Pilgrim's progress

We picked up Cousin Anne last Saturday. She’s joining us for two weeks to see Cape Cod and the fall colors around New England.

Sunday we headed off to the Braintree, Massachusetts, area where John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams were born and raised. Until the George Bush tag team came along, the Adams family was the only father/son team of U.S. presidents the country had. Some people today wish that were still true. Anyway, the houses that they were born in still exist right next to each other and are an interesting tour. I had never realized how incredibly intelligent son Quincy was. He spoke 7 languages fluently and could read and write several others. At the age of 14 he was his father’s secretary in Paris during the revolutionary war. Truly, an amazing individual.

The following day found us in Plymouth at Plymouth Rock and the replica of the Mayflower. The Mayflower carried 102 people to America in the story you all know. What you might not know is that during the 66 day voyage, the only people allowed on deck were the crew of the ship. Everyone else had to stay below deck in an area that measured approximately 40 feet by 20 feet. Needless to say that required a bit of a lifestyle adjustment. The phrases “Up close and personal” and “Reach out and touch someone” take on a whole new meaning when the majority of 102 people are packed in that tightly. Privacy, as you can imagine, wasn’t in the pilgrim’s dictionary.

Cape Cod was next. On a map it looks like an arm raised and flexed with a clinched fist, jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean. Out at the very end of the cape in the area of the clinched fist is Provincetown. This is where the pilgrims really first landed and spent a month before moving on to the more famous location. But, it gets little respect in that regard today and is better known as a playground for the gay and lesbian community. Had the puritanical Pilgrims known that the site of their first landing in the “New world” would obtain that reputation, they may have gone back to England and never reported the existence of the place. Indeed, something else that wasn’t in their dictionary.

Located below the flexed bicep of Cape Cod’s arm are the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Nantucket is best known as a center of the whaling industry a couple of hundred years ago whereas Martha’s Vineyard is better known today as were the whale known as Ted Kennedy took an impromptu swim with his car one night after leaving a party many years ago resulting in the death of a female “companion”. Teddybear took around 12 hours to report the accident…. enough time, they say, for the alcohol to wear off before his having to submit to any nasty tests. In talking to a man on the island, he indicated that the Tedster still has a habit of operating vehicles while enjoying a brewsky to two. Seems that just a few days ago he cut right in front of a ferryboat with his sail boat. Probably thought he’d go between the two boats that he evidently saw out of his bloodshot eyes. Indeed, my source told me, the man definitely has a taste for the nectar.

But this Republican digresses. An interesting facet of the town of Nantucket on Nantucket Island is the continued existence of many cobblestone streets. Now, anyone who has driven on them knows that they can present a bit of a rough ride under the best of conditions but when they appear to have not been maintained in decades, the ride can be downright harrowing. We didn’t have our car there – something about the $350 roundtrip cost to bring it put me off – so I can only tell you what I saw. Suffice it to say that it’s rather funny to see a police car drive down a regular street at a regular speed and then slow to about one mile per hour on the extremely rough cobblestone street until again reaching regular pavement. It would definite be a place of OJ’s liking, given his penchant for slow speed chases. Pictures in the gallery.