New: “The Big House”

As a kid, our family had a house on Scraggy Neck…a flounder-shaped piece of land connected to Cataumet by a causeway. Just north of our Neck is Wing’s Neck. Both of these summer-house sections of Cape Cod were home to stately summer “cottages,” beautiful seasonal properties built facing the bay, whose seabreezes cooled hot summer nights. A book was written about one such house, The Big House, by George Colt Howe, a family from Wing’s Neck, who we had known somewhat through our Neck’s proximity to his.

I came across this place on East Chop Drive, in East Chop (Martha’s Vineyard), and saw in it the same qualities of the older summer cottage Howe wrote about in his book, written about his old summer place, and the difficult decision his family made to let it go. I borrowed it’s title for this piece. “The Big House” 30 x 24