Cape Cod History

1979: The Straw Hat circuit was hot here; 1986: Cod was still King

1979: It's Frantic Time on the Straw Hat Circuit as 158 summer playhouses are open

The Falmouth Playhouse in its prime around 1940.

On Cape Cod several decades ago in summer, a caretaker throws open the doors and the old theater--once a barn --seems to sigh, expelling in a single breath the cold, musty air of winter. The staff arrives, followed by apprentices and a procession of painters, plumbers, crew members and carpenters. Then the actors and directors, and the audience fills the hall for real, live Broadway-level entertainment.

It's wasa frantic time along the Straw Hat Circuit that summer as no fewer than 158 summer theaters would be in operation throughout the Northeast. There was the Falmouth Playhouse in that town, as well as the Cape Playhouse which alone holds sway today. Read our reviews here.

1986: The Cod is King

On this day in 1986, the NY Times could still claim that Cod was King, or at least the Times' was still "King." Actually, he was Seth King who had retired to The Cape but still wrote for his former newspaper. Here's Mr. King's report;

August 24, 1986

FARE OF THE COUNTRY; COD, STILL COMMON, AND STILL KING
By SETH S. KING; SETH S. KING, A FORMER CORRESPONDENT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES, LIVES ON CAPE COD.

No other creature, extinct or extant, has played a greater role in the history of coastal New England than the common cod. Today, 489 years after the English explorer John Cabot described the seas of this region as ''covered with fish,'' cod is still most often the catch of the day at the auctions on the fish piers in Boston, New Bedford and Gloucester.

In 1602 the prevalence of cod prompted Bartholomew Gosnold, an English adventurer poking around the New England coast in search of sassafras, to call a strange, claw-shaped segment of Massachusetts Cape Cod. Eighteen years later codfish sustained the Pilgrims in their first harsh winter in the New World. The cod's role became vital in Massachusetts, and for more than 200 years the State House has displayed a five-foot wooden fish carving known as the Sacred Cod of Massachusetts.

In the magazine articles he wrote in the early 1850's, Henry David Thoreau described the cod's place in the lives of that day's Cape Codders, noting with some scorn that the front yard of every house in Provincetown was several feet deep in cod scales, disturbed only when the householders brought their fish out each morning to dry.

More than a century later cod and scrod (small cod) are listed at the top of most menus in the hundreds of seafood restaurants dotting New England shores from Providence to the Bay of Fundy.

George Berkowitz, owner of the four Legal Sea Foods restaurants in downtown and suburban Boston, says he orders more than 20,000 pounds of fresh cod and scrod each week.

''Even though there has been a lot of pressure on the Atlantic fishing grounds lately,'' he said, ''cod is still abundant and caught year round, making it the freshest and cheapest fish we can buy.''

His customers prefer cod to other local fish, Mr. Berkowitz said, because its flesh is light, white and flaky, with just the right degree of fish taste.

Cod was of special benefit to New England's early settlers because it stayed fresh longer than most other Atlantic fish and could be preserved easily by salting or drying. These qualities are still valued by today's fishermen, especially the small boat owners who are out at sea for two or three days at a time.

Most of the cod that ends up in restaurants throughout New England and coastal New York and New Jersey is caught on George's Bank, the great shoal area about 150 miles east of Boston, or on Stellwagen Bank north of Provincetown. Mature cod normally weigh 4 to 6 pounds, big enough to yield bone-free fillets (pronounced FILL-its in New England). Cod are called scrod when they weigh less than 2.5 pounds.

Molly Benjamin, who once skippered her own commercial trawler out of Provincetown and now writes about commercial and sport fishing for The Cape Cod Times, says that in earlier days when the fishing fleets stayed out longer and had no ice or refrigeration, scrod meant the cod at the bottom of the deck piles that got squeezed by the bigger fish. Scrod may be smaller but this does not mean they are more tender or taste better than cod, she says. Those qualities are determined by how fresh the fish are when they're cooked.

It's in this cooking that the true glories of cod are found, New Englanders say. The fish's flesh is highly absorptive, readily soaking up the spices used in cooking it or incorporating the delicate flavor of the scallops or lobster bits with which it is often garnished or stuffed.

Cod can be fried, baked, broiled, salted, smoked or, in the mode of the area's original settlers, hung out on a clothesline and dried until it is a dark golden color and, as those settlers said, stiff enough to spank a child with.

In addition to descendants of the Pilgrims, the region is also home to the descendants of the Portuguese, who arrived early in the last century to fish and hunt whales; and of the Irish, the Greeks and the Italians who came later to work in Boston and other New England cities.

Members of these ethnic groups still cook cod the way their great-grandmothers did. A traveler with a little persistence can find restaurants serving Yankee-style Cape Cod turkey, a dish of salted cod first soaked in fresh water, then simmered until tender and served on toast with a cover of cream sauce and a garnish of hard-boiled eggs. In Portuguese restaurants in Provincetown, cod is baked and served in a delicate wine and tomato sauce. In the Italian restaurants of Boston's North End, a diner will sometimes find salted cod cooked with onions, celery, tomatoes, potatoes, green olives, pine nuts and raisins. And almost everywhere along the coast of New England cod and scrod are cooked in the Irish or British manner - dipped in batter and deep fried and served with french fries.

At Boston's Union Oyster House, which began serving fish and oysters in 1826 and claims to be the oldest restaurant in continuous service in the United States, broiled or fried scrod leads the menu's fish list every day. A feature at lunch is fried fish cakes made of finely minced cod lightly battered, spiced, and served with New England baked beans and cornbread ($4.95).

One day recently the luncheon menu at the Chestnut Hill branch of the Legal, as Bostonians call it (the motto of the group of restaurants is ''If It's Not Fresh It's Not Legal''), scrod was offered in the fish chowder ($1.95 a bowl); broiled ($8.95); baked in a casserole with cream sauce, cheese, and crumb topping ($9.95); baked ($8.95); or steamed with vegetables and topped with melted cheese ($10.50).

People who know their cod in Provincetown and the other fishing ports, Miss Benjamin said, are always on the alert for the cod delicacies fishermen call tongue 'n cheeks and skully joes. The first are the tongues and flesh from the jowls of cod, rolled in batter and deep fried. Skully joes are small scrod salted with coarse salt, left to set for several days and then hung out to dry.

''If you're lucky enough to find skully joes,'' Miss Benjamin says, ''there's nothing on this earth that tastes better with a cold beer.''