Reeling in the Great White

One of the great pleasures of being a writer is reading from your own work to a sympathetic audience. I say sympathetic, for who else would listen to six-minute snippets of unpublished works? A Book in the Hand's 2nd Annual Open-Mic Night was held on September 14 at the Jacob Sears Memorial Library in East Dennis, MA, and I was fortunate enough to participate.

The library, recently added to the National Register of Historic Places, made for a perfect setting, cozy and smelling of old books. You enter the front parlor and believe for a moment you're Mrs. Muir seeing Gull Cottage for the first time, filled with a sense of rightness about the place. The building is 114 years old and is located in the Quivet Neck section of East Dennis, and keeps company with the most beautiful New England homes you're likely to see--large white clapboard dwellings with black shutters, dropped from heaven onto maize-colored fields marked with large chestnut trees, old barns and stone walls.

Sixteen writers had signed up to read, most of them published authors who were trying out their new work on their colleagues. Humbled by my own amateur status, I felt more and more convinced of my own unsuitability for the writing profession with every word I read. Added to the self-imposed trauma was that inflicted by the time-keeper who, every five minutes of reading, would call out, "One minute warning!" In the case of one reader, a swarm of grasshoppers was climactically overwhelming a vacationing family's station wagon when the gong rang, so to speak.

The week-end following the reading I returned with my husband to Quivet Neck for a pleasant, uneventful drive only to have a wondrous thing happen. We spotted a House for Sale sign, and beneath it the magic word "Open". The hunt was on. We followed the signs down one sun-dappled lane after another, tantalized by the Indian Summer breeze full of late-blooming roses and salt sea air. And there it was, fittingly beached on Sea Street, the Great White, aka the Captain Stillman Kelley House.

This house was no mere antique Cape that sat quietly year after year. This one wagged and wandered about, with each new owner's structural addition moving the main house ever closer to the huge old barn, whose loft was made from a shipwreck's timber.

The rooms were filled with antique furniture, including some that belonged to the original owner, according to the agent's informative flyer. How the Captain had kept his ten children from wearing out every stick of it I don't know. Perhaps the child named Heman kept the other nine in line.

I've now returned to the Great White with my co-conspiring sister and best friend in the hopes of finding the wherewithal to reel this one in. We've thought about subsidizing the carrying costs by turning the home into a writers' retreat, executive conference center or summer rental. There are of course doubters among us exerting a repressive influence on our enthusiasm--husbands--but they've got to face facts: When a great white house hunter starts to fantasize furniture placement and color schemes, the "Deed" is all but done.