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Vacation’s End: Classic Photos of Late-Summer Cape Cod

3 minute read

In early September 1946, LIFE magazine published a cover story that, in words and especially in pictures, perfectly captured the unique, sweet, melancholy feel of summer vacation’s end. That the article focused, as LIFE put it, on “the first postwar summer vacation” of the 1940s somehow added—if only in retrospect—a quiet intensity to the story. All these years later, the pictures and the story itself remind us of just how fleeting the peaceful, hot days and long, cool nights of late summer really are.

As LIFE put it in that long-ago article:

William and Carol Foster [of Nashua, N.H.], with their sons Karl, 9, and Michael, 4, have spent the summer at Cotuit on Cape Cod, enjoying the lazy and wonderful pastimes of sailing, swimming, digging clams and loafing. Now they and their summer neighbors are going home. Boats will be hauled out of the water to lie forlornly in the tall beach grass. Cottages will be boarded up. The clam bar and dance pavilion will be deserted. The golf course, the tidal pool and the lonely sea beach will again revert to the rabbits, the fiddler crabs and the sandpipers.

Labor Day is here. A month ago it seemed hazy and remote, separated from the present by an endless succession of golden summer days. Now, suddenly, these days are changed and gone. The mornings are still the same. It is still hot and fragrant in the cranberry bogs, hot on the white shell roads, hot on the beaches and in the village streets, with everywhere the strong smell of pine, bay leaves and salt water. It is the afternoons and nights that are different. It gets dark early, and cold. Heavy fogs often roll in from Martha’s Vineyard and the late swim is a shivery business, made enjoyable only by the quick warmth of the picnic fire. In the evenings, going to the movies, the fog is wet in the streets. All night long the in the harbor rings a steady accompaniment to the remote blasts from the lightship out in the Sound.

These are sad and disturbing days. Everything is being seen for the last time, everything done for the last time. The last clam is eaten. The last bag is packed, the cottage door locked. . . . Down on the steamboat wharf at Woods Hole the last passenger gets off the Nantucket boat and joins the crowd of departing vacationists from the Cape, pushing to board the train. . . . Walking across the station platform, they catch a last glimpse of the white gulls turning in the sun and nets drying in the fishing boats, take a last deep breath of salt air before they are swallowed up in the incalculable stuffiness of the Pullman. Another summer on the Cape is gone.

Finally, note that most of the Cornell Capa photos in the gallery above never ran in LIFE. A dozen or so photos at the end of the gallery are those that appeared in the magazine in 1946.

Caption from LIFE. "Michael Foster, 4, and his friend Marcia Perry, 5, spend the summer among the sand dunes of Cape Cod, at Contuit."Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Digging clams, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Young boys outside a sandwich shop, Cape Cod, summer 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Reading comics, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Summer ice cream on the screened-in porch, Cape Cod, 1946.
Not published in LIFE. Summer ice cream on the screened-in porch, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Summer vacation, Cape Cod, 1946.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Driven by the soft southwest wind, the four Fosters sail on Cotuit Bay in the family's knockabout, "The Sea Dog." Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Mike sight-sees around Cape on the back deck of the family convertible but falls asleep after first few minutes' rideCornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Mike likes to get up before daybreak and bring in the milk.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Mike, who is fascinated by all the babies in the neighborhood, gawks at the little boy who lives in the cottage next door.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Mike and Karl while away long hours fishing in a fresh-water brook. When lucky, they catch a few small herring.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Given a good head start, Karl manages to beat both his parents in a swimming race in Cotuit Bay.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Mike beats Marcia Perry, his best girl, in a race down a lane.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. On the porch, with boys off playing, the Fosters get some time to themselves. Bill Foster was down weekends and for a two-week vacation.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Mike and Karl Foster run to the top of the hill each morning with Fluffy, their dog, to get the paper.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. Quiet evenings in the cottage are spent around the fire, which is needed in chill Cape air. Karl sits on floor, reading about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn attending their own funeral. Mike has stopped painting, which he does well, long enough to listen in on his parents' conversation.Cornell Capa—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

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