Synopsis – Author Inspiration and Story Nostalgia
Inspired by an actual recorded interview with Charles Ayling in the Tales of Cape Cod archives of Oral Histories in 1958, and published with permission in the Provincetown Independent.His trip was the first car (A Stanley Steamer) to drive from Centerville to Provincetown in 1902. He held the recordfor about a year.
The Tales of Cape Cod, a nonprofitorganization founded in Barnstable in 1949 to record oral histories, provided the Independent with a transcription of a taped interview with Ayling, making the source of this story Ayling’s own recollections. Reports of Ayling’s trip sometimes place it in 1901, but Ayling referred to 1902 in his account.