“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In the 68th session, July 6, 1964, page 221, Seth stated that our friend Bill Macdonnel, who was going to vacation in Provincetown, Cape Cod, for a few weeks, “will of course go to the seaside. There is a man, perhaps fifty years old, with whom he will become acquainted, or with whom he may become acquainted, with prickly hair. I see a rowboat with a symbol of some sort on it. I do not particularly see any women. That may be because my interests are somewhat different now, though this could be misleading.”

(Bill returned from Provincetown last Saturday, Aug. 29, 1964. Visiting us the next day, Sunday, he confirmed Seth’s statements in almost all instances.

(Bill reached Provincetown the second week in July. He had not been there long, he said, when he did meet a man as described by Seth in the 68th session. His name and address will be furnished on request. The man was 54 years old actually, and his “prickly hair” turned out to be a brush cut. Bill first got acquainted with him in the Old Colony Bar in Provincetown. The man is from New York City, and was spending a week in Provincetown to “get away from his wife and family.”

(First, after some thought and figuring of dates, Bill states that the date, 7/29, is correct for the situations described below. By this time he had been in Provincetown long enough to meet various people.

(Larry O’Toole, it developed, rented for the summer the “front room across from a beach.” This room is part of a cottage that is joined to another cottage in the crowded Provincetown area, and both units are, actually, directly in back of a business establishment that faces on Provincetown’s main street, Commercial St. To reach them it’s necessary to use an alley around the business establishment. To explain the rather complicated setup, Bill drew a map for Jane and me, and my copy of it is included with these notes.

(The party broke up rather early that evening, and Bill then went to the Atlantic House bar with Garry and Larry, where he saw the keg. Bill states that another bar in Provincetown has many small kegs dangling from the ceiling as a means of decoration, but these kegs are quite small, and do not compare with the one in the A-House for size.

(Bill Macdonnel also states that as one looks out the front room of Larry O’Toole’s cottage, he sees just to the left a dock with boats, although Seth stated it as “a boat and dock,” singular. To the right of the joined cottages is the Provincetown Playhouse.

(The front room overlooking the water is, contrary to expectations, rather an unusual one in Provincetown, Bill said, since the cottages are rather crowded in against other buildings in somewhat of a helter-skelter fashion, and actually most of them do not command a view of the water. In this O’Toole’s cottage was out of the ordinary. The bar in the cottage has a small beer keg, Bill said, but he does not believe this is the one referred to by Seth.

(Let it be stated that neither Jane nor I have ever been to Provincetown, anywhere on the Cape. I spent one day in Boston about 23 years ago while in the service, on my way to an airfield in Maine by train.

(For the record: I copied Bill Macdonnel’s map of the Provincetown area discussed in the 82nd Session.)