Old-Fashioned Sunday

Sometimes I find myself thinking about the way things used to be when I was growing up and I’m caught up short by just how much things have changed. For me, at least. And while I realize that’s a choice, it’s still an enormous comfort to every once in a while allow myself to experience an old-fashioned Sunday.

And actually, that’s not even accurate. I’m actually thinking about an old-fashioned summer.

I’ve written at least tangentially about some of my memories of spending summers on Cape Cod, and the lasting love I have in my heart for Nauset Light, in Eastham. Situated just down the sandy back road from our cottage, this lighthouse was (and will always be) known in our household as the “I-love-you” light.

But it occurred to me the other day as I was cruising down the potato chip aisle at the local Giant (obviously having taken a wrong turn, of course), that I don’t think I ever mentioned that the red and white iconic lighthouse on all Cape Cod potato chip bags is ‘my’ Nauset Light. It’s funny how you can look at something year after year and, because it’s familiar, somehow end up no longer seeing it.

For whatever reason, I suddenly saw it again – as Nauset Light – and a flood of memories came rushing back.

Perry Mason, too

Maybe it’s because Karl and I have been watching the new Perry Mason series on HBO that also has me strolling down this particular memory lane. (It’s a great series. I highly recommend it!)

My memories of summer from age 4 to 21 all include staying at that very same cottage on the Cape. During those intervening years, but especially when I was in those betwixt and between years of 12-13, I started to prowl through the myriad paperback books that lined the shelves of the cottage’s tiny, pine-paneled bedrooms. Amongst those shelves were a number of books by Erle Stanley Gardner, featuring Perry Mason.

I can honestly say I doubt I would ever have read any of those books had they not been part of the relatively meager selection of paperbacks available to my voracious appetite to read, read, read. (I ask you, can you think of many pleasures in life that surpass a beach read that you simply cannot put down? No. I thought not.)

And that’s part of the difference between then and now that catches me up short. Bookstores were few and far between. Access to books was nothing like it is today. This was before Borders and Barnes & Noble became ubiquitous parts of our culture, not to mention decades before Amazon was even a glint in Bezos’s eye. Indeed, one highlight I remember about the Cape was attending the local historical society’s book sale, just across the road from the (then) newly built Cape Cod National Seashore Center, where they would put out row after row of folding banquet tables in the hot sun filled with donated books of all sorts.

A Reminder Today

Which brings me to why I titled this post “Old-Fashioned Sunday.” Karl and I got up early today and mowed our lawn first thing, in spite of how dew-laden the grass was. We knew the day was going to become unbearable – and the forecast looks like tomorrow will be even worse.

After we got that task under our belt, I allowed myself to immerse myself in a book I’ve been nursing in the wee hours of the morning, after completing my blog post each night. Ah! What a great joy. I simply love giving myself enough uninterrupted time with a book to become completely consumed by the characters.

And that was my old-fashioned Sunday. A lazy, hot, humid day spent draped on our porch’s glider, ensconced amongst oversized pillows, listening to the birds and the wind chimes, entranced by a book.

It occurs to me only now that the only thing that might have made this experience even better would’ve been some Cape Cod potato chips!