I was taken aback by the front pages of the last two editions of the Independent because both had pictures of Eastham. The Feb. 8 issue even had a front-page Eastham article — the sad news of the death of the select board chair.
Eastham almost never makes the cover of the Independent. Why is that? Surely, the town with the largest population on the Outer Cape has many stories worthy of the front page. Each week, when I grab the Independent from my mailbox, I get my hopes up. Often, my hopes are dashed. I feel like a kid who watches Sports Center every morning hoping her favorite team will lead off the show, only to be disappointed because her team isn’t very good.
But Eastham is good — it’s really good. We have a windmill, and a lighthouse, and a giant red barn with video games, saltwater taffy, pizza, and alcohol! Eastham has a hardware store with a staff who have an answer for every household problem. There’s a beach called Thumpertown and a road called Foote Path. Eastham has twice as many National Seashore beaches as Wellfleet or Truro, and neither is named for a guy who may have been a fascist. Eastham also has a turnip festival, which, admittedly, is a pretty lame thing to have a festival for, but it’s a lot cheaper than Oyster Fest and way less intimidating than Mates Leather Weekend.
Eastham has three times as many mini-golf courses as the rest of the Outer Cape combined, and children love mini-golf, which means children love Eastham and its many ice cream shops. And speaking of kids, Eastham has a high school where young people from the Outer Cape and beyond congregate. Have you met the young people of today? They care about the environment, equality, social justice, and each other, which means they show far more promise than your generation or mine ever did. Young people of today are great, and Eastham has loads of them! If Eastham sounds wonderful, it’s because it is.
So, with all the good stuff happening in Eastham, why does the town so rarely make the front page of the Independent? Maybe all the good stuff is the reason — because the front page is where bad things happen, like the government trying to kick a 95-year-old man out of a dune shack in Provincetown. The front page is where Wellfleet’s government seems to be in a continuous state of dysfunction or nonexistence. The front page is where the denizens of Truro possess some dark sorcery that allows them to live and thus vote in two towns simultaneously. What the hell?
The front page is for the Delgizzis, Ben Zehnder, and business owners who illegally cut down acres of trees. The front page is for lawsuits about outdoor dining tables being too close to the neighbor’s property, hotels being too big, or restaurants being too loud. The front page is for lawsuits about affordable housing and who really owns a certain piece of land. The front page is for stories of the East End flooding and dolphins washing ashore in Wellfleet, because the front page is terrifying.
Don’t get me wrong. Eastham has problems, too, but it also has the Superette, Artichoke, and Buddha Bob’s. Eastham is where my aunt Sandy’s house is, as well as the Schoolhouse Museum and the Salt Pond Visitor Center. Eastham is the underdog town where you’re more likely to find artwork on Jersey barriers and abandoned buildings than in art galleries. Eastham is where old hippies bang drums on the village green to promote climate justice, world peace, and whatever else they might be banging the drums for. You may have seen them, because you have to drive through Eastham to get to or from the rest of the Outer Cape by car.
I’ve been coming to Eastham part-time my whole life. I love Eastham like no other place on Earth. It’s full of wonderful people and incredible places. It’s not perfect — few towns are. But at least it rarely makes the front page.
Brendan Noonan lives in Cambridge and Eastham.
