The Provincetown Trolley is a curious beast. To be a killjoy stickler for veracity, it is not really a trolley but a replica of one. Real trolleys usually run on overhead electric wires. This is a dressed-up bus. Put another way, it is a trolley the way the Monument’s elevator is a funicular.
Whatever it is, I decided that after almost 60 years of living in this town, it was time to take the trolley. Heretofore, if you had asked me, I would have said it was a dorky thing to do — riding around and listening to a narration of a place I already know.
I confess: in my weaker moments, I have given in to a certain condescension regarding tourists — those stumblers around town, so ignorant of our virtues, so clueless about where to go, what to see, where to eat. This bias is a common attitude among locals: even Mary Heaton Vorse gave voice to it back in 1942. But in recent years I have done a bit of traveling myself and have found myself in strange places with no grounding in their realities. I discovered humility. Visitors need guidance and should not be ashamed of seeking it.
So, one July afternoon, accompanied by my 12-year-old granddaughter, Esme, I boarded the trolley in front of town hall. I wanted to experience the town through the eyes of a tourist. To my delight, my friend Char Priolo was our guide.
The trolley does not lumber down the street. It does not wend its weary way. There is a limberness to its operation as it squeezes past cars and bikes and scooters and pedicabs and pedestrians. But a double-parked car forced our driver to stop the trolley, get out and search for the naughty person who obstructed our progress.
He was a bit perturbed, but Char was gloriously unruffled. This woman is an absolute wonder to behold. As she pointed out the treasures of Provincetown to our visitors, I was thinking that the real treasure was standing in the aisle before them, singing the praises of “our beautiful town.”
Char is a star, an original, a natural, a beauty, and a blessing to all who know her. This gig with the trolley is only the most recent of a long list of occupations and roles she has played in town over the last 44 years. She has had something to do with just about every aspect of Provincetown public life. Many remember her as the co-founder of the Fabulous Dyketones back in the ’70s. I remember them playing on a float in the Fourth of July parade — and they were indeed fabulous. You may have listened to her show, Char Time, on WOMR or encountered her at the Chamber of Commerce’s Welcome Center (for the last 22 years) or at any number of events that she helped organize, like the Year-Rounders Festival, or the Secret Garden Tour, or at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House, where she is still active. Char was named Senior of the Year back in 2009 because of her “extensive involvement in the community” — an understatement of massive proportions. Like the late Hilde Oleson, Char has built a life here by daily mixing it up with others. “I love sharing this town,” she says.
Although I often focus on the natural world, Char reminds me that people are what matter most. “The proper study of Mankind is Man,” wrote Alexander Pope in 1734. I must agree. Every square inch of this town calls out to me, but there is usually some character or other occupying it. You would be hard pressed to find a greater diversity (I still use that word) of human beings, a more dynamic bunch of people, a livelier and more generally positive group — and that includes locals and washashores, year-rounders and summer people, and even the day-trippers flowing into town.
Char points out the many features of the town to the passengers on our trolley (the majority from Indiana): here are the gardens, here is the oldest house in town, there the Monument, and there the Figurehead House, and the new Cannery Wharf Park….
Finally, a gleam in her eye, she says, “On our left: humans in their native habitat.”
