I was now moored in Provincetown Harbor. The forty nautical mile jaunt from Gloucester to Provincetown took me through Stellwagen Bank and with it the sighting of a mammoth humpback. I was close enough to catch the fishy smell of the whale’s exhale and was glad that he didn’t see That Good Night as a possible mate or as distant relative of the whaler Essex.
It’s a stark contrast sailing from commercial Gloucester to the tourist Mecca of P-town. Instead of fish fresh off the docks, here there’s trendy restaurants, more antique dealers than Antiques Road Show and galleries galore.
Lori and I had pictures on our walls, family photos. The boys covered their walls with posters ranging from athletes to rock stars. But art, no! Our home was devoid of anything challenging or even resembling art. At the machine shop we displayed posters of machinery with scantily clad beauties holding micrometers or depth gauges, all gifts of machinery salesmen. Rigid Pipe Company had the best posters. The truth is I have never walked into an art gallery in my long life before being lured into one in P-Town. Catching my eye in the window of a small gallery was a small oil seascape. I wandered into the store and bought the thing—$900 worth of art. The artist, a Nova Scotian named Leonard Lane, captured the sea the way I felt about it. I mean there is nothing stable about the ocean; it’s constantly changing and that’s what this painting said to me. I hung it on the bulkhead forward of the port settee. I’m very proud of myself for buying it. Good for me.
I finished reading A Coal Black Horse last night. Tonight I’m starting Last Stand at Saber River by Elmore Leonard. An oldie but a goodie.