Music Transportation

The distant mountains stood as a proud contrast to the seemingly flat plain of the locale. Driving back from the gym the other morning, the serene blue sky welcomed the approach of a pleasant afternoon of projects to complete, and ideas to bloom into reality. Flipping through the random array of radio stations, I rejected a bubblegum pop tune here, dissed a gangsta-play there, and swam against a sea of overplayed and tired tunes. But then, much to my surprise, I found a distant yet familiar melody that carried me back. “Lie-la-lie…” crooned the voices of Simon and Garfunkel over the radio. “Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-la-lie…” And thus, with the lament of the New York City Boxer, in my head the years began to roll back.

 

The 70’s were, for so many, a turbulent time comprised of a soup of social change, politics, war, fear, generational divides, and music. Yet for a young and timid child growing up in New England, it simply was what it was. Leaving the house next to the family restaurant on Commercial Street in Provincetown, the low-tide smell from the beach permeated the still summertime air. Just a walk down the alley past the boatyard, access to the harbor beach was easy. The beach, for kids like me, was a veritable treasure-trove of discovery. Broken pottery shards, worn and tumbled beach-glass, and shells littered the entire beach – the dumping grounds of both nature and of the fisherman of a by-gone century. You simply never knew what you might find – a piece of fine porcelain from a hand-painted teacup harkening back to a time when a family may have sipped tea during a family breakfast. And on other days, maybe the barrel of a clay pipe that had been smoked by a poor Portuguese fisherman who toiled daily to reap the harvest of the sea.

 

“Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-la-lie…”

 

In a lot of ways, it is so dismal to think of a beach covered in trash. But the trash on this beach was somehow special – it was old trash. The harbor had been the source of a thriving fishing industry for the Portuguese community. And while fishing boats still dock along the wharves of Provincetown Harbor, they are nothing like they were when my family struggled alongside of other Portuguese brethren just to make it. In the distance, rotting wooden pylons crumble and rot against the pounding waves – all that remains of a wharf that used to be there where boats used to dock and wives kissed their husbands goodbye before what could be a long and dangerous venture out to sea. Some newer wharves have been built alongside of the ones that harsh winter storms have ravaged. Many of the rotting pylons that exist in my childhood mind have now vanished forever, recorded perhaps in an oil painting or in a faded photograph.

 

“Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-la-lie…”

 

Once in a great while, the townfolk would wake up to find something very unusual on the familiar beach. Overnight, a sick whale would appear high upon the shoreline, gasping for breathe… awaiting death. In a far cry from a hundred years earlier when hunting whales provided both fuel and income to the fishing fleet, the townsfolk would do whatever they could to help save the struggling creature. Grabbing whatever buckets we could, people would fill them with water to splash the whale and keep its skin wet against the blaze of sunlight. And with sturdy ropes tied around the immense tail, boats would slowly try to tow the creature off the sand, back into the water. Yet, more often than not, the animal would break loose and beach itself again in some unknown and misunderstood ritual of suicide. Only after the creature died would it be possible to tow back out to the sea, lest the stink of a rotting carcass canvas the entire town.

 

“Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-la-lie…”

 

I find it fascinating how we hold on to random memories, and label them in such a way as to be triggered by things such as familiar tastes or phrases or lyrics or melodies. I had forgotten about these things until I heard that song. Hmmmm… I wonder if the harbor beach still has treasures to yield?