"Outies"

STELLA!
How's this for an attention grabber? He's one of the local fishermen.





These pictures are just a sampling of the allure of Chatham on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. You want to be part of it - the quaint village, the sea-side beauty,the great surrounding ocean, the fog, the Sun.

We've rented lovely homes here for thirty years. We should have saved our pennies, though, and purchased a place. If you don't own - you're just not an "In-ie".

Sitting on the spacious front lawn of our rental we watched as a large SUV roared up our driveway. A very attractive couple stepped forth and introduced themselves as the new owners of the recently remodeled house down the road. Bona-fide were quickly established. He's an oil executive living in Qatar - they both have families here on the coast. After we disclosed that we were the renters - you could feel the gears shift.

"Come on gorgeous," he called to his svelte younger wife as he scooped her back into their LandRover. "We'll come up your driveway and plan having drinks one of these evenings." I smiled inwardly at how smoothly he ended this dead-end encounter with essentially 'don't call us, we'll call you.'

Two evenings later we heard bag pipe music in the distance. It grew closer. At the foot of our driveway a piper passed in full-regalia as he marched toward the oil executive's new home. Strains of 'Scotland Forever' tingled the spine. Another couple and their little girl followed him at a distance and explained as we joined them that they guessed he was headed for a house-warming and they were just following because their little girl loved the music.

Tagging along we ended up in front of the refurbished house. The music drifted from the backyard where Gorgeous and her husband were entertaining.

I figure the day they'd come up the driveway they'd intended to invite 'the owners' to their house-warming. Hey,I understand. Why the heck would you invite renters - transients ? Still, there is something so inherently icky about this scenario. I mean 'hey'! Aren't we fun? Wouldn't we have contributed an element of serendipity to their party? Riigggght. Trust me. I do get it. But his smooth dismissal - the dramatic slamming of the social register - ick.