Desperate End-Stage Monomaniac Cape Cod Fireplace Delirium

Yesterday, astoot reader and commenter Pastor Jeff remarked on our Cape Cod fireplace photos:

The third one from yesterday looks a lot like my in-laws’ den in Wisconsin.

You can feel the room from the photo — the squeak of the leather, probably a slightly musty, comfortable smell, the crackle of the fireplace, an odor of smoke, possibly the feel of a cool glass in one’s hand, the rustle of a newspaper or the turning of the page in a novel already read many times. Very nice — a room for quiet reading or pleasant conversation — a hobbity sort of room.

That’s a lovely picture he’s painted there. Makes you want to go to Wisconsin and go fishing and get a sunburn and so forth. But I’m not sure it’s very Cape Coddy.

Well, of course it can be Cape Cod recently, but it’s because we’re living in the shambles of an earlier civitas. The original fireside of the Cape Cod house has a spare, almost chaste quality to its appearance. There’s a sort of nobility to the plainness of it; a kind of luxurious asceticism. Grim, humorless bonhomie. They’d put out traps for hobbits.

The scene our internet friend has described reminds me more of the freshwater version of the fireside we’ve got around here; Lake Winnepesaukee. Egad, don’ t get me started about that. Let’s have Cape Cod one more day.

And out into the world, in our crooked way, we go: