Read Online Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown by Michael Cunningham - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Cunningham
Tags: United States, Fiction, General, History, Provincetown, Travel, Massachusetts, State & Local, Sports & Recreation, Northeast, Essays & Travelogues, New England (CT; MA; ME; NH; RI; VT), Walking, ME, NH, VT), New England (CT, RI, Provincetown (Mass.) - Description and travel, Cunningham; Michael, Provincetown (Mass.), MA, Walking - Massachusetts - Provincetown
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American, for better and for worse; it is a bit like West Egg in The Great Gatsby , where Jay Gatsby lived; where the newly rich and the newly arrived squeeze their private, personal monuments in among the prim cottages that came over from Long Point 150 years ago. The East End, like East Egg, where Daisy Buchanan lived, is more Cape Cod, more in love with tradition, more likely to house people whose families have owned their shingled, dormered residences for fifty or a hundred years.
J OHN’S H OUSE
On the West End of Commercial Street is my favorite Provincetown house, the home of my friend John Dowd. John’s house stands at the bend in Commercial Street that resulted when, in the mid-1800s, a particularly stubborn citizen refused to move his salt works to accommodate the laying out of the street (which was then called Front Street, as Bradford was sensibly called Back Street).
John is a landscape painter. When he bought his house ten years ago, it was one of the eyesores of town, though the term eyesore probably implies a grander awfulness than this house actually possessed. It was simply as devoid of character or charm as a house can be: an old rambling building wrapped in aluminum siding, with a faded asphalt roof. If it were a person, it would have been a server in a high school cafeteria or an attendant at the sort of nursing home you hope never to have to go to; someone stolid and blank, of questionable competence, whose uniform is not quite clean and whose manner suggests a state of exhausted boredom so extreme that an emotion as deep as despair would be a relief.
No one I know thought it was a good idea for John to buy this place, even though the price was low (as, we all felt, it well should have been). Everyone I know is astonished at the house John was able to find under all that aluminum and asphalt, that general air of quiet hopelessness. It turns out that aluminum siding peels off, as John put it, “like foil off a baked potato,” and in this case had actually helped preserve the old wood siding beneath. He replaced the aluminum-frame windows, the sort you find in cheap condos, with six-over-sixes he scavenged from flea markets and demolitions and managed to fill them with panes of the imperfect, slightly wavy glass they would have held when they were new. He put up shutters (also old scavenged ones, from the period when the house was built), replaced the roof, and added a back porch.
As a renovator, John’s true gift lies in his respect for the process of decay. Provincetown is full of “restored” houses that, with every good intention on the part of their owners, have been rendered so pristine, they might be part of a Cape Cod village section in Epcot Center. John’s aesthetic runs more toward the Miss Havisham, and his house is not only lovely but looks as if it has been standing there, more or less unaltered, for at least a hundred years.
Usually in summer someone is staying there, in one of the upstairs bedrooms with an old brass bed and a dormer window. Often more than one or two people are staying there. It is a bit like I imagine English country houses to have been during the days of Jane Austen—a sort of ongoing semiparty with guests who come and go, read books in the garden or cook some dish they’re renowned for, gather at dinnertime, and then disperse again. One guest, an erudite man and a considerable cook, somehow extended his visit to just under four years.
The house has a well-used music room with a player piano and a big closet devoted entirely to costumes. It is possible, at John’s house, to arrive in your street clothes and emerge as a sultan, a Confederate soldier, or a ballerina with feathered wings. The archway that leads from his reading room to the living room has been fitted out with heavy velvet curtains that facilitate the occasional parlor game, play, or evening of tableaux vivants.
If you happen to be in Provincetown on the Fourth of July, you will find a group
J OHN’S H OUSE
On the West End of Commercial Street is my favorite Provincetown house, the home of my friend John Dowd. John’s house stands at the bend in Commercial Street that resulted when, in the mid-1800s, a particularly stubborn citizen refused to move his salt works to accommodate the laying out of the street (which was then called Front Street, as Bradford was sensibly called Back Street).
John is a landscape painter. When he bought his house ten years ago, it was one of the eyesores of town, though the term eyesore probably implies a grander awfulness than this house actually possessed. It was simply as devoid of character or charm as a house can be: an old rambling building wrapped in aluminum siding, with a faded asphalt roof. If it were a person, it would have been a server in a high school cafeteria or an attendant at the sort of nursing home you hope never to have to go to; someone stolid and blank, of questionable competence, whose uniform is not quite clean and whose manner suggests a state of exhausted boredom so extreme that an emotion as deep as despair would be a relief.
No one I know thought it was a good idea for John to buy this place, even though the price was low (as, we all felt, it well should have been). Everyone I know is astonished at the house John was able to find under all that aluminum and asphalt, that general air of quiet hopelessness. It turns out that aluminum siding peels off, as John put it, “like foil off a baked potato,” and in this case had actually helped preserve the old wood siding beneath. He replaced the aluminum-frame windows, the sort you find in cheap condos, with six-over-sixes he scavenged from flea markets and demolitions and managed to fill them with panes of the imperfect, slightly wavy glass they would have held when they were new. He put up shutters (also old scavenged ones, from the period when the house was built), replaced the roof, and added a back porch.
As a renovator, John’s true gift lies in his respect for the process of decay. Provincetown is full of “restored” houses that, with every good intention on the part of their owners, have been rendered so pristine, they might be part of a Cape Cod village section in Epcot Center. John’s aesthetic runs more toward the Miss Havisham, and his house is not only lovely but looks as if it has been standing there, more or less unaltered, for at least a hundred years.
Usually in summer someone is staying there, in one of the upstairs bedrooms with an old brass bed and a dormer window. Often more than one or two people are staying there. It is a bit like I imagine English country houses to have been during the days of Jane Austen—a sort of ongoing semiparty with guests who come and go, read books in the garden or cook some dish they’re renowned for, gather at dinnertime, and then disperse again. One guest, an erudite man and a considerable cook, somehow extended his visit to just under four years.
The house has a well-used music room with a player piano and a big closet devoted entirely to costumes. It is possible, at John’s house, to arrive in your street clothes and emerge as a sultan, a Confederate soldier, or a ballerina with feathered wings. The archway that leads from his reading room to the living room has been fitted out with heavy velvet curtains that facilitate the occasional parlor game, play, or evening of tableaux vivants.
If you happen to be in Provincetown on the Fourth of July, you will find a group
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