EASTHAM — Colin Nobili says he wasn’t sure what to make of the first UFO-themed float he saw. He had come to the parade at the Windmill Green on Sept. 7 expecting a repeat of the same procession he’d watched every year as a child. While all the parade’s hallmarks were present this year — firefighters tossing candy and blasting their trucks’ horns, a fife and drum corps beating a jaunty tune as it marched up Route 6 — they were joined by people in tinfoil hats and a wooden E.T. cutout that waved its two-dimensional arms through a mass of bubbles.
“As more came, I figured it out,” Nobili says: Eastham wasn’t being invaded, it was following a theme. Last year’s parade had a relatively tame motif — “Back to the Farm” — that honored the town’s roots as an agricultural community. This year, organizers opted for something farther out. In fact, it was “Out of This World.”
It was the town’s 48th Windmill Weekend, an annual celebration that takes place just as the summer season is winding to a close. The gathering is quintessential “small-town Americana,” says select board chair Jerry Cerasale, who donned a pair of green alien antennae (provided by fellow select board member Robert Bruns) to tend the festival’s beer garden. Cerasale was joined by board member Aimee Eckman (who served as bouncer) and her wife, Joanna Stevens, who wore a shimmering sash as this year’s festival honoree.
Festivalgoers enjoyed warm weather for Saturday’s biggest events: a sand art contest at First Encounter Beach and an antique car show at the Eastham-Orleans Elks Lodge that included vintage autos, classics, and hot rods. John Butcher of North Eastham won “Best of Show” for his 1932 Buick Roadster Convertible Coupe, which was pretty out of this world.
The McNeany family’s signature sand dragon returned to the beach this year, but this time the beast was ringed with planets denoting its possible home worlds. The dragon won the audience vote, but the judges gave their prize to the Klawbert family’s Egypt-inspired sphinx and pyramids.
The Sunday parade’s grand prize winner this year was Seaman’s Bank, whose “Space Camp” float also made an appearance at Provincetown’s Carnival last month. Inflatable aliens peered out of a wooden cabin decorated with stars and rockets while a mysterious figure in a green suit danced down the road beside the truck.
Rain began to fall during the parade’s final minutes, sending kids and parents in matching space suits to seek shelter in the Eastham Windmill (which wore a banner of its own featuring an AI-generated astronaut) where they waited for the storm to pass.
There they were treated to an impromptu history lesson from former DPW chief Marty Mickle, who was on hand to give tours to curious visitors. Mickle had used the windmill to grind corn when his department tended it in the 1970s. He remembers the whole building shaking 50 years ago as it pulverized the grain. It’s still technically operational, he says.
Once the rain started, there was only one weather-dependent event remaining in the weekend’s festivities: a children’s tricycle race down Depot Road, which the recreation committee called off because of water on the raceway. A few would-be participants remained on the Windmill Green, dancing and running laps around the windmill while their parents took shelter under a canopy.
“To me, that was always the best part of Windmill Weekend,” Stevens says: having enough trust in a community to let one’s kids run free.
