Dutra's Market

Last night while reading the Celtics stories on the Globe there was a heading for summer places or something like that and the heading was for Truro,MA. There were like 8 pics and one I clicked on was the center of Downtown North Truro.That intersection for me is the center of the universe.Head up "Puke Hill" on 6a and you come to Babes Restaurant and beyond that is Provincetown.Head the other way and you are bound for Truro and Wellfleet.Go left down Pond Rd. and you come to Cold Storage beach and it's small hilltop parking lot where we watched a lot of sunsets.Go right from the center of North Truro and you are on your way to Highland Light and a great town ocean beach plus our home in 78 The North Truro Camping Area.Off right center of the pic is Dutra's Market.Dutras was and is the place where it all happened.Meeting up out front with friends.picking up my N.Y. Times each day and the fact Dutras had a pagkage store also.In 1978 it was where we bought cases and cases of Pickwick Ale.Pickwick Ale came in big old hard cardboard cases each bottle 16oz. and real returnable bottles.Some had so many roller marks on the bottles they were like sandpaper.It also cost around 8 bucks a case which made it our beer of choice outside Bally Triple XXX Ale at the Surfclub.78 we had a tent trailer for Jimmy and Marty a 8 man tent for Tom and I and a living area in between with many lawn chairs from the Truro Dump.We also had a smaller tent we called the nab tent for dates and we were pretty much scattered over three sites at NTCA but at the edge of overflow and two thirds of our compound was actually into Seashore Land.Anyhoo halfway through that summer there was a strike at a Rhode Island Brewery and you could not find a Pickwick at Dutras.We had plenty of empty bottle cases on site used as end tables,to place shirts and pants on and as the famous shaving stand with the bottle of Jack Daniels used as aftershave holding up the shaving mirror.So we hadn't seen a Pickwick in like 18 days and one day after work we took a cruise into Provincetown from Babes with Pierre one of our Babes owners and he says to stop at this little store way up in the almost all house early part of Commercial Street way before the wharf and he comes out with whatever he needed and pulls a bottle of Pickwick from under his shirt.We all jump out of the car and inside the lady has 8 cases of 16oz Pickwick Ale.We bought them all and had our stash for a week or so and right after that the strike ended.I still have an empty Pickwick bottle somewhere in the apt which is a holy relic much like the Babes Beaver plate which I'll talk about later.