Jun 24 2008
The Magic of the Monument: Provincetown Pilgrimage
Explorer's Guide Cape Cod
Most of my trips to Provincetown seem to revolve around the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. I can usually find $5 parking nearby, it’s good for orienting myself, and I always erroneously think that a public bathroom is located in the museum.
This time, however, I spent an inordinate amount of time staring at it. One of my friends spends the summers performing there and I went down to see his show at the Gifford House. While we were enjoying cocktails on the veranda during one of his breaks he mentioned the “magic of the monument.”
Apparently if you look at the tower at just the right angle, it looks like Donald Duck. Everyone except for me seemed to see Donald’s likeness right away. Even after a few more cocktails, squinting really hard, and having numerous visiting Canadians try to point it out to me, I never saw it. I just saw a really tall tower — the tallest all-granite monument in the entire U.S. at 252 feet and 7.5 inches to be exact, according to An Explorer’s Guide to Cape Cod. I spent the next morning strolling up and down the main street, people watching, window shopping, and eating Provincetown’s famous Portuguese pastries. Every once in a while, I would stop in my tracks, take a good hard look at the Monument, and fail to see Donald Duck. Where was the magic?
I think I found the magic later and it just so happened to be my plastic black and gold vintage purse. That evening three people told me that they liked it so much they wanted to buy me a drink. As most of the places charge around $8 for a simple screwdriver, that seemed like magic to me.
Read more: Art & Architecture, Eastern US, New England, Travel, Weekend-getawayLisa can usually be found staring longingly at the Eastern European shelf at the Globe Corner Bookstore. However, she really wants to go to Colombia.
