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:
Beach time: Cape Cod National Seashore among 2020 most visited parks capecodtimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from capecodtimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Barnstable MA: Bunny rabbit statue by Ama Torrance on Rte 6A capecodtimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from capecodtimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
BARNSTABLE I was dehydrating fruit with my nutritionist, Perry Stallsis, when a sudden electrical surge sent kiwi slices soaring over the marsh. I could see them stick to the picture window of my rival, Rex Wrathston, author of the competing Furious Cape Cod column. I knew this would be trouble.
Even from a half-mile away, I could see Rex s gleaming pitchfork as he made his way toward us. Fortunately, he had to take a circuitous route through the marsh, and I noticed that he was leaving a discernable pattern in broken phragmites. And thus, written in cursive over a vast landscape, the following message was revealed: