Jun 21 2012
Cover Your Highballs
With the 300th anniversary of the establishment of the town of Chatham, it only seems appropriate that we take a moment to talk about an issue of dire consequence. This is a problem that has bedeviled this town for some time now, and in the past few weeks it came into public consciousness. It puts in peril that most sacred of institutions, namely, the Cocktail Hour.
I speak, of course, of skydiving.
Now, as a native whose roots go back in the area to a leaky boat from Plymouth, England (if not before, should DNA testing show a little extra familiarity with the original locals), I know as well as anyone how important the Cocktail Hour is to Chatham.
Why, I can’t go just about anywhere on Cape Cod or up to Boston without someone inquiring, upon learning I am from Chatham, about this time-honored custom.
This should surprise no one. We might be waiting in line somewhere and when it is our turn, we will be asked, “What’s your hurry?
Need to get back down to Chatham fast? Late for Cocktail Hour?”
It really is amazing how so many people not from Chatham can be so sensitive to what our priorities are.
Some have even added on “at the country club?” Well, how kind! They must have a pretty high opinion of me. That’s almost embarrassing. Pretty over the top, and perhaps worthy of its own column, but not here.
Now that tradition to which I speak must be hearkening back to my ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, who brought his family with him across on the Mayflower. He was one of the “Strangers,” as the non-religious passengers were referred to, compared to the “Saints” or Separatists who were wishing to leave England to worship as they chose. Hopkins did rather well for himself in Plymouth, and tried to move down to the Cape like his son, Giles (from whom I get my middle name).
But the authorities at Plymouth kept ordering him to move back. The place was depopulating, and for good reason: Hopkins kept brewing beer and getting shut down for it. That’s right, court records show fines levied on Hopkins for making and serving liquor. That was not to be tolerated, so of course Hopkins wanted to get down here. I mean, how are you ever going to establish a tradition of a Cocktail Hour if the guy bringing the booze can’t make it?
No wonder it took until almost another century for Chatham to be founded. Is it any coincidence that, rumor has it, just a year before America saw the publication of the very first Mr. Boston’s Official Bartender’s Guide? That’s what we in the historical biz call “a supposition.” Sounds important.
But just like so much of Chatham’s 300th anniversary, let’s not get bogged down by historical facts or ancient records or how people behaved or what they were called, where their businesses were located and whether or not any one of the people who built and lived in the houses we love so much would be allowed to use their property as they saw fit if they were alive today.
For one, they’d be too poor to buy anything to drink. And besides the Methodists wouldn’t drink at all. But can we please ignore that great big church right in the center of town with the clock tower and focus on the real issue? Can we just think about the skydivers? I mean, how can we not? Always with their flying around, having fun, hooting and hollering, ready to fall RIGHT ON YOUR COCKTAIL PARTY. Oh, yes. We all have them. I myself have four or five per day, and living in the flight path of Chatham Airport, I can tell you that I live in fear of some person having the time of their life just landing right in the middle of all of that.
You see, there’s nothing Chatham hates more than someone else having fun. We didn’t “find our way here” for that. Even if we were born here. It is not appropriate for Chatham, as some people who I never heard of have said, for people hundreds and thousands of feet away to express happiness at flying.
When I think of cocktail parties, I know I think of the quietest, best-behaved people. Like a church. Having lived in many places in Chatham, I can’t tell you how many times I have had to go next door and apologize for racket of flipping the pages in my book disrupting the sanctity and quiet of a neighbor’s cocktail party. If Chatham can’t be a place where fuddy-duddies can get sloshed in peace without being disrupted by the distant howls of happiness from on high, then I don’t know what is appropriate for this town anymore.
Clearly one of these two has to go, and I think we all know which one.
It’s not like these are waterskiers, after all.
Read this and Andy’s other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.
