Part 2
And now, after realizing the fascination of clamming, why be surprised if, when you run down to the Cape for a week-end, your host grips you with a hand, cold and moist from submersion—a “clammy hand”; and why be surprised if on the following day, instead of the routine of golf and tennis, you are initiated into this simple sport? The surprise would come to the writer of this slight dissertation if he should find you callous to the delight of clamming or disrespectful of the occupation of the clammer.
IV
A BY-PRODUCT OF CONSERVATION
The torrent of conservation surged over our community in war-time with a mighty roar, carrying with it all thought of flowers and lawns, and making chaos of our cherished plans for a summer garden. With a velocity which only social enterprise could initiate, New England became a market garden from Eastport to Greenwich. Conservation developed back yards and vacant lots into gardens, and bank clerks into farmers, enthusiastic at the prospect, and innocent of the coming torments which weeds and pests would soon bring with them. And so, for this same reason, our flower garden on the Cape simmered down to a few nasturtiums and whatever blossoms of a perennial nature cared to show themselves, while our spring borders, usually a riot of color, were given over to vegetables.
What, then, should we have in our vases to reflect the profusion of the outdoor season? For a room without flowers in summer is as devoid of character and charm as a man without a necktie. The solution, naturally, was soon found by many in the wild flowers, and if conservation has accomplished nothing else, its gift to us of an appreciation of the beauty and variety of these exquisite plants will more than repay our efforts to grow potatoes, beans, and corn at exorbitant prices with doubtful success.
The last days of school for the children and certain affairs at the office, together with fixed habits which tyrannize over the household, kept us from leaving for the Cape until late in June, so that we missed the mayflowers which have made Cape Cod famous for generations. The iris and violets, too, had disappeared, as well as the dogwood with its delicate and generous pink-and-white petals. A few short hours after our arrival, my little daughter discovered near by some exquisite specimens of the wild lupine growing just as I had last seen it upon the slopes of Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco, although perhaps not in the same profusion.
From that first day until well into September, our living-room was made joyous by a succession of flowers as delicate and graceful as ever came from the highly cultivated gardens of the idle rich—a term which will soon vanish and justly so.
The wild roses were late and never more plentiful or more perfect. The daisies, arranged amid clusters of shiny bayberry and huckleberry leaves, were transformed into stately decorations. The broom, as it is often called, which abounds in certain sections of the Cape, planted there in past years without doubt, gave one a sense of having been ferried across the sea overnight, while our own columbine and wild geranium made a pleasing variety, especially when arranged with the soft green of the wild sarsaparilla.
With the coming of July, the _Hudsonia_, or beach heather, clothed our foreground with brilliant yellow spots, touches of the sun here and there, while the low wild shrubs and grasses seemed to grow overnight in their desire to hide our view of the water. After a week of rain in which we were confined to the flowers about the house—succulent clover, Queen Anne’s lace, and a wide variety of tall grasses, which, mingled with pine branches, form admirable wall decoration—our desire for botanical information led us to scour the near-by country, not with guide-book, motor-maps, or even a copy of “How to Know the Wild Flowers,” but to journey simply forth, either on foot or tucked tightly into our Ford car. To come unexpectedly upon one of the many ponds dotted with lilies and fringed with a variety of flowering shrubs caused as delightful a sensation as the same sight a few years ago would have aroused, only then it would have stimulated a very different desire—the thought of a possible bass, lazily drifting below the surface, to be tempted, perhaps, by a fly, would have been uppermost. But this summer our sport lay in securing wild flowers, a harmless and charming pastime in which for the first time all the members of the family found equal enjoyment, and even our near neighbors, confirmed golfers, admitted the fascination of our newly acquired sport. To return laden with lilies, wild clematis, marsh mallows, delicately pink upon their tall, stately stems, cat-tails, red lilies, the fragrant clethra, and a variety of other flowers whose names are to be discovered in the winter over a “complete botanical guide,” savored of a veritable triumph.
Our growing interest in this wild garden was amply rewarded, for now in August the flowers were at their height and it became doubly interesting. Whether the discovery of new varieties or the satisfaction of gathering and arranging the commonest weeds brought the greater pleasure, it is hard to judge. The recollection of a tall, graceful copper vase filled with the despised chicory and bouncing Bet, the blue of the one and the delicate, pinkish purple of the other blending charmingly and supported in contrast by a few sprays of sumac leaves, lingers as one of the floral discoveries of the summer. A mass of fireweed, interspersed with slender sprays of salt grass in full bloom, is another.
And yet to the sportsman or the embryonic scientist, individuals of very similar characteristics, an excursion into the back country through the woods, a good, long, honest tramp in pursuit of new floral game, and the finding, now a clump of cardinal-flowers and again the deadly nightshade (for the sportsman and scientist alike are fearless), is keen pleasure.
At times we would return with little booty to show for our trouble, a gathering of St. John’s-wort, perhaps, or a few stalks of mallow or one-eyed daisies, but never empty-handed and always with the exhilaration of the thought that here was a garden without limit, without weeds, and without the cares and expenses to which we were accustomed.
In arrangement, it must be confessed that discussion often arose. Certain members of the family, who shall be nameless, preferred a few blooms alone in each vase, while others clamored loudly for garnishings of salt grasses and other green decorations. Upon such flowers as butterfly-weed and tansy, such discussions nearly ended in riots, and only a tactful distribution of these blooms to those who had gathered them with full authority as to arrangement secured peace.
The goldenrod made its appearance earlier than usual, the handsome, sturdy variety which grows close to the tidewater being especially fine. With it came the purple and white wild asters, which are in reality so much more beautiful than the cultivated kind, and the sea lavender vying with baby’s-breath in its delicacy.
In this September a pleasant surprise came in the discovery of a flower which we called—and possibly incorrectly so—the wild primrose, growing close to the coast among the pines and scrub oaks; and blooming at this same time was the beach pea, a long, climbing vine of a pinkish-violet color, luxuriating amid the desolation of the sand-dunes.
Close upon the heels of these blossoms, which both seemed to belong to the springtime, the turning of the leaves, the crispness of the air, the short evenings, and the aforesaid three governing reasons, school, office, and domestic domination, decided us with more reluctance than ever to close the cottage. It was not until our luggage was packed and ready that our final gatherings of the season’s wild flowers were removed and the vases put away against the coming of next spring.
It still remains to be seen whether conservation will ultimately lead to a saving in the cost of food (for Americans are more given to preaching than to practice) but it has served us well in our appreciation of certain of the good things in life.
V
MOTOR TYRANNICUS
In the dim days of a decade ago—a generation might well have passed, for time is measured by the march of events rather than the procession of years—I remember yearning for the possession of an automobile. It mattered not what make, or shape or size or year. I was oblivious to the merits of six cylinders as opposed to four. I laughed at the enthusiast who reckoned upon the length of wheel-base as deciding his comfort or the question of demountable rims as governing his decision as to which make to select. All I coveted was something on wheels (preferably four) of my own which might go or even might not go, for so rampant was the possessive desire in my heart that the chief thing in the world seemed to me at that time to be able to say “My motor” in an utterly casual, matter-of-fact tone, and back it up by nodding my head in the direction of the barn, which after the fashion of marriages had suddenly changed its name overnight by the possession of a master, and so became my “garage.”
This ridiculous state of mind is easy to account for. In winter we lived in the suburbs where it seemed to both my wife and to me that every friend we had owned a car. In summer we sojourned upon Cape Cod, where the motor had replaced the runabout so completely that our old horse looked like a prehistoric relic of the Stone Age. Added to this was the ignominy of knowing that the Butcher and Baker both possessed machines and had that mythological person the Candlestick-maker abided in our town, doubtless he also would have honk-honked his way by our door.
In short, the thing got so badly on our nerves that finally, with full knowledge of the financial iniquity involved, I purchased one of those hopelessly plebeian affairs which travel under so many opprobrious pseudonyms—a Ford. From that day to this I have owned some sort of a car and have thought myself a wise and a fortunate man, and subconsciously I have felt myself rather more of a person because of this possession, for such is the frailty of human nature.
To-day, however, marks a turning-point, a milestone, a crisis in my career. Personally I consider this day one of triumph—I have sold my car. I have no independent means of transportation other than my own good legs—or, at least, they were so until I neglected them—and I rejoice in my motorless state. I feel a sense of exhilaration in my freedom from Fords, from the bondage of Buicks, from captivity in my Chandler Sedan. Such exhilaration is doubtless hard to understand because precisely the same conditions now exist which originally drove me into buying that first “Universal Car,” only in a more exaggerated degree. My children (and now there are more of them) are always clamoring for rides, even for the short distance of a few blocks which separates our house from school. My wife (and I must confess there is now more of her too) still plies her trade of exchanging visits and buzzing about town all day long, never thinking of walking, and for myself, I have become mutely accustomed to the rôle of family chauffeur when not attempting that increasing impossibility, the attempt to make both ends meet.
And yet, is it after all so hard to understand this relief? In the first place, the car, no matter what variety, either goes or it does not go. If by chance it goes, you must go with it. If it does not go, you must make it go or get some one who knows more about it than you do, and who costs more than you do, to mend it. That means that you go upstairs into your own room and change into old clothes reserved for this purpose, go down again and out to the garage, where you stand in contemplative mood for some moments before crawling under the machine. When you are safely landed in a dripping pool of oil, your children and your neighbor’s children come trooping in from play and ask you why you are there and what you are doing. This in itself is disconcerting, for you generally don’t know. Having successfully found that out you slowly emerge from your cramped quarters, which compare only with an upper berth, return to your room, resume the garb of a successful business man, and take the car to a garage and there wait until some one makes it _sound_ all right. This individual vies with the tax collector in separating you from all excess cash.
This does not happen every day, I admit, but there is a sensation in the back of the mind of nearly every motorist which is more or less constant. You know that you worry when the car does not go. There is no ground for speculation upon this point. You worry about what the matter is, and when you find you can’t mend it, and take it to a garage to be repaired, you worry as to whether you have taken it to the right garage, or the right man in the garage. You fuss over the cost and you continually wonder whether the repairs have been properly done or whether the blamed thing won’t break out in the same place the next time you take the car out. And during this whole period you feel in the bottom of your heart that you could have mended it just as well yourself.
Then there are the worries when it _does_ go. You wonder when the tires are going to give out, whether they are too flat or too inflated, whether you put in gas before you started, and how the water is. You are continually guessing whether you have too much or too little oil, and you generally guess wrong.
These, however, are all mere trifles, the superficial maunderings of a sensitive organism. Your major worries may be classified under three headings:
First: the worry of changing cars. Every year the question comes up for family discussion, competing valiantly with the problem of when we are to move to the Cape. Shall we turn in the old car and get a new one? If so, what kind?—and then follows a month of violent discussion in which my wife and the children take one side and I the other. By instinct I am a modest man and by habit cautious. I do not like changes, especially sudden changes, and so my inclination is either to stick to the old car for another year or buy a new one like it. My family—why I cannot say—seem to be oppositely inclined. My wife avers that So-and-So has had great luck with a ⸺. Billy, my eldest, backs her up with several lengthy anecdotes told him by So-and-So’s son, proving the excellence of that make above all others. I am sufficiently shaken in my opinion to consult with the garage-man from whom I bought my car, only to be shown a car of the variety mentioned in deplorable condition awaiting the mechanic’s skill. Poor engine, inadequate something or other,—I can’t remember the name,—and so it goes. My office is thronged with automobile salesmen so that work is impossible, while the evenings are passed in futile argument until the final verdict is given, resulting generally in a compromise—a new car is purchased of a trifle better type at a considerable advance in price and the old car sacrificed for a song. Those days of budding greenness for which we have longed through all the cold, useless days of winter are utterly ruined by this fearful problem.
The second worry comes with breakfast daily. Who is to use the car during the day? The day being balmy, I had thought of going to town in it, especially as I wanted to make a call on the way home. My wife, it seems, had planned to go to the dressmaker. I should have guessed it. Billy, who has just arrived at the legal age which foolishly permits youth to endanger the lives and liberty of American citizens, had planned to take a number of his cronies to St. Mark’s School to see a ball game. Billy, as can be readily imagined, wins out.
This daily observance takes the entire breakfast period and often leads to slight feeling. I say slight because I rarely ever secure the car myself unless it needs repairing.
The last worry may perhaps be more likened to fear. “What next?” I generally remark—for this third division concerns our friends. In that happy decade, now but a dream, we used to live in a delightful community, surrounded by friends who dropped in and then dropped out again, both happy incidents in our daily life. But now, who has time to see his neighbors when every one is frantically motoring to some distant acquaintance miles away? What can you do when some friend at the end of nowhere invites you to dinner because she knows you have a motor? You go because your wife explains that this sort of thing is what a motor is for.
Is this not a matter for worry?—to work in an office until five; to journey home with the knowledge that in exactly thirty minutes you start out, in a car which needs oiling and when one of the tires should have more air, for a distant suburb, where you are to meet a number of people you do not know and never care to see again. That this sort of thing is going to increase just as long as you have a pesky car is more than a cause for worry. It is a calamity.
In a trice all this vanished, for I sold my car. I remember hearing the story of a Southerner whose property was taken from him during the Civil War and who later was robbed of all the money on his person. He confessed to a feeling of intense joy and relief, for with his loss of property went his feeling of responsibility, and care-free he entered the army and fought a gallant fight.
And so upon that day I walked with elastic tread, head up, chest out, delighting in the discovery of freedom. I care not that my friends all possess cars. I’ve had one—several in fact—and I can afford to buy others, but I am not going to. That is, not yet (and here I remember my family, somewhat dubiously). I plan to renew the pleasures of daily rambles over the beautiful hills of my own town. I plan to renew old friendships with my neighbors near by. I look forward to an occasional Sunday at home. In short, I picture the joy of being without a motor.
As a matter of fact, however, this vision was short-lived. In the first place, the ramble over the old familiar hills made me so beastly lame that my Sunday at home was a painful one, and the day was punctuated by the complaints of each and every member of the family over the loss of the car. I ventured out, still painfully, to call upon one or two of my old neighbors, just for a run in and out again, but they, it seemed, were out in their motors, and so I returned dejectedly to the sad-faced group in my own living-room, where we managed to exist until bedtime, conversing upon our prospective move to the Cape, and what it meant to the various members of the family to be—as my daughter puts it—a million miles away from every one with no means of ever leaving the house. And so it was the Cape and its appeal which broke my defenses, for I must confess our seasonal trips there were a delightful part of our existence, to say nothing of the joys of our summer life.
The next day I took an early train to town, and I came home that evening somewhat sheepish, but reasonably happy, for I came in a new car, which bids fair to be the best one yet; it is certainly the most expensive.
VI
“CHANGE AND REST”—SUMMER BARGAINING
Although on the surface Cape Cod seems to offer a haven of refuge to that much overworked appendage to the modern man, the pocket-book, there are dotted here and there upon the highways and byways many comparatively innocent pitfalls.
To a close student of these danger spots, they may be grouped under the heading “Tea-Rooms, Arts and Crafts Stores, and Antique Shops.”
I know of no greater relief than to escape from town and come to the Cape. Once there, the daily routine of office, the absence of any assigned duty, the leisure hours passed in or on the water or idly knocking about the golf links, tend to merge one day into another, so that time flashes past at an alarming rate. But every now and again comes a day when some member of the family suggests that we take the motor and extend our vision. It is upon such occasions that we test the financial astuteness of the aborigines.
One never visits the Cape without discovering how effectively the climate stimulates the appetite. What wonder, therefore, that every village and hamlet possesses a Tea-Room of varying attraction?
The stop is made and the Tea-Room visited, only to find that the family, in addition to ordering the tea, with its accompaniment of toast and cake, or, for the younger members, a bottle of ginger ale or an ice-cream cone, are bent upon securing a souvenir. The Tea-Room is generally furnished with an assortment of articles intended for just such gullibles as ourselves. There are, for instance, baskets of assorted sizes and colors, for flowers, or fruit, or sewing, or pine cones; in fact for everything that should be thrown away, but isn’t. We have several such baskets at home, but that does not prevent some member of the family from buying another. It will do for a Christmas present. Then there are varieties of other things made far away and designed to lure the cheerful motorist, such as charmingly decorated match-cases for elderly people, noisily painted tin pails for the children, dainty knockers, and all manner of knick-knacks for the women of the party. The invariable assortment of what, to a man, seems the essence of uselessness, and yet, I confess it, attractive to an insidious extent.
The pocket-book is touched, not severely, to be sure, but there is a perceptible shrinkage as we file out to continue on our harmless junket.
For a few miles we bowl along over a delightfully smooth road and give ourselves over entirely to the view. Now a long stretch of pine woods gives just a glimpse of the water glistening through the trees; here and there a little farmhouse, snugly tucked among a clump of lilacs close to the road, with visions of larger establishments in the distance, out toward the sea, the homes of summer residents boldly exposed to the refreshing southwest wind; then a long stretch of marsh and dune brilliant in the sun. Suddenly we come upon a more thickly populated district where many of the old houses have been purchased and renovated to fit the needs of city people, who, with the assistance of some modern architect, oftentimes make enticing homes of these structures by the simple addition of porches and piazzas, with bright touches of paint here and there on blinds and doors, and the whole garnished well with bright flowers, climbing roses, and cozy hedges.
It is generally near such a settlement that we come upon the Arts and Crafts in all their glory.
Compared to the Tea-Room, the Art-Shop is a veritable mine of treasure. From a variety of toys which would do credit to Schwartz to a complete set of hand-painted furniture such as one might expect to find in the window of the largest furniture store in Boston during the months of May and June, seems a far cry for a small shop occupying a converted bungalow in a modest Cape town; but this sort of thing exists, and between these items there is an almost endless list of what for a better term may be called “specialties,” and even I, who scorn the newness of furnishings as they are displayed in town, fall a victim first to an exceptionally soft-toned rag rug, oval in shape and comfortable to the tread, and also to a set of doilies made of a light, colorful variety of oilcloth with dainty pattern that my wife says will save washing; and lastly to a pair of bayberry candles, olive green and a full eighteen inches high, which it seems to me will give an admirable touch to our living-room mantel.