WELLFLEET, Mass. This town on outer Cape Cod has for many years been known as a haven for artists and writers that is quiet in the winter but jam-packed with vacationers during the summer. “There’s an old saying, in the summer you can fish and drink,” says Tom Philpott of Wellfleet’s Department of Public Works, “and in the winter you can’t fish.” What, this reporter asks, does that have to do with seasonal fluctuations in population? “I don’t know,” Philpott says, “I just like to say it.”
But as Baby Boomers reach and exceed retirement age, Wellfleet and other towns that formerly saw their populations decline after Labor Day are facing a new problem: their year-round numbers have swollen as more seniors choose “the Cape,” as it is known in Massachusetts, for retirement, straining municipal resources, particularly solid waste treatment and disposal.
“They’re something about crossing the Sagamore,” one of the two main bridges that connect the arm of Cape Cod to the body of the Bay State, Philpott says. “A guy who’s been an accountant his whole career, a woman who’s never had a creative thought in her life, all of a sudden they get here and think they’re poets.”
As a result, poetry has surpassed newspapers and disposable diapers as the leading source of non-biodegradable waste on the Cape. “We got sandy soil,” Philpott says, “so not a lot of room to put trash.” He points off in the distance where a bulldozer is pushing poems about seagulls, sunsets and sandcastles into a thirty-foot high pile. “We can’t recycle ’em, the little lit-mags won’t take them,” he says before he is distracted by a truck making a delivery of unrequited love poems.
“Where do you want these?” the driver calls out.
“You’ll have to wait probably, I dunno, half an hour maybe, I got no room for you right now.”
“How about over there?” the driver asks, pointing to a lot where there is nothing but two industrial-size dumpsters.
Philpott looks down at his clipboard. “I need that,” he says. “There’s an incoming load of poems about what an impact John Coltrane had on freshmen” from some of the region’s many four-year liberal arts colleges. “Go get a donut and some coffee over in the Confessional Poetesses shed.”
The driver expresses his resignation with a shrug of the shoulders, then turns his rig around and heads for a building bearing a large sign that says “WE NO LONGER ACCEPT SYLVIA PLATH KNOCKOFFS.”
Wellfleet is governed by a traditional New England town meeting at which every resident is allowed to vote on municipal appropriations. “It’s a nightmare, but it’s democracy,” says Michelle Edksteen, President of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters as she checks residents in for a special session. The main “warrant” to be considered is a supplemental appropriation for what residents refer to as the town “dump,” but whose official name is “Recycling and Transfer Facility” in order to avoid the unpleasant connotations associated with its popular name.
“What ward and precinct?” Edksteen asks pleasantly of a grey-haired man with a hearing aid and a walker.
“Ward 3, precinct one,” the man says, and Edksteen hands him a ballot. “What are we voting on tonight?” the man asks as he scans some informational literature on the various items on the agenda.
“We’re going to impose a charge on people who don’t recycle their crappy poetry,” Edksteen.
“Well what am I supposed to do with it?” the man ask with a note of frustration in his voice.
Edksteen is stumped for a moment, but her years of handling tough but irrelevant questions from voters enables her to recover quickly. “Do you have grandchildren?” she asks.
“Yes, six of them!” the man replies enthusiastically.
“Well, kids love papier-mache.”