From Dave Brigham:
Kind of a cool stone building, isn't it? Definitely stands out amid the old Colonial homes and wood-framed shops of Cape Cod. I'm not sure I would've stopped to take a picture of this place, however, if it wasn't lying under a pin on Google Maps saying, "Kurt Vonnegut Saab Dealership."
I use Google Maps a lot to find new places to explore, and to get directions. In advance of my annual Cape vacation this past July, I consulted the online atlas. Scanning a bit further east than I've roamed on previous Cape outings, I saw that this former dealership was located on Route 6A, about half an hour from the house we rent.
According to lore (and a few sources I found on the Internet), Kurt Vonnegut -- author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Bluebeard and other books -- owned a Saab dealership in this building from 1957-1961, before his writing career really took off. I read Slaughterhouse-Five in high school, along with a few of Vonnegut's short stories, including my favorite, "Harrison Bergeron." That's why I sought this building out.
After checking this place out, I poked a bit more around West Barnstable.
At first I thought this sign for Ed Nemec's TV-Radio Service was something that a collector had put up on an old cottage on their property. But after, what else, a Google search, I learned that Mr. Nemec ran this shop out of his home for more than 50 years, before he passed away about a month before my visit. His shop was enough of an institution that it has been memorialized on canvas.
I also stumbled across the former Prince Jenkins Antiques.
If it were open, I'd have gone in. I haven't been able to find out anything about this place, other than some provenance references at auction web sites.
A few steps away from the old antique shop is the West Barnstable Cemetery.
This is the Bursley family crypt. Just a short drive away is Bursley Manor, a bed and breakfast run out of a circa-1670 house that was once the center of a dairy farm.
This impressive stone was set for John "Mad Jack" Percival, a naval officer who served his country during the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and "the campaign against West Indies pirates," according to Wikipedia. Perhaps the most amazing story from Mad Jack's life is his piloting the USS Constitution around the globe in 1844-45.
I finished my quick tour of West Barnstable at, where else, a train station.
West Barnstable Station, headquarters of the Cape Cod Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, was built in 1911 and contains "working railroad tools and equipment, lanterns, switch stands, a baggage cart and a small motor car," per the group's web site. Below is either the motor cart or the baggage cart.
Below is a caboose from the Delaware & Hudson railroad, which called itself "the Bridge Line to New England and Canada."
Last, and certainly not least, a sign that's difficult to read, for which I apologize.
The white sign underneath the humorous yellow one is even funnier. "This ain't a bathroom. Don't pee here," it says. I guess public urination here is, um, a sticky issue. Under the warning are graphics of a guy peeing, a woman calling the police, and a guy peeing again, this time with a picture of handcuffs under him.
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