(2008)
The Papetsas family made their home here beginning in 1959: John “Jack” Papetsas (1930-2009) and Patricia Helen “Trisha” (Cabral) Papetsas (1930-2014), and their sons Brock M. Papetsas, who was then seven years old, and Thadd D. Papetsas, who was four. Jack Papetsas had been introduced to Provincetown when he served in the Coast Guard during the Korean War. After settling here, he was a construction worker, a crew member aboard F/V Peter and Linda, a bartender at the A House, and an employee at Sal’s Restaurant, which he eventually owned. In 1965, he transferred his interest in No. 70 to Trisha. She was the daughter of Mary “Mamie” (Taves) Cabral and William P. “Captain Bill” Cabral, for whom she organized fishing parties, and the sister of Robert E. “Bobby” Cabral, with whom she worked at the Cee Jay Corporation.
In 1973, Trisha Papetsas and the abutter, Charles Bennett of 70A Commercial Street, went to legal war over the question of whether Bennett had the right to drive over a portion of Papetsas’s property to get from West Vine Street to his house, and also whether he had a legitimate claim to a 400-square-foot panhandle at the northwestern corner of her property, on which Bennett kept a shed. Papetsas prevailed in Superior Court, but Bennett ultimately won in the Massachusetts Appeals Court.
Papetsas sold the property in 2000 to Dr. Joseph G. Todaro of Boston. He has made a sideline of renting 70 Commercial Street for “fabulous vacations, weddings, and annual reunions.”
For a view of the shed, please see 70A Commercial Street.
¶ Last updated on 8 July 2018.
For further reading online
70 Commercial Street website.