Winter must come awfully early to that little spit of sand called Provincetown.

The town isn't exactly Mayberry to begin with, if you know what I mean. But as the cold winds blow relentlessly down Commercial Street and the gray waves slap constantly against the shore, the isolation must lead to a total divorce from reality. Think Jack Nicholson in ''The Shining."

How else to explain the bizarre behavior of a majority of the town's selectmen at a meeting earlier this month?

To wit, Selectwoman Sarah Peake spun her chair around near the end of the Nov. 14 meeting, gazed up at an oversized oil painting depicting the Pilgrims voting on the Mayflower Compact when they first landed in Provincetown, and declared that she wanted it removed.

Mind you, it's not that she didn't like the look or the colors or the style. It's not that she thought it was too big or too small for the Judge Welsh Hearing Room. It's not that it clashed with anything around it.

No, what Peake didn't like was that the painting didn't include any women. That and the fact that the painting's only Indian -- Native American, I'd better call him -- wasn't holding a ballot like everyone else.