A FEW MONTHS ago, I posted off the deposit for a cottage rental on Cape Cod in August. As I see it, handing over money in this fashion is a sure sign that summer is just over the hill and around the next bend.
But the transaction also recalled a previous, supposedly short-term Cape Cod sabbatical, which kicked off in June, 1986, and which only came to a close when I moved to Ireland six years later.
Here’s how events unfolded.
On St Stephen’s Day in 1985, three buddies and I hopped on a plane and paid a much-anticipated visit from the US to Ireland to catch up with friends old and new. (As it turned out, getting here was almost as much fun as arriving, involving as it did an early morning train ride from Boston to New York, a subway journey out to Terminal 5 at JFK, and our eventual disembarking at Shannon.) After we recovered from our jet lag – not to mention our introductory breakfast at a friend’s home, which included several lashings of some vintage Bushmills whiskey – we jumped into our rental car and made our way along many a dark and wet winter’s road from Cork to Dublin, back to Cork, and over to Kerry to ring in the New Year. It was a whirlwind two-week tour.
Anyway, our Yuletide excursion occurred during a time of profound economic uncertainty – not unlike the present day – when a J1 working visa was more sought after by Irish students than an honours college degree. To take up the visa, however, US authorities required that Irish students submit a letter of sponsorship from an American citizen. This served to guarantee any applicant’s well-being and upkeep in the event he or she was delayed in finding work.
Given these hard realities, our high-spirited holiday soon took a different turn. Dan, Joe, Jimmy, and myself became guarantors to about half a dozen Irish students who were interested in working on Cape Cod the following summer. And as Dan was already living there, he promised to initiate a search for digs as soon as he returned home – a move we all heartily endorsed, considering the outstanding welcome we’d received.
As it turned out, we were perhaps a bit hasty in trying to match our hosts’ hospitality by promising to set them up stateside come summer. I didn’t return from my travels until May, having journeyed on to England and Italy, and I never saw myself joining the Cape Cod commune anyway. Also, Dan’s life had taken its customary twists and turns, so that as the mid-June deadline approached, he found himself scrambling around looking at potential rental houses.
In the end, Dan found a place that couldn’t have been more suitable. It was centrally located and it had an outdoor shower and a converted attic, not to mention a large living room with loads of floor space to accommodate some makeshift bedding. This would prove essential because the word from Ireland was that the number of interested parties was growing.
I’d been persuaded to spend the summer on the Cape as well, abandoning my rather flimsy plans to remain in the family home near Boston and peddle my new undergrad English degree to potential employers.
By the time the first recruits arrived at Logan Airport, we were well prepared for them – meaning we’d moved into the house and a handful of jobs had been secured. What followed over the coming weeks was a daily succession of minor whirlwinds, as about 10 of us (on average) got up, showered, dressed, ate, and made our way to work on one of the several bicycles parked outside the back door. In the evenings, the process was reversed.
The house also served as a kind of way station for Irish students – sisters, cousins, friends of friends, etc, – who needed lodging until they found a place of their own. We made a tally at the end of the summer and came up with the names of 40 wayfarers who had spent at least one night under our roof. In some cases, that was one night too many. And through it all, remarkably, the house itself bent but never broke.
We were, in fact, very good tenants.
I hope to have a more relaxed time on the Cape with my family in August. There’ll be far fewer of us, for starters, and everyone is guaranteed a proper bed.
Still, when I signed the lease to secure our holiday house, I couldn’t help smiling as I recalled “The Summer of My Irish Commune” on Cape Cod.
sbcoro@eircom.net