A woman in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, wonders: Why is the less busy period in a tourist area known as the shoulder season? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Shoulder Season”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Betsy.
Hey, Betsy.
I’m from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
From Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Cape Cod, welcome to the show.
What’s up?
We, meaning Cape Codders, are in the midst of what we refer to as our tourist shoulder season.
And the question is, where does that originate?
And by shoulder season, you mean what?
It’s on either side of our high tourist season.
So we’re still getting visitors, but then it sort of ramps up to our high season, and then it sort of ramps down to the other side of our tourist season, shoulder season, less busy.
So you have two shoulder seasons then?
Yep.
And what are the periods for Cape Cod?
Generally, it is late spring, early summer, or after Labor Day in the fall.
Right. And so those are the periods where it can be a really good deal to go there, right?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
But the weather might not be quite as nice and not as many things are open or as open as long.
Right.
Correct. And, for example, right now the weather is beautiful, but the water might be a little cold.
So if you want to go and spend all day splashing around in the water, getting chased around by sharks, it’s not going to happen this time of the year.
And the shoulder seasons, as I understand it, tend not to be the traditional vacation times.
Correct. The traditional vacation time is when school is out.
Right.
You actually gave a great explanation for it because you were talking about how there’s sort of this curve where there’s this level of tourism there and then it kind of goes up.
And then it goes back down.
It’s sort of almost like a profile, you know, a silhouette of shoulders and a head.
So a plateau of a shoulder curving up to the roundness of a head or spiking up to a pointy head and then coming back down to another plateau of a shoulder.
That’s cool.
Yeah, it’s kind of like a silhouette.
But that is the origin of it, right?
It’s the shape of the graph when you put it on paper.
Right, or just the notion of it, you know, just less and then more and then less again.
And it appears to go back to the mid-20th century.
And the earliest citations I’ve seen involving shoulder season have to do with aviation.
Interesting.
And, you know, when planes fly certain places.
Right.
They may have seasonal routes.
But also it’s related to the idea of a shoulder as something on the side.
So it’s the side of the main season.
Exactly.
Like the shoulder of the road.
Exactly.
I was wondering if it had something to do with the shoulder of a road, especially when you’re talking about tourists that are driving out here to vacation.
With the non-literal language, we often find many contributing factors kind of throw in their notions to combine and give us the overall understanding of a term like shoulder season.
Well, that’s wonderful. I appreciate it.
My volunteers, the not-for-profit where I work, will be fascinated.
They’re the ones that sort of prompted this conversation.
That’s cool. And what business are you in?
Are you part of the tourist business there?
Actually, I work for Mass Audubon.
I work at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.
Oh, nice.
That’s very cool.
Well, we certainly would love to see you.
We’d love to have you visit us.
Okay.
Maybe in the shoulder season.
It’s certainly a lot less busy.
Betsy, thank you for your call.
We really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Take care.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Well, it sounds like Cape Cod is a wonderful place that we need to go.
Let’s go.
And you can go right here and call us with the questions about where you’re from and the things that are happening in your life and your work.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
