The Death of Cape Cod

It is clear that Cape Cod is becoming an overpopulated suburb like Long Island, New York.

Yes, it still has gorgeous beaches and architectural character in the small villages, but the villages used to be Cape Cod.

Now Cape Cod is a distination for shoppers, developers, restaurants, discount malls and brand name malls from one end to the other with the exception of Truro, Wellfleet, and Provincetown.

So what is new about this? The news is that this New Cape Cod is becoming the Old Cape Cod,

Mega Mansions and landscaped properties even dominate the scenic roads. The look of Old Cape Cod with its unpainted rambling houses, no landscaping, patchy grass lawns, laundry blowing in the wind..... gone forever!

The nouveaus arrive in their suv's and shop, eat, and play on the water and on the beaches. becoming dewy-eyed when they reflect on their summer when bthey return to another suburb they have created years ago.

The change has not gone unnotificed by locals and town officials and and when a shellfish area is threatened by the growth in dock construction of waterfront properties, town officials and public servants are confronted by three-piece suits and verbal skills that make the local idiom seem quaint.

It happens every day and is a type of place erosion. It can't be stopped. One retreats emotionally, like home owners moving their old fashioned, simple summer cottages back so many feet after years of predictable wearing away of the beach.

Now, finding the Old Cape Cod means visting protected areas or the National Seashore.

The machine that pushes out the old and makes the new old in time is inexhorable.
Perhaps it is a natural decline, a rise and fall of the times and economics.

When one thinks of all those flushing toilets, washing machines, swimming pools and remember a Cape Cod with small cape houses and a two seater and laundry on the line drying in the sun and wind, one must pause, bow one's head, and leave...but for where?