A Cape Cod Notebook

After years of watching people leave Nantucket during the winter, I decided I wanted to be one of them. Not for the whole winter, just for a week

When Walter Baron built his workshop on a side road in Wellfleet 40-odd years ago, he knew what he wanted to do: Build boats.

January is the time of year on Cape Cod when we really start to doubt some of our life choices. A couple of different decisions and I would be living in a place where the temperature rarely falls below 50 degrees, and there’s no such thing as ice.

I spent many years as an objective observer of this place. An academic, a historian, a researcher. On my better days, an anthropologist or some kind of gonzo documentarian, snapping pictures and recording my observations on the yellow legal pads I took everywhere, even the beach.

He already was becoming the most exemplary former President maybe in history, picking up hammers to help build Habitat for Humanity homes, donning a suit and traveling the world to encourage free and fair elections.

Bob McKeon, a 78-year-old retired state trooper, splits his time, as many do, between his primary residence -- his is in North Attleboro -- and his place on the Cape in South Dennis. A favorite activity is going out to dinner, and when he started posting restaurant reviews on a popular Facebook page years ago, he gained more and more friends -- many of them touched by his endearing references to his singular dining companion: The Bride.

What is it that pulls so many of us to a Christmas Eve service, even if we are nonbelievers or haven’t stepped foot in a church since our cousin’s wedding in 2019?