Now the widowed mother and two small daughters faced a real test of courage and control. The ship was under the command of the Second Mate, who had only recently been promoted from ordinary seaman by the Captain. He had learned his lessons well, however, and there was nothing to do but go on. Aunt Alice’s mother stood fast on one point. Her husband’s remains were not to be committed to the sea but they must rest where he would have wanted to rest, on the hill at South Dennis. An understanding crew prepared the remains as best they could and, after a brief religious service, the flag-draped casket was secured upon the deck for the long voyage home. Then, after nearly a year away, “the Obed Baxter,” her flag flying at half mast for its departed skipper, made New York. Now it was left to the mother to organize the trip back to the Cape where she must begin a new kind of life ashore. They had travelled across and back a limitless and hungry sea to the other side of the earth in a small vessel that, save for the skills at the helm, was at the will of the wind. They had encountered typhoon and volcano, wild waves and listless calms, disease and death, and one hundred and one moments of the terrors of the unknown. But life went on, and you thanked your God that it had been no worse, for, in a sea-going community, the sea had claimed so many, and brought about such tragedy, that Cape people stood up to the buffets of life as bravely as their stout vessels stood up to the angry seas of the world. This was part of the strength that I had felt in Aunt Alice from our first meeting. It was a strength that came from an abiding faith in God and in His sense of the fitness of things—in an era when the living was not easy, and only the strong survived.
But along with spiritual strength Aunt Alice had many another attribute. At eighty, her one intolerance was for other people who were so concerned with being old that they had no eyes for the wonderful world about them, and particularly for the natural wonders of Cape Cod, its land and its four seas. She loved lights and laughter and music, and they were as important to her at eighty as they had been at eight, when she would dance and sing for the amusement of her sea-faring father. Once, when a play was produced by a local group in Liberty Hall at South Dennis, I foolishly expressed surprise when she told me she had attended both performances, and been among the first ones there. “Why,” she exclaimed! “Do you think I could stay to home doing nothing while all that excitement was going on right across the street?” But she could never have just “done nothing”. While she washed her dishes her mind was busy composing little verses, and when her household chores were done she would attend to a voluminous correspondence, or an item of news for the Yarmouth Register, or perhaps sort out her memories of her sea voyage as she looked at the oil painting of the “Obed Baxter” that hung in her parlor. She could reminisce about bygone days when she attended the first class of the new High School at South Dennis, or when she and her husband sang duets at the services in the old white church on Main Street, but she never dwelt upon the past, because she was too interested in what the morrow might bring.
The little house at the corner of Main Street and the High Bank at South Dennis is empty now and lonesome and soon the signs of her not being there to “put it to rights” will commence to show. I miss my visits at the old house, but I shall always remember—and thankfully—a fine friendship that gave me much to remember and an insight into the kind of character that led Cape people to achieve greatness around the world.
SOME NIGHT BEFORES
If there is one thing above another upon which a Cape man has always prided himself it is his independence. Let them take what courses of action they will on the Mainland, and let them subscribe to whatever conventions they admire, the Cape man will make his own mind up about the issues before subscribing to them. It is a tradition that has not been easily come by, which back at the beginnings of American history involved sacrifice and heroism and the expenditure of the skills and treasure of the people, on the land and on the sea. In the year 1776, several of the Cape towns met and gave their approval to a Declaration of Independence from Great Britain a month before the official Declaration was issued on that memorable and long ago July the Fourth. The news of the Declaration on the first Fourth was a cause for almost universal great joy and celebration throughout the Cape and the spirit of independence that reigned that night has reigned in succeeding celebrations right up to the present time. The Night before the Fourth took on a very special and unique flavor on the Cape. Its nearest counterpart on the Mainland would be the old-fashioned Halloween in the pre-“trick-or-treat” era, together with a celebration of Freedom and Independence that had some of the characteristics of License. This was the night when the violent ringing of church bells on midnight of the Third of July would usher in a night of revelry and pranks into which had gone a full year’s planning. At least some of the sons of the Sons of Liberty declared themselves, for one night, to be beyond the law. Vested authority became fair game on the Night before and to them and to the more grouchy or less-popular citizens of the village there always befell the dubious honor of being among the first to have their outhouses overturned amidst the boom and flare of giant firecrackers and the sound of running, revolutionary feet down the sandy streets of the village. The dawn’s early light would reveal the still-smouldering ashes of Main Street bon-fires and of gruesome figures burned in effigy. It would reveal mysteriously-displaced store signs and the incongruous sight of carriages and wagons ingeniously hoisted to a precarious position upon the rooftops of the village. The first light of the holiday would also reveal the formation of the horribles parade that would commence on Main Street and wind its way through the village to the delight of younger children whose eyes were heavy from a sleepless night of anticipation. These were now armed with hoarded firecrackers of their own and the biggest hero among them was he who had contrived the loudest explosion. The horribles wore fantastic masks and old clothes and they rode in ancient and decrepit vehicles of the town that had been borrowed or appropriated by night requisition.
The horribles parade marked the end of a night of freedom and confusion and made way for the more formal celebrations of the day. Then came the characteristic Cape clambake with the wonderful aroma of steaming sea-weed and shellfish replacing the acrid smell of punk and gunpowder. Then came the band concerts with the handsomely-uniformed bandsmen tooting the “Stars and Stripes” at its very loudest to replace the sound of exploding firecrackers. Where they failed, the inevitable speeches of visiting politicians and local patriots nearly succeeded. (It was a good time for grass-roots campaigning and the subject matter provided by the Fourth of July could not have been more popular.) As darkness fell, many of the villages supplied a formal fireworks display, sky rockets and handsome set-pieces, where suddenly out of the darkness there appeared in flaming color the unmistakable likenesses of Washington and Lincoln, of the fife and drums of the “Spirit of Seventy Six” and at last, amidst the final “ohs and ahs” of the deliciously happy and weary multitude, Old Glory herself, handsomer and prouder than ever as she wove in the mechanical breeze of the soft July night. They were great days and happy days, something to be looked forward to and talked about for many months. But however fine the day, however well-contrived the day’s celebration it was the story of the antics of the Night Before which always lived the longest. For it was then that vested authority was often enticed to look aside from the surging spirit of independence—and leadership passed, for a time, into the hands of the town’s high-spirited young men, frequently led by the Town’s Bad Boy.
Most of the villages had their Bad Boy just as they had their Fool. He was usually an over-sized, over-aged, juvenile delinquent, a perpetual adolescent who, nevertheless, had an ingenuity for thinking up unique outrages that made him the recipient of a kind of perverse admiration. In the village where I grew up the Bad Boy title was universally awarded to Henry.
Henry, in spite of a wide streak of plain badness, was a man of unquestioned charm, and the possessor, when he cared to avail himself of them, of extraordinary native wit, skill, and intelligence. He was a good hand aboard a fishing vessel, an expert mason, a better-than-average carpenter, a wit and raconteur, and to the mutual misfortune of himself and society in general, he was also a rare man with a bottle and a glass. A wise employer would pay Henry his wages only at the very completion of a job if he ever expected to see him again. This was entirely satisfactory with Henry who was aware of his own weakness and had the greatest respect for employers who treated him accordingly. For when pay day for Henry came at last, a week or more of outstanding celebration would follow, just as surely as the night the day. One such celebration ended with his return from New York in a taxi with a monkey and a parrot for fellow passengers. Directing the driver to a neat, white house, Henry requested him to wait while he went inside for the money with which to pay the fare. The driver has obviously been impressed with the easy manner and good fellowship of Henry but, after some minutes had passed without sign of his fare, the driver hurried to the door of the house. An elderly and gentile Cape lady answered the hasty knock.
“Where is your husband?”, the cabbie demanded.
“My husband?”, echoed the good lady. “My husband has been dead for twelve years!”