Day Seven

Day 7

Woke up to a cool morning with bright blue skies.  Ann was asleep so I made my move for the book (now known as my “mistress”).  I was getting close to the end of the third volume of the “girl with the dragon tattoo” trilogy and all the threads of the book were coming together.  It was hard to put down.

I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and then there she was—staring at me, then the book, with a look of disapproval.  Wives do not like mistresses, even if they are just books. 

Ann later persuaded me that it was wrong to sit around reading when we had such a gorgeous day so I got out the fishing gear and we took Daisy down to the beach for a fishing expedition.  I still had no idea what I was doing but had a theory that I could catch fish in the access point to a salt marsh down the beach.  We hiked down there, but unfortunately it was low tide and there was no tidal flow in or out of the marsh.  I know there are some know-it-alls out there who might ask why I didn’t check the tidal tables before I went fishing.  Well, I just didn’t—so sue me.  Again, Ann kindly supported my theory that my lack of success was attributable to conditions, not a lack of skill (thought this position was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain).

After fishing we drove up the road for lunch in a little town called Bourne.  It seems as though everything on this part of the Cape is named Bourne—Bourne bridge, the town of Bourne, the local market, a farm in West Falmouth.  There must have been a prominent family by this name in this area but I have not been able to verify this as the source of this locally ubiquitous name.

I tried to get a tee time at the local links but it was Saturday and they were full.  Did the only practical thing—took a long afternoon nap.  After the nap we took a walk on the beach with the dog, then came home and watched college football on TV.  It was a good football day since Ohio State (think Ann) and Michigan (think me) both won games but survived scares from teams they were supposed to handle more easily. 

We had dinner at Jon and Sally Reid Sigel’s house (about 10 minutes away).  Sally is my cousin (daughter of my Uncle Jim and Aunt Donna, in whose house we are staying).  Sally made littleneck clams and Jon cooked tuna on the grill and we had a great time catching up.

 The Sigels have a so-called “widow’s walk” on their roof (a widow’s walk is basically a porch built onto the roof, fairly common in coastal New England and almost omnipresent in Nantucket).  It gives the Sigels  a fabulous view of Buzzard’s Bay.  I had always heard that widow’s walks were built so that sailor’s wives could look out to sea to watch for their husbands returning to port after journeys that sometimes lasted years.  However, the captain of the Endeavor had debunked this theory when we were in Nantucket, telling us that the scrub pine wood that they had to burn on the island was so full of pitch that chimney fires were common and they needed an easy way to access the roof to pour sand down the chimney to extinguish the fires.

Got home at about 11 and stayed up reading until I finished the book.  Life suddenly felt empty without my “mistress”.