Our month on Cape Cod—day 8

~Saturday~ We made the short trip up to Provincetown today. Every person we saw there was wearing a mask. And leave it to P-town to be inclusive:
Heteronormative vs. gender fluid mandatory mask signs


Unequivocally, the thing I was most looking forward to in P-town was a stop at The Portuguese Bakery to get some malassadas, so you can imagine my disappointment at finding this:

John in front of the Provincetown Portuguese Bakery Closed for the season sign on the door of the Provincetown Portuguese Bakery

And as if to pour salt in the wound, a local walking by seeing us take this picture said, “And they’re actually closing for good. They’re not opening back up in 2021.”

I can’t find any article online to corroborate that, so I’m just going to pretend it’s not true until I see it (or read about it) with my own eyes.” Denial is not a river in Egypt.


(l) It’s so refreshing to see your humanity affirmed in a t-shirt slogan. (r) The Herring Cove tank top makes me laugh ’cause “girl” is not gonna let go of her bag no matter how high the water gets.

T-shirt store with t-shirt sayings on them that affirm gay people's humanity User's guide to Herring Cove tank top

Here’s Bob on the steps of the town hall recreating a picture he took there about 20 years ago.

Bob on the town hall front steps


We’ve been wondering about a couple of things since we arrived here a week ago. The first is about “heart art” on pallets we’ve seen all along the roads:

Red heart painted on a wooden pallet

It turns out they are to support and honor the healthcare workers working on the frontline of COVID, as described in this Painted hearts spread across south shore celebrate front-line workers Coronavirus crises article.

And the second thing is why the fire hydrants here have antennas on them:

A red fire hydrant with an antenna sticking up from it

According to a Reddit discussion, they’re for when the snow drifts get high enough to cover them—so the fire fighters can find them easily and so that snow plows don’t hit the ones that are on the sides of roads.

Although, one Reddit user posits that the real reason they’re there is “so dogs can listen to the radio while they do their business.”

By the way, the colors of fire hydrants are also significant, if you didn’t know. The red ones, like the one shown here, have the lowest flow volume at fewer than 500 gallons per minute.


“Back at the ranch,” we just chilled out the rest of the day, enjoying the leftovers of yesterday’s clam fritter meal for today’s lunch. I read some, and Bob watched some YouTube entertainment.

After dinner, we put together our menu for next week, which informed our grocery store list for Bob’s Monday Stop & Shop trip.


Comments are welcome about this entry in the form below. | Read our day 9 entry.
Note: Comments won’t appear right away as I have to approve them to avoid spam and trolls.

Leave a Comment