Popeye Enos’s marker. [2013, Dunlap]
Maurice Victor “Popeye” Enos (1921-2000) was already dressed in his sailor suit as he prepared to lead the Fourth of July Parade in 2000, as he had for years. All of a sudden, he was dead of cardiovascular disease. His death that day deprived the parade of its most recognizable marshal, and the town of one of its most happily eccentric contemporary inhabitants. In a captain’s cap, with his face scrunched, and a corn-cob pipe protruding from his massive jaw, Enos did indeed resemble Popeye. With the passage of the Massachusetts Bottle Bill in 1982, he found a way to make ends meet that pleased him far more than cooking and cleaning up at the Wharf Luncheonette: redeeming empty cans and bottles for the 5-cent deposit that their purchasers forfeited by simply throwing them away. He made the rounds daily, picking up bottles and cans in an old A&P shopping cart. “He liked the independence, the walking, the fresh air, and the constant contact with others,” Jan Kelly wrote in her “Kelly’s Corner” column in Provincetown Magazine in July 1998. “‘Nice talkin’ with folks, they all got somethin’ to say.'” (The other “Popeye” was David Scott.)
Maurice Enos in his Popeye outfit, in front of Cape Tip Sportswear. [Ben Kettlewell / Provincetown Diaspora]
In memoriam
• Find a Grave Memorial No. 190295716.
• “Kelly’s Corner: A Tribute to Maurice ‘Popeye’ Enos,” Provincetown Magazine, 1998-07-02. [Jan Kelly / Provincetown History Preservation Project 6552]
• Provincetown’s Historic Cemeteries and Memorials, by Amy Whorf McGuiggan, Memorial No. 84.
¶ Last updated on 12 December 2021.