TRURO – He’s been here near the tip of Cape Cod long enough to have watched hemlines and haircuts dramatically yo-yo, to remember finger-snapping beatniks and flower-power hippies, to recall boomtime summers and storms of economic despair.

But as another summer appears on his horizon, Dave Prelack can stare out as the sun dances on salty water, just feet from the window of his Kalmar Village & Tradewinds here, and exhale.

Finally ready to bid adieu to the season of pandemic and fear on the sand.

“It doesn’t even register with me,’’ Prelack told me the other day as a warm morning sun climbed higher in the sky. “I think people have adjusted. A lot of people are vaccinated. I’m vaccinated.

“Is it possible to get sick still? Maybe. But I don’t sit here thinking about it.’’

He doesn’t have time.

The march of the calendar is inexorable. Another summertime on Cape Cod dawns on his doorstep.

And he likes what he is hearing from his neighbors and those who keep track of the economic biorhythms of this vacation mecca – this land of the sparkling sea with a magnetic pull that keeps traffic humming across the Cape Cod Canal.

“The spring season was strong,’’ said Paul Niedzwiecki, chief executive officer of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. “Reservations are very strong. It looks like it’s going to be busy.

“The challenge for us is the labor supply. The demand is strong and the question is: How are we going to respond to the labor supply shortage?”

Few people are as familiar with that manpower equation as Dave Prelack, who is standing just 700 feet from the Provincetown line on property his parents bought in the late 1960s when he was just a 7-year-old boy.

“I have a picture of myself painting the sign out front when I was probably 8 or 9 years old,’’ he said. “In the ‘60s, there was a group of hippies or beatniks who were protesting in town over something to do with the government.

“And that same group then got into a station wagon and drove here to Kalmar Village because this was one of the few places that had a pay phone. And they were going to call the White House. But then they camped out on the lawn at Kalmar. They were right outside that window. There must have been 10 of them in the car. So, I found that humorous.’’

Finding humor in the hospitality business is something like the secret sauce in this place of shingle-sided cottages sprinkled across five acres of waterfront and 400 feet of private beach.

Prelack has learned that along the way – along a path that wound its way through Wisconsin, where he collected an economics degree in 1983, and to Boston University, where he did some post-graduate work.

“I always worked side-by-side with my father,’’ he said. “His generation wasn’t the computer generation. So, I remember carrying my first big Mac in a 40-pound satchel and I would start doing reservations on that.

“And that was like this kind of breakthrough because prior to that my family would sit down in the wintertime and we would address envelopes to mail out to customers. And probably up until five years ago, I was still using paper charts. And then I started this transition to what we all know now – to book online. You couldn’t book online before.’’

Those are warm and gauzy recollections of a life greeting guests, painting cabins, manicuring lawns, and fixing washing machines – of performing the daily duties that make guests exhale after their pull into the parking lot and smile as they head to the beach to enjoy the magic that Cape Cod offers each summertime.

Magic that people like 61-year-old Prelack, his wife, Kathy, and their longtime friend, carpenter Mark Kittredge, aim to preserve as the curtain is raised on the summer of 2022.

“One thing that is really cool is that you do see generations of the same family come back here,’’ Dave Prelack said. “And it means so much to them. I can’t tell you how many people say, ‘We look forward to this all year long.’ And then they’ll come back with their kids. And come back with their grandkids.

“I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. And in some ways – it sounds crazy – you become friendly with people and it means so much to them. And you like it enough yourself, too, that you don’t want to let people down.’’

People like those who stood on his lawn the other day to watch young newlyweds – Nick and Hilary – dance beneath a white, canopied tent as smartly attired guests smiled and applauded and sang along to Billy Joel’s anthem to love.

I said I love you, that’s forever/ And this I promise from the heart / I couldn’t love you any better/ I love you just the way you are

There was wonderful food. And heartfelt toasts. And a warm, salty breeze.

A breeze that held the promise of a long and loving life together.

The promise of another season on the sand and under the sun of old Cape Cod.

Thomas Farragher is a Globe columnist. He can reached at thomas.farragher@globe.com.

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