Born in 1905, Mary recalls how she and her family traveled from Baltimore, Maryland to summer on Cape Cod each year.   She describes her experiences as a child living in Barnstable Village during the summers, rowing to Sandy Neck to buy lobsters, walking down Millway to Main Street and visiting the stationary store, garage and blacksmith shop, Phinney’s General Store and the hardware store.  She also describes the Cummaquid Golf Course, and the houses on Scudder Lane, where her family lived.  Mary tells a story her father told her about Leander Lewis who lived on Scudder Lane and who put dynamite in his kindling and his wife putting it in the stove by mistake.  Her father referred to him as a cussed old man. She described how they pumped water from a marsh spring to the house and stored the water in a large tank in the attic.  She states that Town water was installed in 1930.  She remembers the World War I White fleet that was the Navy’s public relations tour with 10-15 large ships in 1917.  Joseph Lincoln, the author from Chatham was a good friend of her father.  She remembers plays at the Comedy Club during World War I.  Mary also recalls what the Barnstable Fair was like when she was a young lady.  Her parents attended the Grand Ball at the fair.  She also remembers her father reporting spies down by the harbor in 1917.   

Notes: The Tales of Cape Cod Oral History Collection is housed at the William Brewster Nickerson Archives in the Wilkens Library at Cape Cod Community College in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. For more information about the collection, please contact the Nickerson Archives, http://www.nickersonarchives.org/.