Cape Cod is a number of things

by Allan Neal

With the advent of the summer visitor the picket fence has enjoyed a popular renaissance and they look very much at home around old or reproduction Cape cottages. When June arrives the fences form a handsome background for the multitude of climbing roses that tumble over them in colorful cascades. The summer people have also made frequent use of the split-rail fence which was certainly used on the early Cape but never as widely as some other types. Over on the North side there were bothersome, but handsome, field stones which, as the land was cleared, were built into rambling walls, adding so much to the charm of that area. As the nineteenth century grew old and the land was secure, and the Captain’s prosperity was being felt in the villages, it became time to indulge in tidying up and beautifying the stark simplicity of earlier times. Then the mansions became more ornate and so did the fences. You can see them all over any village, particularly on Main Street, such as the very beautiful wrought iron fence that surrounds the Captain Obed Baker mansion in my own village of West Dennis. The elaborateness of the fences became as much a symbol of the wealth and importance in the community of the owners as did the houses, themselves. Fortunately, all of them somehow managed to retain a standard of good taste and authentic Cape Cod flavor which makes them both suitable and attractive.

What had become something ornamental had once been extremely useful, which may explain the frequency with which you will see a fence on village streets. “Good fences make good neighbors” is not a Cape expression! With husbands and sons out on the broad Atlantic, or only God knew where, there was no inclination on the Cape to discourage neighborliness. Far from being a defense against neighbors, the Cape fences were primarily built as a barrier to four-footed intruders. For in the old days beef and lamb and pork products were delivered to the villages “on the hoof”. Large droves of cattle and swine were regularly driven through the village streets, all the way down Cape. In each of the villages the butcher would select his purchases and then the herd would be driven on until the last animal was sold. The route and estimated schedule of such drives would appear in the Register columns some time in advance in order that the towns could be made ready to receive them. It must have been a day of great excitement when the swirls of sand, rising from the outskirts of the village, heralded the approach of a drive of pigs or cattle that would soon be passing through Main Street to the accompaniment of the shouts of the drivers and the delighted whoops of small boys who were the unofficial escorts of the herds through town. Without a doubt there were anxious moments for the home-owners along the way who could be grateful for the sturdy fences that stood between the pushing, shoving animals and their prized flower beds and vegetable gardens.

Now, once again, the fences are purely ornamental, and the regular drive of cattle has been replaced by the cellophane-wrapped cuts of meat at the chain stores. But some of the fences still have a function and one of these is my own favorite, the white-painted, acorn-topped, hand-turned posts which support three substantial rails. There are many fine examples of this wonderful fence all over the Cape and they are good, not only for their clean lines that blend so well with the landscape, but because they were wonderful on which to sit while watching the passing show—in days when one could find time for, and enjoyment in, just sitting. In the Cape village where I grew up there was a fine one, close by the post office, and it used to support a dozen men and boys, sitting, like starlings on a telephone wire, all in a row, and making just as much noise. This was the local Forum. Here, the blessings of freedom of speech were enjoyed to the full, and everyone had his say, sitting on the same level as his neighbor, with a whole long fence to choose from and no seat better than another. It was an all-male society, with some whittling, some cussing, some spitting, and more than a little story-telling. Here, there was an unwritten law about accepting even the tallest tales with complete credulity, and, with such latitude given, the tales sometimes became very tall, indeed. But I believed every last one of them, and really still do. Furthermore, if that fence had not bowed to progress years ago, I would be there now, pop-eyed and listening, while the summer’s sun warmed my back and my bare toes dug into the sandy soil—for, from a perch on an acorn-topped fence, your toes could just reach the soil and it was a comfortable feeling.

SOME OLD MEETING HOUSES

Perhaps no single work of man enhances the beauty of a Cape village so much as the sparkling white churches whose spires point unerringly toward the blue heavens and serve as landmarks to Cape Codders at sea and ashore. One can find them conspicuously at the center of each of the old villages, and, indeed, it was from their presence that the villages grew. For the early Meeting Houses were not only centers of worship but of government and of all community activity. Distances between villages were computed as between Meeting Houses and until very recently there were many road signs directing travellers to one or another of them, a testimony to the importance of the church to the life of the town.

The early colonists of the Cape were a plain but very pious people and in view of the hardships they endured in the building of a new land it was little wonder that they turned to their God for help, and in Thanksgiving for His bounty in the new surroundings. In many cases they built their churches before they had built their homes and they used them. Someone who visited the Cape remarked that “there are too many churches for any of them to prosper”, but, at one time or another each of them was filled to the rafters. The settlers came to church out of choice and necessity and as the land prospered the farmers and the tradesmen and the Captains came in humility and thanksgiving, giving generously to the support of the beautiful, white edifices that were the symbol of their devotion to Christianity. They have survived waves of free thought, of come-outers, Quakers, and bad times and good and they still stand, a monument sculptured in wood to man’s best dreams, their plain, dignified and honest lines a living testimony to the character of the Cape men who built them. Thankfully, after the custom of the forefathers, Cape people still gather at the churches on Sunday and there are none here that stand empty and abandoned.

In the early times on the Cape the activities of the whole week were directed toward the Sabbath, and its observance took much longer than the hour or two now devoted to it. Sunday in all the villages really commenced on Saturday night when the diversions and duties of a workaday week were finally and quite definitely put aside. On Saturday afternoons Cape kitchens were warm and fragrant with the aroma of a week’s baking, part of which would first be savoured at Saturday night supper when the succulent baked beans and brown bread would make its traditional appearance on the kitchen table. And Sunday breakfast was almost as traditional with the warmed-over beans frequently accompanied by fish cakes of local cod which had been taken from a cool Cape cellar or buttery where it had been put down in native salt. Breakfast done, Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes came out from their week’s retirement, usually to the utter distress of the younger members of the household who, from the stiff postures and unhappy looks and squirmings could have been in fetters, rather than in starched-bosom shirts, black store clothes, and—most repulsive of all—highly polished, imprisoning boots. So restrained did the young feel without the casual freedom of their weekday clothes that they would have had neither taste nor heart for play, even had it been allowed. So they sat stiffly with the other members of the family, as if awaiting the judgment, until, at quarter to eleven, the commanding tones of the great church bell were heard. Then the great movement commenced along the narrow, twisting lanes, with each house emptying its very sedate and formal members into the streets which led to their common destination, the Meeting House. There they would find their more distant neighbors assembling outside with the horses and wagons that brought them secured in the rambling sheds nearby and within sound of the fine old hymns that would soon be rolling out through the opened windows.

The motorist of today on Cape Cod will, in time, begin to look for familiar landmarks. A white spire soaring above the pines indicates the presence of a village and each has identifying characteristics of its own. To the traveller coming home to the Cape there is no other landmark as welcome a sight as the old, gilded weather cock which perches above the West Parish Meeting House at West Barnstable. When, from the new Mid-Cape Highway, you first catch sight of this grand bird shining, golden and bright and triumphant above the trees you know that you are really on the Cape and that an old friend is keeping the same watchful eye over land and sea of today as in the days of the American Revolution and before. For the weather-cock crowns the steeple of the oldest Congregational church building in all America. It is a beautiful structure which served the Town of Barnstable as Meeting House during the most fateful days of American history and, through the foresight of some Cape Codders, it is now being restored to its full, and original magnificence. Already the exterior of the church has been restored until it is now the very same one that was familiar to Commodore John Percival, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, James Otis, and a host of other great men and women of the County in the days when greatness seemed to touch all those within sight of the dunes and the salt marshes of Barnstable. The site for the Meeting House could not have been better chosen and today, more than ever, the old church, on a slight elevation where tree-lined Cape roads meet, is an edifice of great beauty and dignity, commanding attention.

As beautiful as the newly-restored church appears from the outside, it is, nevertheless, the unfinished interior that proves the wisdom of the restoration program. Looking upwards at the dome of the Meeting House with its tremendous beams and unique bowed rafters is an awesome experience. Standing there it is impossible not to feel in touch with the historic past, with the very beginnings of America. And you marvel at the artistry and ingeniousness of the builders who carved these huge timbers from local forests, who weighted them down for a full year to achieve the desired bow shape, who built a framework which is as staunch and true today as ever it was, and that has stubbornly resisted the encroachments of passing fashions. The workers who are in charge of the restoration have been touched with the magic of the place. They speak with great respect of those long-ago builders of the Cape and they point with enthusiasm to the many ways in which the historic structure is coming back to life.

Just down the road a piece, and toward the great marshes and the picturesque dunes that stretch out towards Sandy Neck, the King’s Highway continues its rambling way from West Barnstable down Cape. It is a street of green lawns and historic houses, of flowering shrubs and well-kept gardens that flourish in the good, black earth of the North Side. There is so much to see there that even the most observing may pass by, unseeing, the peaceful, old, white church at the corner of Rendezvous Lane at Barnstable. Amid the shadows from ancient trees the church dreams serenely in the summer sunlight and it is difficult to imagine that this is the very spot where, in the year 1774, there took place one of the most unusual and daring blows for liberty in all our history.