Cape Cod History

1959: Rafio the Mad Monk meets his destiny in Ptown. 1989: Breakwaters Can Help Control Beach Erosion

1959: Ye Olde Editor of cc2day came acropper on Commercial Street
Love among the Beatniks in Ptown a half-century ago

By Walter Brooks

On this day fifty years ago this writer met the woman of his dreams in Ptown. I  was eking out a living as a poet and street artist in Greenwich Village and had come the the Cape tip along with all the other starving artists who did portraits along Sixth Avenue at Waverly Place to escape the city's heat. Our usual customers were here on vacation anyway. That's me back then on the right.

I set up my easel on the porch of the Crown & Anchor and started sketching portraits since the coffeehouse craze hadn't reached here yet.

I soon noticed an very beautiful young 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.

You can read the rest of our "Cape Cod Love Store, but suffice it to say our courtship lasted four hours, and she moved into my pup tent in the dunes that evening. I'm holding a poster of Patricia below in my cc2day office sitting on the lap of Wally2 who runs things when I'm goofing off.  Paul Rifkin shot a short film about all this here.

1989: Breakwaters Can Help Control Beach Erosion

On this day in 1989, Nicholaus Souter of Wellfleet wrote this letter to the NY Times:

Your Aug. 1 Science Times article on beach erosion was excellent. Recognition is growing that dumping sand into flood waters (''beach nourishment'') doesn't work. We are about to reinvent the breakwater.

In early 1988, erosion was 60 inches a day along 1,300 feet of beach in Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod. In one area of the flood, 600 cubic yards of sand were dumped at a cost of $3,000. This was gone in two weeks. For $20,000 a small rock breakwater was then put down. The rate of erosion dropped to 6 inches a day. The annual cost of flood control dropped from $75,000 to $7,500.

This story, however, does not have a happy ending. The adjacent property was denied permission to build a breakwater. Flood control efforts on both properties were then abandoned.

Of the nine houses originally in the flood area, four have been destroyed, and two others are valueless. The three surviving properties have breakwaters. Six homeowners have been wiped out. Federal flood insurance paid less than 10 percent of value. Three other houses in the interior and a wetland have been lost.

Chatham has lost $35,000 a year in tax revenues. This would educate seven high school students. People once willing to pay for flood control have left town. Further erosion of the coast and the tax base is certain.

The Netherlands was doubled with rock breakwaters. The economics of erosion are such that the United States will soon return to this type of flood control.

NICHOLAS B. SOUTTER Wellesley, Mass., Aug. 9, 1989