Text Box: Uncle Tim’s Bridge, Wellfleet Uncle Tim’s Bridge is a wooden footbridge that stretches from Commercial Street over Duck Creek to Cannon’s Hill. To my mind this is the icon of Wellfleet. It’s such an obvious drawing subject that I avoided sketching it for twenty years. I told myself that my style was drawings of less obvious subjects but it’s really that I hate to be compared with anyone else. Part of the problem was also the repetition that would be necessary. I didn’t realize until I started that it really isn’t as symmetrical as it seems. Sometimes boards cross each other in the opposite manner than the expected. With this type of drawing I’m always afraid of forgetting which is solid wood and which is air. What starts out as a handrail should stay like that. I’ve got to draw the foreground first and then fill in the background but it’s very easy to put a line in the wrong place. Especially since I don’t do any kind of preliminary sketch. I always walked to this location because I had to set my chair in the area where there is sort of room for a car to park. If I drove I could park but not see to draw. I tried to arrive very early in the day for this one so that I didn’t find someone parked in my place. One day I arrived to find a box full of vegetables with a handwritten price list and a cup for money. The idea was to pay for what you took on the honor system. Yes, I bought and paid for some items. We once rented on the other side of Wellfleet harbor. If we wanted to walk into town it required walking across Uncle Tim’s Bridge. It was a fascinating walk that took about half an hour. It started on the beach, then skirted the old railroad tracks and finally took us onto Cannon’s Hill and Uncle Tim’s Bridge. I think I did it twice before I decided to become the person who drove into town so that I could haul back whatever was purchased. That was my rationalization, anyway.

 Close Ups

Our rental was in the background on the left

That’s the Borrell’s and guests walking into Wellfleet. I had to stay behind to take the photograph.
Text Box: This month’s backstory page is about this deck of cards. Click to see “Coast Cards”

All material copyright 2016 Neil Borrell

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