Gifts the Cape has offered

In the wake of Christmas, recalling the peninsula’s presents

This great illustration by Dan Joy from Orleans first showed up on the front page of The Cape Cod Voice 15 years ago.

Much as we all love getting gifts, giving gifts -- some of us even like shopping for gifts, amazingly enough -- I confess to be glad the pressure of it is behind us.

Does that make me a post-Christmas Scrooge?

Probably.

But seeing as my goal is to be A Cape Cod Voice, I got to thinking how I might reinterpret the tradition, maybe elevate the notion rather than do a bah humbug.

How about celebrating a few of the great, eclectic gifts Cape Cod has given to the world?

Here we go:

“America the Beautiful”

Falmouth native Katharine Lee Bates temporarily left her teaching post at Wellesley College in 1893 for a summer job in Colorado, taking the train past amber waves of grain, arriving in the purple mountain’s majesty of the Rockies. Toward the end of the summer she took a horse-drawn carriage to the top of Pike’s Peak, where the American West rolled to the horizon below spacious skies.

By the time she got back to Colorado Springs, she had four stanzas written into her notebook, soon set to music by a Baptist minister from New York.

Bates gifted “America the Beautiful” to the country. Anyone was allowed to use and sing it, no royalties or charges, so long as they didn’t change the words.

Perhaps we’ll live to see the day when this inspiring number, far better in every way than the “Star Spangled Banner,” becomes our official national anthem.

“American” theater

A derelict fish house on rotting pilings jutting into Provincetown Harbor became the venue for the birth of American theater, July 28, 1916. Eugene O’Neill’s play premiered, “Bound East for Cardiff,” set on a tramp steamer; the wharf was perfect ambiance.

What made it American? Things we now take for granted: No concern for the wealthy, no upper crust Brit satire, full of laborers and seamen usually ignored on stage, workingclass (if gloomy) “realism,” creativity meant for a democracy not an aristocracy.

After that summer, O’Neill and troupe migrated to New York City and Greenwich Village. They kept the name Provincetown Players, tipping hats to where O’Neill had lived for most of eight years, roaming the dunes, writing 26 plays (12 of which were set on the sea). The players’ values and sensibilities were emulated across the nation. American theater had an identity, and a champion:

In 1936, the hard-drinking, often despondent O’Neill became the first and only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize.

Cranberries

Revolutionary War Captain Henry Hall, from Dennis, made a discovery: Wild cranberries grow better with a sprinkled blanket of sand. So he started transplanting and cultivating vines, imitating Mother Nature’s periodic blows.

Cranberry experiments remained a supplement to more lucrative farming and fishing until the 1840s, when Alvin and Cyrus Cahoon created the first commercial-scale bog in Harwich near what is now Route 124.

In 1854, 200 acres of Cape Cod were in cranberry production. By 1889, 3000 acres.

These days places like Wisconsin (and China) grow more red berries. But cranberries are Cape Cod gifts for sure.

Bananas

Speaking of unusual fruit, all right, we didn’t invent bananas, but it was Wellfleetian Lorenzo Dow Baker who brought them to the continent.

Dow Baker marooned in Jamaica in 1870, his schooner in need of major repair. At an open market in Port Antonio he stumbled on “nah-nahs.” Taught to peel and eat them, he figured people up north would love this novelty – and get him out of debt.

His first cargo rotted under sail. Next he shifted to green bananas to buy time, got as far as New Jersey, and sold them to an Italian vendor who had a vague childhood memory of the fruit. Soon trips reached Boston, one with more than 14,000 bushels. Bananas became popular and Dow Baker became rich.

He maintained deep roots in Jamaica, building a hospital and school, importing scores of Jamaicans to Wellfleet where he also invested in land, building an opulent resort and a handsome church. He also broke with business partners who wanted to turn his operation into a plantation-style exploitation of workers across Central America. They did just that without him, becoming United Fruit.

He finished his life between Wellfleet and Port Antonio, still “the Banana King.”

The Cape Cod House

For almost 400 years, coast to coast and across the seas, people have been building a “Cape Cod house.” The reason it’s called that is because it came from here, or at least became popular here. The reason they keep building it is the handsome, functional, simple design.  

A steep sloping roof sheds snow and rain, allowing for a story and a half within. A big central chimney with multiple hearths facing four directions was the first rendition of central heat, creating structural solidity. The design is easy to build and expand by making the rooms bigger or adding onto the back or sides. The symmetrical version has two windows flanking both sides of the central door, steep steps straight ahead on entering -- a full Cape. Asymmetrical versions have two windows on one side of the door with one on the other (a three-quarter Cape), or only two windows on one side (a half Cape).

They’re all Capes, and when you look at compendiums of classic architecture world-wide, tucked in among classic cathedrals and ornate palaces from the 18th century you’ll find this wooden gem of a gift.

The Cape Catboat

Celebrated wherever people want to ply choppy water and take advantage of a wide stance with a mast planted all the way forward, the Catboat got its name because when people first saw one in Nantucket Sound in the mid-1800s, someone said she came about as quick as a cat.

The first Cat was Little Eva. She went to a fisherman in Chatham, built in the Crosby Boatyard on the south side of Barnstable.

Andrew Crosby was the genius designer, but he died before he could finish putting all his ideas into wood. Crosby lore says that Andrew’s wife and two sons conducted a séance, during which Andrew came back and gave them the rest of the plans – including a basic rule that width equals half of length, creating amazing stability with shallow draft (30 inches, believe it or not).

To many an eye, Cape Cats remain the most elegant small sailing vessel in the world. Thousands have been built, and when they ply our coast or others, people point and admire.

In sensibility and popularity, Cape Catboats are the nautical equivalent of the Cape Cod House.

I could go on. But then, what will I do for presents next year?

With heartfelt thanks to fine writers and reporters who explored these (among many) intriguing topics in The Voice: Beth Seiser, Doreen Leggett, Sarah Korjeff, Jeffrey S. Davidson.

NEXT: HEY, IT’S JUST A LITTLE RADIOACTIVE WATER IN THE BAY, NO BIG DEAL, RIGHT?

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