Just back from a week on Cape Cod, Mass., that sandy curving peninsula that juts into the North Atlantic south of Boston. I first went to the cape as a 9-year-old with my parents and brothers in 1954. This was in the days before the Thruway and Massachusetts Turnpike were opened and a trip that can be made from eastern New York in 2023 in four to five hours took at least 15 hours in 1954.

Arising long before dawn on an August morning we followed Route 20 across eastern New York and then across Massachusetts to Boston where we took MA Route 3 down to the Sagamore Bridge and the Mid Cape Highway. We finally reached our destination in Truro located just south of Provincetown in the very late afternoon, and yes, I was probably guilty of asking my father many time, “Are we there yet?” Fortunately, weekend traffic on the cape in those days was nothing like it is today or we might not have gotten there until Sunday afternoon.

My father had made reservations at Days Cottages on the recommendation of a fellow lawyer who had spent time there in the late 1930s or early 1940s. As he had said it was right on the beach but beyond that entering our cottage was a revelation especially for my mother who was the type of person who had a cleaning lady come in every week to clean the house and ended up doing better that half the work herself.

In that distant era vacation accommodations were not what they are today. Days Cottages were suitable for summer only with walls consisting of planks whose exterior were covered with shingles weathered a dark brown by the sea air. The interior was ungraced by either plaster and lathe or wall board. The kitchen was probably the size of the galley on a world war I submarine and might have been called modern in 1920. But because of its waterside location back in 1954 you paid top dollar for this.

And horrors of horrors my mother discovered bugs in the form of Silver fish and the only thing that kept her from heading home right then was that it had taken so long to get there. We boys took the insects in stride and my father who had encountered foot long centipedes while with the Marines in the Solomons bought some insect spray that solved the problem.

We finally settled in for our two-week stay and I do remember some of the highlights. I remember that one of our fellow renters flew his seaplane in and on arrival as he taxied to the beach, he managed to hit a groin constructed of rocks that tore the seaplane’s hull open. He spent the remainder of his stay making repairs.

A not-so-pleasant highlight occurred when a host of Portuguese man of war started washing up on the beach. The Portuguese man of war looks like a jelly fish but is rather a siphonophore, which is a colony of specialized animals called zooids that work together as one. While the sting from a man of war is painful it is in no way deadly although parental prudence inhibited our swimming for several days.

A big event, at least for us boys, was the day a Carley Float, a kind of life raft with a steel tube frame surrounded by kapok or cork and covered in waterproof canvas that were mainly found on warships in both world wars, washed up on the beach. We sailed that thing up and down the beach playing pirates or Marine Raiders. This float was badly weathered and could have been a veteran of World War II although it was unlikely that it had been at sea for the full nine years since the end of the war.

Built in 1931, Days Cottages are still there on the bayside beach in Truro. They are much nicer looking now than when we stayed when they were probably unchanged since 1931. Now the exteriors are white with sky blue trim with the same colors repeated inside. These days the bare studs are covered by wallboard and the kitchens modernized.

A few years ago, the Day family decided to sell the 22 cottages as condominiums. For the 20 inner cottages the sale price was $399,000 and for the two end cottages it was $400,000. Those are the prices for residences you can only live in during spring, summer and fall because zoning laws in the Town of Truro do not allow their use in winter.

This year’s trip to the cape was my 30th in the last 69 years. The first was that trip in 1954 to Days and this year it was a week spent in a rental property in Eastham. Even though it’s overcrowded with lots of traffic these days, I still love the Cape and I hope this year’s visit will not be my last but when you are approaching your ninth decade that 600-mile trip, even with layovers, doesn’t get any easier. So, we will see what happens.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com