Cape Cod Love Story

The Story of my love

Love among the Beatniks
Provincetown, 3:30pm, August 22, 1959

By Rafio the Mad Monk, a.k.a. Blogfather, a.k.a. Walter Brooks 

I wasn't always a journalist.  I started out as one, but found myself scribbling poetry with an definite anti-establishment slant during the years now known as the Beatnik Era. I finally bit the bullet, quit my ad agency job on Madison Avenue and moved into a one-room apartment on 10th Street in Greenwich Village.

Beat poetry was such a rage in the 1960s that although there were a dozen coffee houses offering it, getting a gig at one was highly competitive, so while auditioning I also set up my easel on Sixth Avenue near Waverly Place where the street portrait artists hung out in those days.

I was good enough at it to pay the rent, eat three-squares and had time to brush up on my poetry and its delivery. 

But NYC gets damned hot by mid-August, and I noticed that one by one my fellow artists departed for Provincetown, so when a friend offered me a ride there on the back of his motor scooter I packed up my easel and left for the Cape.

It took us two days at about 40mph to get there.  We camped out the first night of our trip in the back-country in Greenwich, CT where I had previously  lived in an 11-room house next t0 the Greenwich Country Club and worked at the Greenwich Time newspaper.

Pitch a tent in the dunes at Land's End - Looks are deceiving

When we finally arrived in Ptown late in the second day, we pitched our pup tent in the sand dunes at the tip of Cape Cod.  The next day I set up my easel on the Porch of the Crown & Anchor and started sketching portraits.

She had a shimmering, breathtaking beauty.I soon noticed an especially beautiful girl strolling along Commercial Street every day. She was indescribably beautiful with long, blond hair pigtailed down to her waist and a shape to get anyone's complete attention.  She had a shimmering beauty and grace which I can still recall in complete detail nearly a half century later.  I had never seen a more beautiful woman.

But she looked so young, sweet and innocent, I didn't have the nerve to make a play for her - me a jaded, 28-year-old Beatnik and her an innocent young, 17-year-old high schooler. 

After admiring her from afar for a week, the day came when I lost my reserve. It happened when I returned from a swim in the harbor and noticed that "sweet, innocent" young thing walking off with my sketch pad in the company of her two girlfriends.

Reticence gone, I accosted her to demand an explanation.  She looked me straight in the eyes and said, "I had to have the art - this was so beautiful."

All my anger deflated, the three of us exchanged small talk until one of the girls asked where I was staying, and I of course invited them all to see my pup tent in the dunes. 

Where they really the Perseids?

The four of us hiked to my camp site on a high dune north of the Moors and sat gabbing the earth-shattering stuff that young, spirited types have always talked about - life, love, war, peace, etc. and keep yakking for hours until long after dark. 

Then as I pontificated my imagined genius, the stars began to fall. Literally.

It wasn't until years later I realized it was the start of the annual Perseid meteor showers in late August or early September, but the girl and I assumed they were falling just for us.

After several hours, her two guardian girlfriends stood up and said, "you two don't need us", and left Patricia and Rafio alone in the dunes.

Patricia never really left.

We married ourselves using our own personal wedding vows in Our Lady of the Harbor Church in Ptown the next day. 

Today, I publish Best Read Guide and this online newspaper.

Patricia today is VP and co-owner of Best Read Guide and eCape.com.Patricia is as beautiful as she ever was and sells advertising for our companies, and one of our two sons and his wife work beside us.  We'll take their two children to Disney for the third time this Fall.

If we last until August 22, 2009, we'll celebrate fifty years of a very exciting life together. 

 If you want more of this ancient history, see my column last  November here.

An invitation

Pundits tell us that unlike true love, the web is forever.  So if you really love your mate, why don't you tell the world about how you met.  Every story is unique, and if you met on Cape Cod we'll love to publish YOUR LOVE STORY here.

Simply send me or our Editrix Maggie an email with your love tale, and include a photo from that wonderful time of your life and we'll do the rest.

Of course, you can be anonymous if you wish.