ORLEANS – I was meditating at the end of the Rock Harbor jetty, when a passing charter captain scooped me up in a giant net. Suspended precariously above the bay, I paid close attention to the grizzled seaman as he barked out this message: We all know that the pirate ship Whydah wrecked off Wellfleet in 1717. But did a companion vessel wreck on Pochet Island in the same storm?
My timbers were shivered by this piratical possibility! I whistled for the Curious Prius, which conveniently had just been outfitted for submarine duty. It bubbled up from the briny deep below me. I cut the net with the dagger app on my cell phone and dropped in through the sunroof we were off!
Roadside attractions on Cape Cod and the South Coast: Vintage photos
Kitschy stuff by the side of the road
Giant fish? Huge milk bottles? Whale-shaped car washes? You bet! The John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive at the Library of Congress has that and more.
Stumbling onto it was wicked fun and a blast of color from days of yore. So I am happy to present some of the images in the collection from Cape Cod and the South Coast. Margolies (1940-2016), spent 40 years traveling across America with his camera, documenting cool and kitschy stuff. Enjoy this road trip down memory lane: