When Labor Day arrives on Cape Cod, three things happen, the imposition of the universal proscription against wearing white until Memorial Day, Year-round residents begin, once again, to make left turns, and, as it is what makes those left turns possible, the summer residents leave.
Most people think that there are two seasons on Cape Cod, the summer one enjoyed by the tourists and the winter one where the year-round residents, devoid of the opportunity to serve the tourists, languish in their hovels drinking to access waiting for the summer sun’s return.
In actuality the winter season ends on March 31 with May and June comprising the spring shoulder season when those who have summer homes or rental property begin showing up to prepare their places for the summer while after Labor Day until the middle of October the reverse happens during the fall shoulder season that leads to the dead of winter.
In order to continue living on the Cape where many families have lived since Miles Standish first thought up the idea for a canal to save time from Plymouth to colonies south in spite of the ever growing cost of living, many Cape Codders and year-round wash-ashores will prepare their homes for summer rental, move into some available temporary housing, trailer camps and camp grounds are a common move, to reverse the process in the fall and move back into what is really their home.
Streets whose houses were filled with families and lawns crowded with kids become a few occupied houses and fewer people out and about.
This house owner/occupant dance happens throughout the Cape regardless of the area as it benefits those who are silent victims of the tourist industry.
Pictures of Cape Cod are usually the summer ones with crowded beaches, parties, and the upper crust of society in places like Nantucket and Martha’s whose reputations as the playgrounds of the rich and famous are based mainly on carefully chosen photo-ops or the occasional off-season gathering of people who fly in and out, while the reality is that a large number of the population are lucky to have been able to find a way to continue living on their home Island that the rich out of state people have made practically impossible to do.
As Islands, while the rich and famous can jet in for their catered events and monetarily incestuous visits, the year-round residents are dependent on boats and the winter weather for their basic, not tourist, needs like food and clothing. They do not live the brochure/tabloid depiction of the Islands.
Because of the summer heat in Florida, there are many Florida License plates on the Cape Cod roads that clog them with the drivers acting as if they are either the only ones on the road and drive accordingly or are just rude and think all other drivers must respect that they are on vacation and this should be the prime consideration of all others. They are often rude and, from my experience working on the Cape, the quickest to snap their fingers at you when they want something instantly. When describing a particularly difficult time on the road with congestion caused by one seemingly unconscious driver, the question will be asked if the car had Florida plates, and if the answer is in the affirmative it will be met with groans of complete understanding and enough will have been said.
They may be nice individuals, but, as summer residents, as a group, they are the ones of all the tourists whose Labor Day departure is the most welcomed.
The islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket as well, apparently, as Cape Cod seem to be things of which Governor DeSantis of Florida has little knowledge. Besides not knowing that going from Martha’s Vineyard to Cape Cod is actually travelling within the same state just to a different town so it is wrong to insist that moving his human trafficked migrants was liberals deporting them from the IsIand to Cape Cod, he also is unaware that by this point in the middle of September, the rich people he wanted to annoy had gone home to their year-round homes and the people on the Island were, for the most part, those who understood the housing and job situation on the Island and as Islanders know that relying on one another is part of living there.
Not knowing his target, DeSantis, in wanting to own the Massachusetts Libs, actually set up a situation to annoy his own Florida people who had, unfortunately for his plans, already gone home. Instead, the refugees met the community of the Island’s residents who were not what he had assumed.
Now, had it been summer and the out of state rich people and Florida residents still been there, the reaction might have been different and more to his expectations, but the reaction would not have been from the Island residents but those who keep them from making left turns for three months each year and then are gone.
Of course, it could also be that he knew or hoped his Florida people would react negatively and he was willing to use them and counted on using them as stand-ins for the real residents. He set up a situation in which he was hoping to use the bigotry he believed Floridians harbor.
He dove into the outdoor pool of the cheap motel after Labor Day without checking to see it it still had water in it.
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