Choose Granite Countertops in Truro, MA for Elegance and Durability

TRURO — I was untangling the holiday lights, a rotten job that ramps up frustration and beer consumption, and tends to ignite my inner Scrooge. Muttering Cape Cod curses, like "son of a barnacle" and "tartar sauce," I stomped up the driveway with a ball of electrified confusion and tossed it into a ravine.

"All festivities are canceled!" I yelled at a squirrel.

As dusk approached, I began to feel a bit guilty, so I broke out the giant orange extension cord and plugged it into the snarled mess. I sure was surprised when 5,000 LED lights spelled out the following message: "I need a short hike that has it all. What do you suggest?"

My foul mood lifted like summer fog. I had already been thinking about this very concept! With daylight hours reduced to a brief flash in a sea of darkness, it gets tricky to plan a lengthy outing. This time of year, we all need a reliable three-mile jaunt that takes about an hour and a half.

I whistled for the Curious Prius and we made a beeline for Fisher Beach in Truro. It was almost 3 p.m. and the sun was yawning behind the clouds, thinking about bedtime. But the good thing about walking along Cape Cod Bay in the afternoon is you get to harvest every bit of light before Sol checks in to a motel near Plymouth.

We came to rest in the Fisher Beach parking lot and I popped out of the Prius like a champagne cork. But I didn't walk out onto the strand, I headed down Great Hills Road. That's where the Dalsheimer Trail begins, maintained by the fine folks at the Truro Conservation Trust.

It isn't a long trail, but it is a lovely place. The path curls through the dunes behind Fisher Beach to the edge of Pamet Harbor. And unbelievably, the sun cracked through the clouds and that special late light overspread the land. I watched a boat enter the harbor and this minor event became wildly beautiful, illuminated by the low slant of the sun. Already I was a winner!

I curled back onto the northern end of Fisher Beach and walked out on the little breakwater. "Never bypass a breakwater," is my motto, so I walked out to the end and pretended I was on the bow of the Titanic. I warned some gullible seagulls about the giant iceberg dead ahead, and they jumped off the breakwater into tiny lifeboats.

Now it was time for a good leg stretcher along Fisher Beach, one of my favorite off-season haunts. I found a piece of green beach glass as I headed south, which seemed like a good omen. I've always wondered where the best beaches for beach glass are on Cape Cod, so if you feel like sharing, please drop me a line, so I can start up my Curious Taste jewelry company.

So far, we had seen dunes, a harbor, a breakwater and a fine beach — the hits just kept on coming! And now it was time to delve into the world of art history, and down the beach, I could see a white speck atop a hill: the summer home of the late, great Edward Hopper (1882-1967).

Gugel's dream:The man who wanted to build an island off Cape Cod

Sure, you might know that the Hopper painting "Chop Suey" sold for $91.9 million in 2018. And you might have had an inkling that he hung around Truro a bit. But the tiny town was a big deal for Hopper, according to this passage from the Truro Historical Society website:

"Edward Hopper, generally considered the greatest American realist painter of the twentieth century, was in a sense a Truro artist, usually spending at least four months a year in Truro from 1930 to his death in 1967. Truro was more than a vacation spot for the Hoppers: using an inheritance (his wife) Jo received, the Hoppers bought a property in 1933 on a bluff over Fisher Beach and Edward designed a house and studio where he produced about a third of all his work from then on."

I suppose it's fair to say that Hopper's house is also a work of art. So suddenly I was rushing down the beach to get a photo while the light was still good. I didn't want to take a blah pic and disappoint the Hoppers!

It was a close call and I might have gotten the short end of the stick. Seconds after I snapped the photo, the sun dipped behind a bar of clouds and began hissing into the bay. But I couldn't complain: the whole day had been gray until the last hour or so, and a splendid hour in the late fall on Cape Cod is a victory.

Hiking reward: Mysterious trail leads to awesome ocean vista in Truro

Right after the Hopper house, there's a cut in the dune marked by an erosion control sign. It's a little trail maintained by the Truro Conservation Trust that leads off the beach to the end of Stephens Way. It's a pleasant country lane that takes you to Fisher Road, where you turn left to get back to the beach parking lot.

Two of my favorite public works of art are displayed on Fisher Road. One is painted on the back of what appears to be a shed, facing the street. It seems like a riff on the Garden of Eden, with two figures, lots of grapes and a couple of birds. Then, almost back at the parking lot, you'll come across a big basement door, festooned with awesome dancers. I would pay $91.9 million for either one, but first I've got to cash in my change jar.

What do you want to know about Cape Cod? To ask a Curious Cape Cod question, email me at ewilliams@capecodonline.com. I'll do my best to figure things out!

TRURO — An empty house at Ballston Beach that was moved off a bluff in early February will likely be moved to a new location, the owner said during a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on March 28.

The owners of the house at 133 South Pamet Road have two requests pending before the zoning board.

From a Jan. 24 meeting, owners Tom and Kit Dennis were requesting a variance and/or a special permit to move the house, as a second dwelling, onto 127 South Pamet Road, and that hearing was continued for 90 days.

From the March 28 meeting, the owners sought a special permit to relocate structures on a nonconforming lot and exceed total gross floor area typically allowed in the town's Seashore zoning district. That too was continued until the date of the Jan. 24 hearing, on April 25.

But attorney Benjamin Zehnder, representing the Dennis family, said the town has issued a building permit that now allows them to move the house to a currently staked out site at 127 South Pamet Road.

"He has a building permit," Truro Town Planner and Land Counsel Barbara Carboni confirmed at the March 28 zoning board meeting. An appeal of the permit was also filed, Carboni said.

Dennis perspective

Because of the quick, storm-related move in early February, the house currently sits with half of the structure on Dennis property and half on a neighbor's property, Tom Dennis said at the March 28 zoning board meeting. The house was moved from the bluff, with town permission on an emergency basis, as storms and erosion threatened its structural integrity.

"My neighbor has been very kind and helpful but, you know, the season is coming up," Dennis said at the board meeting.

Dennis suggested to the board that for the time being the house be moved to a permanent location on his property at 127 South Pamet Road, then he and the board can continue to debate any issues.

More:The Ballston Beach house in Truro teetered on a dune before the blizzard. And now?

Rushing to take care of the zoning issues does not feel right, Dennis said of the request before the board on March 28.

"I have no intention to occupy the house until it's properly granted. I just want to move it to its location, getting out of its spot," Dennis said.

Dennis holds a conservation permit which allows him to work on the property until May 15, he said. But further approval is needed from the town Conservation Commission due to changes in the existing permit, Carboni said at the meeting.

Zehnder perspective

The plan is to move the house onto pilings in the new location at 127 South Pamet Road, with a Conservation Commission approval, Zehnder said.

Ahead are plans and requests related to a septic system for the moved house, removal of a studio on the new property and a final status for the existing house on the new property, Zehnder said.

PHOTO GALLERY::Truro House Move

If the zoning board ultimately doesn't grant permissions then the structure will be removed, Zehnder said.

History

The historic building was first moved back from the dune's edge six years ago by the owners. Much of its dune support has eroded away.

More:Teetering on the edge: Erosion-stressed Ballston Beach house is moved to safer ground

The couple has since then been in the process of requesting permissions from the town and the Cape Cod National Seashore to move the building.

Banner staff writer Mary Ann Bragg contributed to this story.

TRURO — Since purchasing their beachfront property at 42 Great Hollow Road in 2018, Susan and Wesley Chapman have sent out an annual email inviting their neighbors to be guests on the private beach in front of their house each summer.

While it may seem like a generous gesture, that’s not how Richard Anders and Judith Paprin, or Ellen Carno, who live on Obbo Drive, behind the Chapmans, see it.

Their houses have no beach frontage, but they believe that their membership in a neighborhood association established a decade ago gives them the right to use the Chapmans’ beach whenever they want. To them, the Chapmans’ email message seemed more like a notice that the beach was private, with neighbors allowed by invitation only.

This neighborhood in North Truro for decades consisted of a handful of lots with small rental cottages under one owner. But over the last 10 years, the owner has sold off the lots as prime real estate. The new neighbors and their lawyers are now debating in state Land Court over who gets to use the beach.

Visitors to Massachusetts are often surprised to see “no trespassing” and “private beach” signs posted in front of waterfront houses. In every other coastal state, property owners’ rights end at the mean high tide line. But in Massachusetts, ownership of the intertidal zone, between the mean high and low tide lines, can be privately held.

The archaic laws creating this situation date back to the 1640s, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony expanded private property rights to encourage waterfront development. The public right of access in the intertidal zone is limited to fishing, fowling, and navigation.

Only the strongest of swimmers should venture into water between the high and low tide mark if the beach is private, since courts have ruled that one’s feet may not touch the sand beneath.

More than 70 percent of the Massachusetts coastline is privately owned, according to state statistics.

In the Land Court case filed on Dec. 1, both sides agree that the Chapmans own the beach in front of their property. What plaintiffs Anders, Paprin, and Carno are seeking is affirmation of their right to use that beach, along with a court order preventing the Chapmans from interfering with their right to do so.

The case comes down to differing interpretations of the documents related to the Sunset Acres Beach Association, to which all three property owners belong. The plaintiffs’ Boston attorney, Diane Tillotson, contends that the association, established in 2010 by developer Joseph Obert, allows all its members use of the beach that is part of the property later purchased by the Chapmans.

The arrangement was accomplished through a series of easements, Tillotson says. One of those easements includes the beach area in front of the Chapmans’ property. The association also has a set of beach rules and regulations that strengthen the neighbors’ claim to the beach, Tillotson says.

But the Chapmans say the easement cited in the documents is limited to a 10-foot-wide path between the front of their lawn and the beach. Susan Chapman said in a phone interview that both Obert and the real estate broker told her in 2018 that the beach the association members have the right to use is a stretch to the south of her beach.

Association members can’t access that common beach directly because it’s at the bottom of a steep coastal bank, she said, and that’s why the easements across her property had been created.

The paths are clearly marked in crushed white shells, Chapman said.

Chapman said she had asked Obert about the use of her beach by association members prior to buying the property. “Joe said, ‘You know, I usually just invite them to sit on my beach,’ ” Chapman said.

Chapman has kept up her annual email invite to the neighbors. This past summer, she included a map of her property with the easements marked on it. She crossed out the beach, to indicate that the easement was limited to the 10-foot path.

Wellfleet attorney Bruce Bierhans, who represents the Chapmans, told the that he plans to argue “the appropriate document had never been recorded regarding the use of the beach.”

The issue won’t be resolved quickly. Bierhans said cases like this one can take two years or more for final disposition.

Attorney Tillotson did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Anders declined to comment.

Susan Chapman hopes the case will finally settle the beach dispute. “For our benefit, we want the rights clarified as well,” she said.

Residents of and longtime visitors to Truro are surely familiar with a grisly, dark chapter of the town’s recent past involving Pine Grove Cemetery. Even now, decades later, just reading about the bloodcurdling events of January 1969 might be enough to dissuade many from venturing into the secluded burial ground. It would, however, be a shame to bypass this tranquil two-acre spot, filled with bird song, and tucked amid the scrub pine of the National Seashore down a dirt road off Old County Road.

Pine Grove is Truro’s second oldest cemetery (Old North Cemetery being the oldest), created in 1799 by Methodists near a church (established 1794) that no longer survives. In 2013, the cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Here you’ll find not only an eclectic mix of stones — from early slate to modern — that memorialize prominent Truro families (the Riches account for nearly one third of the burials) but yet another compelling Truro story from the town’s more distant past.

By all accounts, Sept. 15, 1844 — a Sunday — dawned crisp and clear, a perfect early autumn day. Behind the dune that protected the bustling and prosperous village of 2,000 residents from Mother Nature’s ferocity, townspeople attended church and returned to their homes for an afternoon of quiet reflection before retiring for the evening.

As Monday dawned, crews leaving the Pamet Harbor and heading out to sea saw the mackerel schooner anchored not more than a mile off the Truro shore. It was assumed that the crew of 10 had come ashore in the longboat during the night. As news spread that the crewmen were not yet at home with their families, several townspeople reported that they had, in fact, seen the at anchor early Sunday morning, though none of the crew had been present at church, as would have been customary. Alarmed neighbors rowed out to the schooner and found it meticulously secured, but with no sign of life. The whereabouts of the crew was a mystery.

Despite the devastating loss to Truro of seven vessels and 57 men and boys during the 1841 October gale, the town and its fleet had bounced back, enjoying success on the fishing grounds in the years following. The , commanded by the respected Solomon Hopkins Lombard, was well known along the coast and had shared in Truro’s success.

But just a year before the mystifying disappearance of the crew, the had had a tense encounter. Suspected of violating a treaty between the U.S. and Great Britain, the vessel had been seized and the crew detained at Port Hood, Cape Breton, by Her Majesty’s Revenue Cutter . When it was learned that the had entered the harbor in distress, having lost her dory and a sail, the Halifax authorities released the vessel and the crew. After three weeks in custody she sailed from Arichat, Cape Breton, to Truro.

On that Sunday morning in 1844 — one of those lovely days when the sea takes on that deeper tint of blue and the goldenrod glows with its deep tint of yellow — the crew of 10 had included Captain Lombard, age 29, and his brother James, 25; father and son Solomon P. Rich, 36, and Charles W. Rich, 12; Elisha Rich, 16; John L. Rich, 13; Thomas Mayo, 23, and the brother-in-law of Solomon Lombard; Reuben Pierce, the eldest of the crew at 39 and the father of seven children; Ezra Turner, 20; and Sewell Worcester, age 30. Eight of the crew had been born in Truro, one in Provincetown (Turner), and one, Worcester, in Boston, though he was living in Wellfleet and in 1839 had married a Wellfleet girl, Pamela Atwood. Four other crew members were also married. The adult crewmen were all members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Truro.

Several newspapers carried stories of the mystery, titling their dispatches “Another Melancholy Loss of Life of Truro Fishermen,” “The Lost Crew,” and “The Late Disaster at Truro.” Within days of the distressing discovery aboard the , the schooner’s longboat, with a plank amiss, was found along the shore in Brewster. Had the longboat sprung a leak and been swamped, drowning all aboard?

The deaths were entered in the Truro town records by Registrar Barnabas Paine, the date as Sept. 15, and the place of interment as Cape Cod Bay. In recounting the tragedy in his , historian Shebnah Rich wrote that over the next three weeks the bodies of the 10 crewmen were recovered over a stretch of 30 miles, and that all received the sacred rites of a home burial. Seven were buried in Pine Grove Cemetery.

Time has taken its toll on several of the headstones. That of Capt. Solomon H. Lombard lies in pieces, as does that of his brother, James H. Lombard, which rests against the headstone of the Rev. Benjamin Keith and his wife, Deliverance Atwood, in what is shown on the cemetery plan as the Parish Lot adjacent to the center driveway. As a circuit minister, the Vermont-born Rev. Keith (1788-1834) was instrumental in the organization of Methodism in Truro and was settled as pastor in 1831. In 1840, his daughter Amanda Keith married James H. Lombard. If the light reflecting off the Lombard headstone is just right, the inscription of Lombard’s drowning in Cape Cod Bay is discernible.

The headstones for Solomon P. Rich and his son Charles are yet another poignant reminder that death at sea reached deep into neighborhoods and families and across generations.

Shebnah Rich wrote, “How a crew of ten active men, many, if not all, expert swimmers, could all be drowned in smooth water, so near the shore, probably having the usual complement of oars, thwarts, etc. — how the leak occurred, and why it could not have been stopped, with many other queries, will ever remain a mystery.”

In His Garden

Meetings Ahead

Conversation Starter

The select board unanimously voted to approve the town’s Housing Needs Assessment and Production Plan at its Oct. 24 meeting. The 118-page document was prepared by consultant Jenn Goldson and the five members of the housing authority.

The plan is meant to serve as a roadmap to reaching housing goals laid out by the state’s Chapter 40B comprehensive permit law, which encourages towns to have subsidized housing inventory of at least 10 percent of their total units.

Once certified by the state Dept. of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), a housing production plan is looked on favorably by funding sources, according to housing authority chair Kevin Grunwald.

The plan’s housing production goal is to create 110 total new units in the next five years, with a long-term forecast of 260 new units by 2036. It lays out five main strategies, including developing the Walsh property for housing and amending and instituting policy and zoning changes to encourage affordable housing development.

Among its suggestions for zoning changes, the plan lists adopting legislation to allow property tax abatement for owners who rent out their properties year-round and amending bylaws to allow duplexes to be constructed by right.

The plan also suggests working with the National Park Service to consider the transfer of vacant homes in the Seashore to the Truro Housing Trust and developing the former North Truro Air Force Station for mixed-income affordable year-round housing.

That goal is “a real stretch,” said Grunwald, but “we have a new superintendent now, so who knows what could happen with this property.”

The plan also suggests pursuing the acquisition of vacant properties such as the condemned Truro Motor Inn for conversion into affordable housing.

The planning board voted in favor of the plan with one dissenting vote and one abstention. The dissent came from chair Rich Roberts, who criticized the numerical goals that the plan lays out. The plan “would result in Truro exceeding the state’s 10 percent SHI inventory goal,” Roberts said. “We should be working with a number of 70 to 80 instead of 110.”

According to the plan, 15 percent of Truro’s housing stock are rental units, which puts the town in the category of “rental desert” according to a study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

The median sale price of a single-family home in 2022 was nearly $1.4 million. A buyer would need to earn about $375,000 to afford that; the median household income in Truro in 2022 was $83,992.

The town’s largest affordable housing development, Sally’s Way, has a total of 16 units. More than 200 families are on its waitlist, according to the plan. —