow lights coming from some of the houses and, seen through a large window, the silver-white light of a television, broadcasting the news of the summer people to the winter people who really don't care; but it breaks the monotony.