Chatham

A few days before Labor Day I tend to get nostalgic for the sixty-five summers I spent in Chatham on Cape Cod. The feeling starts slowly, especially during our after-dinner, three-generation family strolls around the Chatham Lighthouse in the charming Old Village. If it is our last evening before returning to Europe, my father would be broiling the last steak. The stroll begins with a nip in the air and the gently falling, silver leaves from the trees that line small streets. There isn’t any traffic; residents of the Old Village walk. Later, when my mother had two bionic knees, she was still lovingly called the “fastest woman in town.” Now she strolls with the rest of us. We are savoring another tradition, after a summer filled with golf, tennis, swimming, boating and feasts.

Willard Nickerson was about as Cape Cod as you could get. Chatham locals even gave him the nickname ‘The Codfather’. Willard was a 12th-generation member of the Nickerson family, his ancestors having arrived on the Mayflower. He was also a Chatham lobsterman/fisherman and on July 4, 1976, Willard led the annual parade down Chatham’s Main Street in my father’s 1952 Woody car. My father was rightly proud to chauffeur one of the town’s most revered residents. Willard was not just a local treasure because of his profession, he also played the trombone during Chatham’s summer band concerts. If you happened to be a year-round resident, Willard would come and find leaks in your roof during a blustery nor’easter.