I remember one little repast which pleased me mightily, because it came at the end of one of those hot days—they are rare on the Cape—when the wind refused to blow from the southwest. We had had our swim, but even golf was a bit too strenuous and food does not have its usual appeal on such occasions even on the Cape. It also happened that our friends of this particular week-end were literally congested with land and its more generous offerings, and so when I practiced the usual humiliatory cough and remarked that our simple repast came from my Cape farm and they must excuse its simplicity, I was just a trifle nervous.
The melons were a gift from my plumber, a curious combination. If only the plumber could plumb as well as he grows melons upon his barren sandpile, our summer comfort would be increased by fifty per cent. No better melons can be found than these little fellows. The clam-broth, from my own clam-bed, was an appetizer. I seriously believe that there is real energizing value in such clam-broth as this, boiled down almost to a liqueur from newly dug clams. Then came scallops plucked that day from the seaweed, where they lie at low tide blowing like miniature whales. We all know how delicious they are in the autumn served with tartare sauce, but have you ever tasted them creamed with a dash of brown sherry and served with fresh mushrooms?
Just as the plumber supplies us with melons, so the fishman is the local authority on lettuce. Our salad, therefore, came from Captain Barwick, crisp and white with slices of early pears from a near-by tree, and with it my favorite muffins of coarse, white cornmeal toasted, thin, and eaten with beach-plum jam made from our own bushes in the bramble patch close by the lane, and cottage cheese which our cook positively enjoys making.
My wife had felt this to be a rather scant repast for those used to dinners of six or eight courses, and so the dessert was a substantial huckleberry pudding served cold from the ice-chest with whipped cream, and to take the chill off we had a small glass of my home-made wild-cherry brandy with our coffee; and while there are other beverages which are preferable I confess it gave us a delightfully comforting sensation.
The hearty, genuine praise from my guests gave me a fleeting feeling of shame at the way I had criticized their asparagus and numberless eggs, but the pride of success carried me with it.
“Oh, this is not anything; wait until to-morrow and let me show you the varieties which my farm offers. In the catboat, I have a well in which we keep fish alive. What say you to a butterfish for breakfast? For dinner we can either go out to the fishing grounds for something with a real pull to it, or we can motor over to Turtle Pond for a try at a bass, or we can golf and take a couple of lobsters out of my pots bobbing up and down out there by the point.”
“Hold on,” my friend interjected. “What I want to know is whether every one on the Cape lives in this way, for if they do I think I shall be moving down here by another season.”
“No,” I replied, “very few. In the first place, most people continue to do just what their neighbors do—tennis, golf, swimming, sailing. The fishing is poor unless you know where to go. The natives are not helpful unless you know how to take them, and that is why I call it all my farm, because I have taken it all unto myself and I reap a reward much richer than I deserve.
“I pass much of my time hunting up new fishing grounds or the lair of the soft-shell crab, or even the quiet, muddy recesses of the ‘little necks.’ I wander about the country exploring new berry patches, for there is a great variety of these. And if you must know, I fraternize with certain delightfully conversational individuals who sell me delicious fruit and vegetables as well as ducks and chickens and a variety of odds and ends, as, for instance, that little model over there. But you could not buy them. No, sir, not until you learned the art of negotiation to perfection. You may manage your estates to the Queen’s taste, but when it comes to managing a Cape-Codder, ah, that’s not done so easily.”
I see my friends leading the conventional summer life and wonder at times how they can come to the Cape year after year and yet be strangers to its real fascination, because it has many other hidden allurements besides this quest for food.