A few years ago, while driving the backroads of the Cape to avoid the traffic snarls on the main drags, I was listening to WOMR – Outermost Radio — the weirdest radio station on Cape Cod and what you would expect from a radio station in Provincetown, the funkiest place on Cape Cod. The signal is faint, but where else can you listen to John Philip Sousa hour on Saturday mornings, followed by Tuvan Throat Singers, followed by the commercial fish landing report?
A song came on, I’d heard it before, September Song, a weepy classic from 1938 written by Kurt Weill.
“ Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting gameOh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you
These precious days I’ll spend with you”
The song summed up, right then, in the third week of September, with Cape Cod at its peak in terms of glorious weather, the bittersweet emotion of a summer’s passing in a resort town. While we natives may say good riddance to the craziness of the silly season, we know the northeasters of winter lie ahead, when the landscape turns into a black and white movie, and Cape Cod goes from glorious to bleak. I for one, will not be standing on an overpass over Route 6 waving goodbye to the Volvos with their kayaks and bicycles.
This summer seemed to end two weeks ago. Blame it on early school openings, but the traditional punction mark of Labor Day is gone. My two youngest start school on the 10th of September, my eldest is heading back to college in NYC on the 3rd, out of boredom more than anything else. Me, I’m looking forward to some clamming, a little sailing, and forging onwards with winter projects. My summertime productivity sucks.