My fun on the Cape is almost exclusively of the solitary kind. Exploring a new beach, taking my bike on the rail trail and stopping for ice cream at the Pleasant Lake General Store. Or making repairs to my cottage.
I love it all, which is why it was rather annoying when my wife signed us up for a happy hour hosted by one of the legends of those beery afternoon sing-alongs, Jim Plunkett. Now 75, Jim still does a few of these gigs every year.
We got to the event before three on a Saturday at a resort called the Cove in West Yarmouth. There was a long line. And to be sure, they weren’t cueing up for what most of us know as the happy hour of old with discounted drinks. Those were banned in Massachusetts in 1984 after a particularly bad accident involving a drunk driver.
This was a happy hour minus the happy-hour prices. We took a booth with friends, and when Plunkett took the stage, he shouted for people to sing along as he rolled out the old hits. He didn’t do a lot of singing. He didn’t have to. The audience became the show. A couple of drinks in, I was right there with the rest of them, following Plunkett’s edict for us to make fools of ourselves. I shouted out the lyrics I knew, fumbled with the ones I didn’t. Shuffled and swayed and one time jumped up and down like, well, like a real fool.
Plunkett is one the last of the Cape’s legendary barroom troubadours including John Morgan who passed away last year, DJ Sullivan and a few others featured in the 2017 documentary, The Kings of Cape Cod. Those guys drew an apres-beach audience of mostly young people in those days. Revelers at this latest Plunkett sing-along I figured were some of those same people who now get the AARP newsletter and were eager for a trip back to those bygone years – a very happy time but, as I said, not a happy hour in the truest sense.
Today Cape Cod’s state senator, Julian Cyr, wants to revive the outlawed happy hours. His bill, twice shot down, would give local cities and towns the option of allowing establishments to have happy hours with cheaper drinks up until 10 at night. The Legislature will take a third crack at it next year. Cyr says his constituent businesses like the Provincetown Brewing Company could really use the help, not in the busy summer months. But in winter, when the summer people have gone, and a happy hour would help draw the locals and keep these places open.
Stats show eliminating happy hours has had no real impact on traffic safety, Cyr said. And then he offered another reason for his effort: ``Massachusetts has a bit of a fun problem.’’ That the revived happy hours could inject some collective good times back into our staid and solitary lifestyle … and that got me thinking about my own definition of a good time.
Did I have a fun problem?
People in my demo are told time again – notably by Harvard’s famous happiness study – that to have a rich life, to add years to your lifespan, one needs to socialize, get out and do things with other people, rub elbows, talk, laugh, maybe dance. Because I’d rather have my fun alone, my wife, who booked the seats for the Plunket show, is constantly saying the same.
I’m not sure happy hours will stave off my mortality, but thanks to her and Plunkett and Senator Cyr, the happy-hour experience serves to remind me that I should sprinkle in some merriment of the social variety with my solo adventures, and that might very well include making a fool of myself.
