My man C.L. Smooth was at White Horse Beach for this picture, but that sign may need to go up off Duxbury Beach this morning...
It's swim at you own risk time in Deluxebury, as an as-yet-unconfirmed sighting of a Great White Shark went down off of Ocean Road North this morning.
The sighting was made by a boater. I could not confirm if it was a more sea-wary Fisherman type of boater. Either way, there's a 10-15 foot fish close enough to shore that the witness was able to assign a street name to his report.
Many fish are mistaken for the Great White. Basking Sharks are common off Duxbury Beach, and usually show up around this time of year, too. They are actually larger than Great Whites, and an inexperienced observer or even a good one who got a hurried look at it could make a classification mistake. They eat nothing but plankton.
If you can see the dorsal fin, here's how you tell a Great White Shark from a Basking Shark. The GWS fin is pointier, like a surfboard, and has a sharp tip. The dorsal fin of a Basking Shark is much more rounded, and looks like the end of an ironing board. The dorsal fin of the Basking Shark will also flop around limply as the shark turns in the water. The GWS, on the other hand, is always on that Cialis tip.
The sighting could also be an Ocean Sunfish, which can get up to 10 feet or so. The video with the Boston guy cursing at a sea monster involved a sunfish.
Dolphins and even whales can also be mistaken for a GWS, and are common enough in Duxbury's waters.
Also, keep in mind that the guy who is telling you about Basking Sharks and Sunfish is sitting comfortably onshore in Bourne. The guy who actually saw the fish in question is saying "Great White Shark."
Either way, the Duxbury Harbormaster is advising you to stay out of the waters off of Duxbury this morning. He sent some boats out to investigate the sighting, but he found nothing. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy did not detect this shark on their tagged-shark detection buoys.
As my Doctor told me once.... "It's the law of the sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. After that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
We have several reporters embedded in the region, and will update you when we have some more information.
Be careful out there, my friends. This magazine can not afford to lose any readers.
UPDATE.... he's hanging around, he just set off the shark detector buoy at 2:42 PM today.
Bluefish and Striped Bass are the two favorite fish of the Bay State surfcaster. We're going to have a look at both fish over the course of this week. We're not experts, but we'll try to give you a good working knowledge of our subjects. We'll proceed in an abecedarian fashion.
Bluefish are the sole (pardon the fish pun) members of the Pomatomidae family. They are distantly related but biologically distinct from Gnomefish. They are known by various names, be it "Shad" in Africa, "Tailor" in Australia and "Elf" on the US West Coast. No, I've never heard it called "elf" either, but this column has a prominent East Coast bias.
You can find the Bluefish in almost any ocean. They do avoid a few places (they avoid much of the Pacific, and the Atlantic between Florida and northern South America) for reasons that only Bluefish know. They migrate heavily. The Blues who you eat all summer spend their winters off the Florida coast. They spawn off of North Carolina. They arrive in Massachusetts by June, and are usually gone for the most part by some time in October.
Bluefish can grow to almost 4 feet long, although 20-25 inches is more of the norm. They can get up to 40 pounds, although anything beyond 20 is exceptional. The Massachusetts state record is a 27 pounder caught by Louis Gordon in 1982 off of Graves Light... way the heck out on Boston Harbor.
The IGFA world record is a 31+ pounder caught off of Cape Hatteras, NC. Check him out right here.... he looks like he could bite off a human head.
Bluefish work in schools, and some schools are very large. One school I saw written about covered 10,000 football fields. They migrate in schools, and concentrate in schools at certain areas. Young ones are known as Snappers.
Bluefish live about 9 years or so, and they are hard-core breeders. Some studies suggest multiple breeding seasons. Stocks dwindled in the 1980s, but management raised the numbers to healthy levels by 2007 or so. 92 million pounds were harvested in 1986, while 7 million was harvested in 1999. Our most recent 5 year average was 13 million pounds. 80% of Bluefish that are caught are caught by recreational anglers. The only saltwater fish who is fished for more by recreational anglers is the Striped Bass.
The Bluefish sports a baby's momma-like disposition, and will bite anything that gets in his path. They, and some species of ant that I read about somewhere, are the only non-humans who kill for fun reasons other than predation, mating, protecting their young, and territoriality. They eat any sort of bait fish. Bluefish suppers include menhaden, sardines, shrimp, squid, mackerel, anchovies, jack, and fisherman fingers.
The gangsta style of the bluefish leaves them few willing enemies in the ocean, but things that will mess with them include seals, sharks, tuna, sea lions, billfish, dolphins and others. I'd guess that humans kill the most Bluefish, followed by seals.
Bluefish are one of the very few fish that a landlubber can watch in action without viewing a documentary. You get this benefit via the Bluefish Blitz, which is when a school of Bluefish chase a school of prey (in Massachusetts, this usually involves Mackerel) close to shore and pins them along the coast. They then close in and just maul the poor bait fish in a feeding frenzy. Bluefish, for some reason, will kill long after they've eaten their fill.
Mackerel will beach themselves rather than be devoured by the Blue Meanies. The waters literally churn like rapids, and the seas flow red with the blood of the Unfortunate.
I saw a guy in the 1970s who apparently had great confidence in his hip waders walk into a blitz off Duxbury Beach, dip a friggin' laundry basket into the water and come up with a Bluefish and some Mackerel. He then put a hook in each bait fish and reeled in additional Blue with this regular-bait method. That's a real, capital-M Man, kids.
The only Bluefish attack on a non-fisherman involved a girl in Spain who may have wandered into the edge of a blitz. The shark attack on Truro in the 1990s was initially blamed on a Bluefish by some people.
If you don't want to risk a bad fish-bite wound, try using 40 pound test fishing line. The Blue is a muscle torpedo, and he puts up a ferocious fight. He can bite through weak line without any great effort. Handle a beached Bluefish with care, as he is a sore loser and is more than capable of taking a fingertip off of a sloppy or careless fisherman.
Bluefish are known as a gamy fish. As we said, it's a muscle torpedo, and that leads to what chefs call "personality." Bluefish have a time-sensitive compound that kicks in 3 days after death that makes it very, very gamy. You want to shop local for fish, and especially Bluefish. Patronize someone who can tell you when the fish that they're selling you was caught. The larger the fish, the stronger the gamy flavor.
There are ways to cut this flavor. Bluefish meat has muddy/reddish areas that are extra oily and lead to a stronger flavor. Fishermen sometimes cut this part out before consuming or even storing the meat. Some anglers soak Bluefish meat in milk for an hour to cut the gamy flavor down. You can also make the Bluefish fight stronger-flavored herbs/spices/sauces... in a skillet!
That's all for now. Get out there and get yourself some Bluefish!
Beaches are closed for swimming in Plymouth after a Great White Shark was spotted by a fisherman yesterday.
Manomet Point, which is the sight of the last shark attack in Massachusetts (remember the kayak-eating shark?), scored another shark yesterday. It's like Monomoy West out there!
A lobsterman (Bob Ward) pulling up his pots had a "Hooper drives the boat, Chief" moment when a large porker followed his pot to the surface, perhaps briefly mistaking the moving pot for a seal. He was about a half-mile off of a packed-with-bathers Manomet Point.
He called the local gendarme, and beaches were closed for swimming soon after.
Beaches are also close for swimming today. I'm presently not sure if the beaches themselves are closed.
The Atlantic Shark Conservancy verified the shark's presence, which may or may not mean that the shark spotted was tagged by Dr. Gregory Skomal.
We'll get back to you if the shark eats someone.
Cranberry County Magazine thanks this shark for showing up just after we did our Summer Shark Spectacular article.
"I'll drive my car through a hotel, through a motel, through a Quality Innnnnnnnnnnn"
A woman from New York made a little faux pas with the laws concerning parking cars inside buildings last night as she drove her car right into Room 102 of the Quality Inn in Bourne.
The driver was cited and released. Her companion was taken away in cuffs, and also was later released. They're sleeping in the room next to the disaster they caused right now.
No one was injured. The family who was supposed to be in that room arrived at the hotel 15 minutes after the accident. Had they arrived earlier, they would have been killed in the accident. It went down in the 9 PM hour.
Damages to the hotel were extensive, but the town's building inspector allowed the hotel to stay operative.
"Remember, this is Cape Cod on a scorching July weekend," said the hotel's night auditor, who asked not to be identified because he's also writing this article. "I had someone trying to rent that room for $20 cash an hour later."
Massachusetts has several sea monsters in her history.
Daniel Webster saw a sea serpent off of Duxbury, and Gloucester had numerous modern serpentine sightings. Moby Dick is tied to us to a small extent, and Jaws is tied to us to a great extent. We are the new, hip place for Great White Sharks to go, and we even had a Killer Whale in town last week. Lovecraft knew what he was doing when he put Arkham in Massachusetts.
However, our nastiest, ickiest sea monster is larger than a Blue Whale, and the only thing on Earth larger than it is a distant cousin of it.
There's no way to avoid it, as it goes where the ocean pushes it. We have no sensors to detect the presence of it, and we don't know if one is around until people start being injured by the hundreds.
Bullets don't harm it, a missile would go right through it, it survived an asteroid strike and you can hack it to pieces without lessening the danger it poses. Oh yeah, it's positively dripping with poison. It may also be immortal.
It'd take a shipload of Hit Points to kill one of those, huh? Thankfully, Godzilla incinerated this monster with his nuclear fire-breath in that 1970s movie, right? Wait... what??
It's real???
No...
Yes.
This monster that we speak of is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish. The LJM is a species of Cnidarian, a phylum that encompasses the Jellyfish family.
It is prevalent in the northern Atlantic, as it prefers colder water. They can not tolerate warmer waters, and are rarely found below 42 degrees north latitude. They dine on zooplankton, just like other giant creatures do. They are pelagic (open ocean) for most of their lives, but they tend to drift into bays as the currents dictate.
It is the largest known jellyfish, and holds the World's Largest Thing title if you don't count stretched-out Bootlace Worms. Massachusetts holds the world record for LJM (and, thusly, everything else), a feat they performed when a LJM washed ashore in a town that I cant find the name of. If anyone knows, hit me up in the comments.
This Lion's Mane Jellyfish that washed up in Massachusetts was 7 feet across. The tentacles, when stretched out, were over 120 feet long. The largest Blue Whales are about 20 feet shorter. That's a lot of jelly! You'd have to slaughter every character that Charles Schultz ever drew to make a corresponding amount of Peanuts Butter to get a PB&J out of that sucker, and that's before we find a football field's worth of bread to house the whole sandwich.
Most of that length is Tentacle, and each of those tentacles is lined with poisonous barbs that would break off into human skin quite nicely. The barbs get fired off like harpoons any time something- like you- touches the tentacle. The poison, while generally not fatal to a healthy adult, can cause critical burns. A jellyfish has thousands of such tentacles.
Now, something like that floating around in the middle of the ocean isn't much of a problem for most of us, and is just a small part of the general Cowardice that keeps me from doing things like Carnival Cruises or joining the Navy.
However, there is nothing to stop one of these creatures from washing ashore in Massachusetts. What beach it hit depends entirely on the currents.
"Washes ashore in Massachusetts" doesn't mean "one washed up here, once, in 1870." We are well within the range of these things, and they have inflicted mass injury in New England before.
Rye, New Hampshire is a nice place to go beaching. However, it wasn't so nice in July of 2010. A LMJ the size of a trash can lid with 20-25 foot tentacles washed into a group of bathers. Officials attempted to remove it, which only broke it up into innumerable pieces.
This, plus the wave action that breaks jellyfish apart, loosed the barbs from the tentacles, and the sea around Rye was a puddle of pain. The barbs can sting long after the jellyfish is dead, and long after their removal from the host creature.
Thinking that the danger had passed, bathers in Rye went back into the water... water that was filled with microscopic, poisonous, floating barbs. Over 150 people were injured.
Most of the injuries were minor, because, as bad as it was, swimming into a spread-out infestation of barbs is different than directly contacting a LJM and getting thousands of stings at once. Still, five people needed to be taken to the hospital. The rest were treated on-site with vinegar and baking soda. Old salts swear by meat tenderizer, as well.
As you can see from my handy map of the currents off Massachusetts, had that beast not become trapped in the surf off Rye, it very easily could have moved with the currents down the Massachusetts, visiting Boston, Plymouth, Cape Cod...
You won't know that it's here... until the screaming starts. If you see it, it's already too late.
Cape Cod is all about Welcome! We rely on our tourists, and go to great lengths to draw them in to us. Without visitors, we'd be in a mess of trouble. We white people were once visitors ourselves, and we may have perished without the hospitality of the incumbent residents.
There have been times, however, where we sought to limit that access. Granted, the visitors in question had a habit of killing both livestock and perhaps the occasional Pilgrim-era child. They also were rather noisy at night, especially when the moon shone brightly. You couldn't go out safely without a gun. Things got bad enough that we once considered building a fence, right here in Bourne.
That seems sort of Donald Trumpish, but we're not talking about Muslims, Mexicans or even a Mohegan. We're speaking about wolves. Pilgrims and Sachems may have viewed the wolf differently, but both would agree that life is generally much happier when a hungry one isn't walking around the neighborhood.
Man has only been on Cape Cod for a hot minute when compared with the overall natural history of the region, but our time here has seen us be Impact Players to the point where you can divide the whole of Cape Cod's natural history into two parts. One part would be Since Man Arrived, and the other would be Everything Else.
Wolves were chased off Cape Cod by the time of the Industrial Revolution. The chief culprit was Habitat Destruction, and they were also heavily hunted once the Europeans arrived. The native Americans lived in harmony with nature, but their English cousins cleared out the forests. The wolves were gone soon after. However, during the process, there was a period- almost two centuries- where it was not unusual to lose livestock to the Big Bad Wolf.
Massachusetts was not even remotely urban outside of some bustling villages for a while, and they were almost 100% dependent on localized farming and livestock raising. Wolves love themselves a good steak dinner if they can get it, and they don't really care if it hurts the people who are stealing their land. This set the stage for conflict.
A coyote, but a coyote that may be 25% wolf (Scituate, taken by Matthew Loveitt) In 1713, the town of Eastham decreed that they would pay out 3 pounds for a wolf, payable when you show up at the constable's place with an adult wolf head. Since our little Cape wasn't the millionaire haven it is now, you know that anything worth a bounty was at least somewhat of a serious problem.
A person could make a fairly nice 1713 living by helping to rid the Cape of this toothy difficulty, if your definition of "nice" includes "hunting multiple apex predators in a dark, uncharted Algonquin forest with a single-shot-per-minute musket."
There were even bounties issued on individual wolves, with payment going to "any individual who shall kill the wolf who has of late been prowling through the township."
In 1717, the town of Sandwich came upon a unique idea. Why not build a fence to block Cape Cod off from wolves?
There are several famous walls, all built to keep something Bad out of (or in) a town. Hadrian's Wall was built to stop barbarians. The Great Wall of China was built to repel Mongols. The Berlin Wall was built to keep the Communists from leaving. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" made for a fine movie, but is completely unrelated to the topic.
The wall would have run roughly along the same path of the present Cape Cod Canal. I presume it would have been made of wood, and maybe stone. I don't know if they planned to extend it out into the ocean a bit, as a wolf who is determined to get to Hyannis Port can always swim out past the fence.
Whether this fence would hold up if the wolf huffed and puffed, we'll never know.
As near as I can tell, it would have started at Peaked Cliff (extreme north Sagamore Beach), worked along the line of the Herring River into and though Bournedale, before finishing up at Buttermilk Bay. Remember that the western/southern end of what is now the Canal was back then a swampy area where several small rivers emptied.
The Bournedale wolf wall was met with something less than enthusiasm by the townspeople, and the idea was shelved permanently. Aside from the obvious cost and effort, there was a sentiment about town that the wall, while keeping wolves out, would also keep wolves we already had in.
It was instead decided to wage an environmental holocaust, deforest an entire region, and chase the fauna into New Hampshire. Ironically, about 200 years later, they decided to instead dig a moat and float oil tankers and container vessels through the same area. The Cape Cod Canal had pretty much the exact effect that Sammich voters were asked to consider in 1717. The Canal became a stopping point for most animal migration, and it is fairly amazing that we somehow got a bear to Truro recently.
We may never get wolves again, although they are advancing south and east from Canada. Once they get to New Hampshire, it becomes only a matter of time before one of them ponders a swim across the Canal. Lesser predators such as fishers and coyote have already made the Hop.
In fact, the wolves may already be here. They got here via the ol' "gradually mate and hybridize (not real science kids, I just made the word up) and then come back disguised as coyote" trick. The local Eastern Coyote has a lot of Grey Wolf in his DNA. A study in Maine showed 22/100 coyotes studied had wolf DNA, with one "coyote" having 89% wolf DNA.
The basic idea here is that, as wolves were chased from a region, they mated with coyote in the regions they fled to. Through kicking it as wolves and coyotes do, the hybridized DNA would spread through the coyote population. The resulting hybrid (a "coywolf") which is migrating back into Massachusetts is the basic current design of that coyote you see in your back yard. If you want to guess at how much Wolf DNA they have, look for pack behavior. Coyotes generally hunt in pairs, while wolf/coyotes work in larger groups.
Mother Nature, who is inexorable, tends to get the last laugh. She no doubt had a solid session watching us ponder and build fences and canals which in the end failed to keep the wild dogs away.
Either way, it may make normally boring Bournedale a little more exciting if you know that it was almost a Checkpoint Charlie for Cape Cod wildlife.
Eastern Massachusetts has a substantial coyote presence. Every town and even every city has them. If you drive at night enough, you'll see them around.
Coyote are not native to Massachusetts, at least as recently as when White People started coming. The canid feared by Myles Standish was the Wolf. You could kill a wolf for a bounty in Plymouth by 1630, and Cape Cod actually considered putting up a wall to keep wolves away.
Trapping, poisoning and habitat destruction drove the Wolf out of Massachusetts and even New England. The wolf was extinct in New England by 1840. We then had a Pax Lycan of wolf-free living. Meanwhile, east-to-west settlement of America drove the wolves west, where they began to breed with the smaller and more adaptable western coyote.
This newly-created hybrid- the coywolf- then began to push east as former farmland reverted back into forest. Before long, they started making appearances in in northern New York and northern New England in the 1930s-1940s. From there, they began to bleed into southern and then southeastern New England. They were all over SE Massachusetts and even Cape Cod by the time the century turned over.
As of 2016, anyone living in any town who might be reading this most likely has a coyote in their neighborhood. What does that mean for them?
Again, the "coyote" we have are actually coywolves. To be fair, "coyote" sampled around here (specimens were taken from Barnstable and closer to Boston) turned up an odd mix... they were about 25% wolf and 10% domestic dog. A four-way mix, a menage a quatre, exists, and differing levels of Coyote, Eastern Wolf, Western Wolf and Domestic Dog is what is walking around in our neighborhoods.
A coywolf is larger and more suited to suburban/urban life, perhaps because or perhaps not because of the dog DNA. It may weigh 50 pounds more than a classic coyote.
A coywolf is bad enough to kill a human if enough of them get in on it. A gang of them killed a Canadian folk singer a few years ago. It most likely won't go down that way if you see coyote around, but that's the worst-case scenario.
What you can do to lower your chances of a coyote fight is to follow a few guidelines. These guidelines are from the Massachusetts Divison of Fisheries and Wildlife, just in case you thought that the guy making the MILF jokes last month in this column has now decided to offer his own untested thoughts on protecting yourself from a predator.
To Avoid A Coyote...
- Secure your garbage.
A coyote is a fine hunter, able to bring down a deer with the right numbers. However, like most everything, they'll take an easy meal if they can get at it. If you have your leftovers from the week in a thin Hefty bag on the side of our house, that's like a Golden Corral to a coyote.
While a coyote can eventually knock over a trash can and force off the lid, animals are cunning, and a great part of cunning involves choosing the path of least resistance for your task accomplishment. Once the coyote moves along from your house to the point where the house is out of his range, he's an SEP... Someone Else's Problem.
- Don't feed a coyote.
Take this as 1A with "secure your garbage," or take the garbage one as "don't indirectly feed the coyote."
Feeding a coyote does triple damage. It keeps him coming back to Freemealistan, it takes away his fear of humans, who he will then associate with food.
I knew a guy in Duxbury who lived on a meadow. He began to see a fox around his house. He soon was able to throw hot dogs to it and have the fox eat them. One night, he made a trail of hot dogs that led right onto his porch, where he was watching the Red Sox. About around inning 7, the fox came up on the porch and ate the stash he had left there. He stuck around for a few innings, not quite begging but still with a 100% food-focus. We were able to pull this stunt at will for a whole summer, enough that, if you added up the innings, the fox probably watched two or three full Red Sox games.
We named him "Redd," and he really wasn't a problem until he got a credit card and started ordering out of the ACME catalog. We were fools to do as we did, but it does go to show you how food association works.
- Be smart with those pets!
A coyote will view a small dog or cat as prey. It will view a large dog as competition. They have unfortunately aggressive reactions to both stimuli.
Your pet is far more likely to be killed by a car than by a wild animal. The threat all across the board is raised, however, if your pet is free-roaming. That's a free-range chicken to a coyote.
Feeding pets indoors is also important, as something which eats carrion and roadkill like a coyote does is going to view a big bowl of Gravy Train on your porch (or even a pile of spilled bird seed in your yard) as you or I might view an ice cream sundae giveaway.
I did find a stat that said "the most common food items were small rodents (42%), fruit (23%), deer (22%), and rabbit (18%)." Only about 2 percent of the (coyote) scats had human garbage and just 1.3 percent showed evidence of cats. "
I my be wrong, but the totals they listed (42+23+22+18) add up to 105%. Either way, cats and rubbish are a minor part of the coyote diet. - Close off potential dens or areas that provide cover.
If you have an open crawl space under your house, you also have a coyote Holiday Inn. There's shelter, ambient heat, nearby food, and a perfect place to issue forth and nurse a litter of the furry fuc*ers.
If you have a bunch of thick brush in your yard, you also are providing a perfect place for the coyote to hide in and strike from. His main targets will be your pets and your trash.
You want to sort of seal your property off from a coyote, rather than make him want to hang around.
- Avoid going into areas that a coyote might favor.
This is especially true during spring and summer, when they are bearing and raising pups.
Of course a coyote can be anywhere. However, you can avoid areas where sightings are frequent, and you can use social media to pick up on sightings.
Ooops, there's a coyote! Now what?
- Remember who runs the f*cking planet.
You, as a human, are more dangerous than a coyote is. Both of you know it. That's why he hasn't attacked yet. He's alive because we have not yet decided to exterminate him.
If you remember that, it will add to your confidence. That will show in your body language, and that could deter an attack.
Like the author said, “Walk tall, kick ass.... and never forget that you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.” - Try a domestic dog command on it.
Who knows? It may work.
If it does, you have a circus act. Try to teach him hockey next, I saw some gypsies in eastern Europe do that with bears once
OK... it probably won't work, but if you do it with some authority, the tone of your voice may deter the beast.
- Try to scare it off.
None of us are Hitchcock, but you can make an attempt to scare off an approaching coyote.
Maintain eye contact, don't show it your back, and don't run. Running will activate the chase instinct.
Screaming, performing mock charges, spreading out your coat to make yourself look 7 feet tall or 4 feet wide, throwing rocks, playing some NWA aloud... make sure ol' Wild E. knows that he'll be in for a squabble if he goes down Messing With You Boulevard.
- Bear arms and fight like Iron Mike.
If you live in an open-carry state, congratz! Shooting an aggressive coyote is one of those good reasons for having a gun.
If you can't or don't walk the b-lock with the G-lock c-ocked, there are other means by which to drive off or even kill a coyote. A good walking stick can deter a nosy coyote. Pepper spray or some sort of bear repellent spray will make them think twice about having themselves some people food. An air horn will both scare them away and summon attention from people who can help you. If the coyote gets in close on you, a good knife will go a long way.
Either way, fight to the death. It probably won't come to that, and the coyote will probably run off before sustaining crippling injuries, but don't let your own Lack Of Intensity be the reason for that.
You may feel badly about beating down a coyote with a lead pipe, but you're actually doing him a favor. A coyote who doesn't fear humans is a coyote who will eventually have to be euthanized.
Be The Dominant Primordial Beast.
If a pack of them come up on you and if you can't avoid it, fu*k up the meanest looking one first.
Dogs of any sort live by a dominance hierarchy, and it's easier to have one brutal fight with the top dog than it is to have a half dozen fights where the opponent keeps getting better.
Look at it this way... if a pack of celebrity dogs rushes you and you smack Cujo in the face hard enough to make him run away, you're probably not going to get much of an argument from Lassie afterwards.
Notify Authorities When A Coyote Becomes Aggressive.
An aggressive coyote is just the reason to have an Animal Control Officer on the payroll.
"Coyotes are naturally afraid of people and their presence alone is not a cause for concern, though depending on human-related sources of food, coyotes can become habituated. A habituated coyote may exhibit an escalation in bold behavior around people. The coyote has lost its fear of people when it exhibits one or more of the following behaviors. The coyote: * Does not run off when harassed or chased * Approaches pets on a leash * Approaches and follows people When wildlife exhibit these behaviors, corrective measures can be taken. If an immediate threat exists to human life and limb, public safety officials including ACOs, police departments, and the Massachusetts Environmental Police, have the authority to respond to and dispatch the animal as stipulated in the Code of Massachusetts Regulations (CMR) 2.14 that pertain to handling problem animals . This includes animals exhibiting clear signs of rabies. If possible, MassWildlife should first be contacted to authorize the lethal taking of a coyote. Coyotes taking pets are not considered an immediate threat to human safety, therefore ACO's and municipal police departments are not authorized to remove these wild animals."
When the traffic gets bad enough and pols start talking about making residents pay tolls to cross a theoretical third bridge, people who live in the mainland areas of Bourne and Sandwich start getting angry. When that anger boils up enough, you even hear talk of secession.
"We lost any financial benefits from Cape traffic in 1985. Start our own town, demand financial concessions from Cape Cod for the traffic, and dump both bridges into the Canal if the Cape says no" is the general tone of secession talk.
I'm not going to support the "dump the bridges" talk, as it is terrorism and might kill someone. I'm also not here to push Secession. It's a fun conversation piece, and it might get me some site visits, but I'm simply not the man with the answers you'd need if you wanted to get the movement going. I'm not sure how it would be done, nor am I sure if it is even a good idea.
I'll leave those questions for a future article, most likely one written in August when I just took 90 minutes to get through the Belmont Circle rotary. Instead, I will take on something that I am completely capable of doing... naming the post-secession town.
We're going to work from a fictional scenario where Buzzards Bay, Bournedale, Sagamore Beach and Scusset Beach have all broken away from Bourne, Sandwich and perhaps even whatever parts of Wareham and Plymouth (why not go for everything east of Red Brook and all of the Great Herring Pond area?) we could get our hands on.
The resultant bow-tie shaped town would need many things, but the main thing it would need is a name. We've kicked around a few, and we'll share some of them with you now. There's no ranking, even if the staff have their own personal favorites.
- Gridlock
"Gridlock" would be a form of protest. It would speak of the new town's plight, while concurrently scaring away tourists who would otherwise clutter up our roads. It would be easy to remember, it would gain us amazing name-recognition value, and might invite investment.
"Gridock" was chosen from among several staff suggestions for traffic-related town names, edging out equally awesome but less serious contenders such as "Jam City, Massachusetts, " "Road Rage, Massachusetts," "Slow Lane, Massachusetts" and "Bumper-to-Bumper, Massachusetts."
"Bumper-to-Bumper" would have a sort of Stratford-upon-Avon sound to it, and would pair us with "Manchester-by-the-Sea" as the only town names in the state with hyphens in them. We'd also join them as the only town names with Prepositions in them.
- Ripton
"Ripton" was the name of a fictional Berkshires town that an awesome western Massachusetts pol (Editor's note: it was a UMass-Amherst professor) invented. He was able to apply for grants, and even got Ripton included in the state budget. He did Ripton's work so well, he was able to obtain state funds for the fictional community. He gave the money back, as he was less interested in Fraud and more interested in pointing out that the state government lacks Western Massachusetts awareness.
Anyhow, my financial adviser- who I will admit up front is in jail at the moment- tells me that he's "pretty sure" that state funds were collected and set aside for Ripton, and that if a Ripton should suddenly appear, they would be owed both the original sum of money and any interest accrued since Ripton's 1980s inclusion in the state budget.
- Capeside
Not a lot of TV shows were set on Cape Cod and the Islands (I can only think of one other one, Wings), but one of the best was Dawson's Creek. I don't think that I saw enough DC to tell you what it was actually about, but it launched the careers of Katie Holmes, James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams and that other kid.
If you were a child of the 1990s and didn't arc a few to Katie Holmes... nice restraint, brother.
The "Capeside" town scenes in Dawson's Creek were actually filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, and any Massachusetts scenery used in the show was filmed in Oak Bluffs. However, why not steal the name? As you can see from the entries above and below this one in the article, it's not like we have any better ideas.
"Capeside" edges out several other fictional town names that we wished to steal from TV, movies or literature, including "Amity," "Crabapple Cove," "Dunwich, "Wallencamp," "Peyton Place," "Gotham City," "Atlantis," "Jerusalem's Lot," "Dudleyville" and "Quahog."
- Wutham
Pronounced what-ham, it would be a goof on neighboring Wareham. We'd spell it "Whatham," but we wish to avoid GPS errors with Waltham.
We'd need Marion to change their name to Whoham in order to complete the trinity.
- Sagamore
"Sagamore" is probably the logical choice, although it would be complicated in that the actual village of Sagamore is on the Cape side of the Canal.
We might have to name the town "Scusset Beach," which would force us to negotiate something with what would most likely be a very hostile Sandwich town government.
The "Scusset Beach" thing would be unfair to the Buzzards Bay part of the new town, while a "Buzzards Bay" naming would be unfair to Sagamore Beach.
Shark City
Assuming that we are unable to cut a concession for traffic from Cape Cod, and assuming that we lack the testicular fortitude to destroy the Canal bridges.... well, not all fights are physical.
If we can't take the physical means of going to Cape Cod away, why not attack them through tourism?
There would be no way of driving a car to Cape Cod without going past the NOW ENTERING SHARK CITY signs which we would dot the highway with. I'd even post the population on town signs, and cross it out every time someone died... you know, like they do in bad towns from cowboy movies.
Sure, most of those deaths would be Old Age, Cancer and so forth.... but you won't be thinking that when you drive past the Shark City sign.
Double Bay
One thing that this fictional town would have on every other town in the state would be the fact that we would be the only town to touch two (Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay) bays.
If you count Buttermilk Bay, we could even be Triple Bay.
This one is here mostly because it would make a great Casino name. If we stole enough of Wareham's eastern and Plymouth's southern forests, we could build a mega-casino right off the highway.
Shoot, I'd leave the bridges up at that point. Who wants to go to Taunton or friggin' Everett when you can instead gamble all night in Double Bay, and then dip over to Cape Cod for some daylight beach time?
Bowtie
"Bowtie" would be a play on the shape of the new town. Yes, it sucks.
Keeping the theme, but changing the shape.... this (and the Casino) would be a big motivator for the Wareham and Pymouth land grabs. If we seize the Ponds sections of Wareham and Plymouth, we'd be shaped like a mini-Connecticut.
Squanto
"Squanto" beats out "Samoset," "Metacomet," and "Massasoit" for Algonquin tribute purposes.
Squanto has the best Q Rating, and would be the best tourist-drawing name.
I don't know how we could do it, but maybe Johnny Depp or the Farrelly Brothers could be convinced to re-invent Squanto as an action hero. Maybe he goes all Seagal on invading Mi'kmaq, or perhaps he even kills a Sasquatch that was menacing Priscilla Alden. Squanto's story is an amazing one, but it needs more kung-fu and dinosaurs if he's getting his own town
Have Any Better Ideas? Let us know in the Comments...
We're transferring our photo archive from one spot to another, and we're unearthing a few pictures that we'l be sharing out over the upcoming weeks.
One theme you will see a few times is "Duxbury Beach, Nor'easter."
We have a pile of pics on this topic, so brace yourselves over the next few weeks.
Hurricane season is actually the calm time on Duxbury Beach, so these storm photos will hopefully keep the storm-lovers happy during the off-season.
My memory is notoriously spotty, but I'm pretty sure that these pictures are from a 2007 nor'easter.
My sister Sheila is on the camera, and these pictures are from Ocean Road North on Duxbury Beach
These pictures ran on Cape Cod TODAY, who used to go off-Cape now and then if a writer maybe had a sister trapped in a beach house during a coastal storm.
It is technically Cape Cod Bay, I suppose. It also is part of why the Irish Riviera is included in this article.
If you'd like a scale of reference, take note of the fence in the lower left hand corner.
Keeping a lawn is a tough business on Duxbury Beach. Every winter, the storms take big chunks of it away, and what's left has been power-soaked in Atlantic salt water.
When I lived there, I had a lawn, a garden and a high-maintenance cobblestone patio to the right of that fence. Re-did it every year. I'm one of the very few people walking around in 2016 with a permanently deformed finger relating to a "cobblestone accident."
We're looking north in this picture, down northern Duxbury Beach towards Green Harbor.
It's almost impossible to see the town line, but it's about where the really large (100-150 yards) break in the seawall is if you're ever taking a walk down there. The break exists because the residents there decided that they were highly-enough elevated, and passed on paying the fee being charged to put up the concrete seawall in the 1950s.
Green Harbor gets a bit more of a curve to their seawall. This results in some spectacular surf-to-seawall crash spraying, as the wave hits the wall and rolls down it. You get some sweet house-high spray.
Duxbury has more of a straight-line frontage to storm winds, and they get the more foundation-shaking direct hits.
It looks worse than it is. The seawall takes most of the shots, and the spray- however impressive it may look- isn't as bad as it gets when the actual waves start coming over the wall. It's why the pay so much to repair the seawalls.
A photographer shooting pictures from this vantage point in the Blizzard of '78 or the Halloween Gale of 1991 would have been killed.
This storm did some damage, though. It tore down decks, flooded the street, smashed through fences, ruined yards and scared witless everyone who had moved into the neighborhood since the last really bad storm.
A lot of people in that neighborhood buy a cottage, renovate it, and then realize a bit too late that the area is Poseidon's punching bag. There's a lot of turnover for a neighborhood that is Heaven-on-Earth for the other 364 days of the year.
Again, this is like a C+ storm. It did damage, but it wasn't ripping houses down.
Beach people have a high bar vis a vis How Scared They Get During Ocean Storms. While this is a bit heavy for it, kids in the neighborhood do risk-taking games with slightly smaller storms.
What they call a "Death Run" involves dropping onto the beach between waves ad running as far down the beach as you can before you have to desperately claw your way back up and over the seawall.
"Death Runs" may have died out with my generation. I go to a lot of beaches during storms, and I never see anyone doing them.
... on purpose, anyhow.
The area behind the house we were shooting from is a meadow. Locals call it "Bradford's," after a family that ran a beach parking lot there. It's the Low Ground of the neighborhood.
You can see the remnants of the last of WWII-era cottages below. That house in the background is no longer standing. Someone was going to build condos there before this storm. I believe that the effort has since been abandoned.
Bradford's, like the rest of the neighborhood, sits between Cape Cod Bay and a rather large marsh. The marsh fills up during really high tides, and it spills over into the neighborhood.
The whole Gurnet Road area of Duxbury Beach becomes an island during storms, and the nearest dry land is over about where Duxbury High School is used to be. At the moment this photo was taken, Duxbury Beach was an island, about a half mile offshore.
It's basically why Duxbury Beach won this contest.
I may have run these before, not sure if I did it on this site or not. I lifted the pics from this site.
This is the Trans-Atlantic Cable coming ashore on Duxbury Beach on July 23rd, 1869. It's what Cable Hill is named for.
At the time, it was a big event. The cable stretched 3500 miles, from Brest, France. It cost a then-ridiculous $1.5 million. Everyone in town came out to watch it come ashore (there aren't many on the beach, but there was a 600 person tent on Abram's Hill across the bay), as did dignitaries from around the state. One of the first messages was sent to Napoleon III.
It came ashore at what is now Cable Hill. Since the cable hadn't landed at the time, locals called the area "Rouse's Hummock," after a farmer who was the sole inhabitant of the area for a while. Rouse's Hummock is what Hummock Lane is named for. Ironically, a "hummock" is a hill, while Hummock Lane is the lowest-lying inhabited land in the Gurnet Road area.
Nothing in the Gurnet Road area of Duxbury bears Rouse's name, and it is lost to history.... save for here, of course.
This is the area where the first opening in the seawall is now. The guy standing alone on the dune is about where my(Steve) house would be 100 years later.
Duxbury had a very impressive dune in place. It seems much larger than the dunes down on the uninhabited parts of Duxbury Beach are presently. There was no jetty in Green Harbor at the time. The jetty there went up after the Portland Gale in 1899, limiting the flow of sand down to Duxbury Beach.
Notice that there are no houses around the dunes. A storm in 1806 (my source says 1806, but a Category 3 hurricane hit Massachusetts in 1804) closed the outlet to the sea for the Green Harbor River, Her mouth was further South than it is now, with "now" meaning where the Green Harbor Marina is. The water in the area became stagnant, and was a mosquito factory for 150 years or so. The Cut River was dug out after the GHR mouth closure, but Duxbury Beach was just sand and dunes for a while.
They did subdivide 300 cottage lots in 1888 further down the beach (they're why the Powder Point Bridge was built... prior to the bridge, if Duxbury residents wanted to go to the beach they just took a boat across the bay), but the Portland Gale tore Duxbury Beach to shreds and nixed those plans with the quickness 10 years later.
I'm not sure when the cottages on the north end of Duxbury Beach went up. Duxbury historians have generally been very interested in the Beach Reservation part,of Duxbury Beach while concurrently having no interest at all in the Irish Riviera part further North on the beach. Many people from Duxbury Proper think that this neighborhood is in Marshfield.
Back to the cable....
They (the workers, who may be French, are the ones in the light-colored work shirts, and were the only barefoot ones in the pictures when they are on the actual beach) dragged the cable into what most residents of the area refer to as Bradford's Parking Lot. You can see Bradford's in the bottom picture.
It went into the wooded area at the foot of Cable Hill. If you stalk into the scrub pines on the south end of the hill, you can still find some of the wreckage from the relay station.
From Cable Hill, it went across the marsh into Duxbury Proper, ending at the Cable Office house on the banks of the Bluefish River.
The cable was very busy for a while, and 40 francs would buy you 10 transmitted words.
It was used heavily until a 1929 Grand Banks earthquake/tsunami created an undersea avalanche that destroyed several cables. The Duxbury/France cable was among the casualties.
My dad, in a good example of making busy work, used to pay me $5 per foot for hack-sawing pieces of the cable. It was already snapped by this point, and the sharp edges were sticking up from the beach, so it was more of a public service than it sounds like.
Not to be outdone by the arrival of Sonic onto the South Coast, Cape Cod is importing a national heavy-hitter for a trial run in our local fast food universe.
Chic-Fil-A gained approval from the Cape Cod Commission to open up a drive-thru/eat-in restaurant in Hyannis. The franchise will be will be Chickening Out at the corner of Enterprise Road and Iyannough Road (Route 132). The area was previously overflow parking for the Cape Cod Mall.
Chic-Fil-A (pronounced: "chick filet") is a Georgia-based 1400 restaurant chain which specializes in Chicken. Unlike most fast food joints, I didn't see a cheeseburger on their menu. They use Waffle Fries instead of regular fries. They put pickles on chicken sandwiches, a distinctly Southern thing which I approve of. They also have a chicken-dominated breakfast menu.
I have never seen one of their commercials, so I can't say if their mascot is a clown or a king or a little red-haired girl or even a Kentucky Colonel. If my girlfriend is correct, their commercials are the ones where a cow bothers people while holding a sign that says "EATZ MORE CHICKEN."
Many people only know Chic-Fil-A via their hard-line stance on opposing all things Gay. “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come into contact with Chick-fil-A,” is the chain’s mission statement. Mumbles Menino famously banned them from Boston in 2012 or so. They only use heterosexual chickens for their sandwiches.
Local reactions have been mixed, at least from the section of the community that we sampled. "Praise be to Jesus," said Osterville interior designer Jeff Nonesuch. "I've been searching high and low for a less gay-friendly chicken sandwich."
However, as Hyannis Port retiree (and, she added, former Southerner) Anne Teechikfila said, "I'd sooner hunt and eat seagulls, and that's before you factor in Chic-Fil-A's odious bigotry."
Chic-Fil-A branches are closed on Sundays, which should hit them in the purse in an area of Massachusetts with about a 75 day peak season.
Due to mitigation costs (mostly traffic), the place may lay an egg early if they take off too many peak business days. The Cape Cod Times says that they will have to sell over 81,000 of their $3.49 basic chicken sandwiches just to pay off their traffic mitigation costs.
I do not believe that they will be open by July 14th, Cow Appreciation Day. That's a shame, because you can eat a free meal at any Chic-Fil-A on Cow Appreciation Day, provided that you arrive in the restaurant dressed up as a cow.
We'll let you know when they post their Opening Day date.
Life should be easier. That said, there sure are a lot of towns in Massachusetts. I'm not even considering the irrelevant parts out past Worcester. Eastern Massachusetts is bad enough.
I grew up in Duxbury, and eventually moved to Monponsett. Prior to my move to Monponsett, I had never heard of Monponsett. You could write that off to me being a moron, and you wouldn't be the first... but it also speaks to the theory that there are too many towns in eastern Massachusetts for a reasonable man to keep track of.
It didn't used to be this way. Various kings of England didn't have the ability to commit memorization time to all of those piddling towns in the Massachusetts swamps. The king was a busy man, and needed his memory for more pressing matters. Memory is finite. If a man who is obliged to breed within a limited pool of people knows where Rehoboth is, it means that he may not know who that pretty girl at his coronation is. He might mess around with the royal scepter and become his own uncle or something.
You are most likely playing for lower stakes than that, but it's still a pain if you have some auto parts or pizza or something to deliver, and neither you nor your GPS can really say whether you are in Marion, Wareham or Mattapoisett.
How would Henry VII handle that problem? Simple. Eliminate some variables, just like one of those mathematician guys. You gotta know stuff like that to be the king.
A man doesn't have to know where Wareham or Marion is if Wareham and Marion don't exist. Call the whole area "Rochester"... yeah, that's the ticket. This also saves a monarch the bother of learning how to spell "Mattapoisett." Just think regional.
Similar regional logic applied around the area eliminates bothersome memory issues in town-sized hunks. Not sure where Mansfield is? Sha-ZAM!!! No more Mansfield. Think that Cape Cod has too many towns? Ka-POW!!! Not any more.
Queen Anne probably didn't spend part of her thirties pumping gas, so I assume that she most likely had more on the ball than your faithful author here does. When she thought about her Massachusetts colonies, how did she visualize them?
This map may help:
We use the same basic map to describe this website's coverage area, although we refuse to give up Weymouth and Hull. I've had some luck dating in Weymouth, and Hull is just too damn cool to give up without a war. We even claim parts of Quincy. If the website makes more money or if we get an eager and well-located intern, we'll include the Islands.
This map of Plymouth Colony is very concise. 17 towns fill up what is now Plymouth, Britsol and Barnstable Counties. Bristol County has 20 towns today. It gets bothersome quickly. Honestly, can you really tell me where Berkley is? (Editor's Note: South Coast readers can substitute "Rockland" or "Holbrook" for "Berkley") You can see why the royals did what they did.
Would this work today?
Some problems do show up immediately. I'm sure that Brockton residents would love paying for Duxbury Beach seawall repairs. Padanaram residents would most likely not align politically with the meaner parts of Fall River. Plymouth seems too big, as does Middleboro, Dartmouth and Taunton. Governance of these areas would be unwieldy at best.
Other things stand out when pondering a shift to colonial-era town maps:
- Freetown, a backwater these days, is one of the Big 17 in this alternate reality. Rehoboth also seems to have extraordinary influence.
- Freetown (and parts of Fall River and Assonet) was purchased from the Wampanoags for "20 coats, two rugs, two iron pots, two kettles, one little kettle, eight pairs of shoes, six pairs of stockings, one dozen hoes, one dozen hatchets, and two yards of broadcloth."
- Plymouth looks a bit like Brazil.
- Scituate and Duxbury both enjoy a unique status as America's first suburbs. Building there was most likely spurred by the Great Colonial Hurricane... which is too bad, because we liked the idea of Duxbury being founded because 1636 Plymouth was getting just a little bit too crowded for one Myles Standish.
- Cape Cod is reduced to five towns with this map... Eastham, Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth and Falmouth.
- Swansea, a tiny town these days, was also tiny then. They would have nearly doubled in size if a dispute with Rhode Island was worked out in their favor. They were also serving as a buffer zone with the Wampanoag-dominated area of Mount Hope, sort of a colonial Latvia.
- I'm not sure how they had the Worcester area worked out, but let the record show that Southboro was (and still is) north of Middleboro.
- The Mayor of Duxbury Beach claims rulership over Duxbury and all lands west to (and including) Bridgewater State University. She refuses to accept the various actions of incorporation of the western towns.
- Brockton used to be part of Duxbury.
- I think that Marshfield's borders have been unchanged since a 1640 dispute with Duxbury over Green Harbor was ironed out.
- Taunton could have built a Norton/Easton/Mansfield-sized casino within their original borders.
- Route 3 would have touched Scituate in this political (map) climate.
I have friends who don't eat fast food in any form. They're the smart ones, no doubt, and nature should reward them with longer lives and slimmer waistlines. Pulling into one of these fast food joints literally takes minutes from your lifespan... but we're all dying at some point, right?
Once you go all in and commit, part of the fast food lifestyle is discriminating between different brands. Some people have no brand loyalty at all. Others will deliver an Eff Wendy's rant while holding a quarter pounder that, when you peel the bun off of it, looks like that Noriega guy who used to run Panama.
What kills the fast food lifestyle for many is the paucity of choices. You have the King, you have Wendy, and you have Ronald. If your town or mall rules, you may also have a KFC or a Taco Bell... maybe even both in one store! The presence of a KFC/Taco Bell nearby was a selling point for me when I moved to Buzzards Bay, although this was before I met Jessica and started getting food that comes from the stove and so forth. A man can get used to that.
You still have to pull off the highway and get lunch in 3 minutes sometimes, and I cook poorly enough to invoke a situation where a Happy Meal is a safer nutritional choice than me trying to not burn chicken. At worst, Logan can at least make money suing McDonald's.
Now, Logan will also have the opportunity to get salmonella or Legionnaire's Disease from a new restaurant. Sonic Drive-In is setting her sights upon the virgin territory of New England.
Also known as Sonic, the Oklahoma burger joint has been spreading across the nation since her 1950s inception. She has been slow to come to New England, with just 4 stores in Massachusetts (Peabody, Lawerence, Wilmington and Stoughton) and one in Smithfield, Rhode Island. That ish is about to change, Big Man.
Sonic is expanding the franchise to Somerset, Massachusetts. My sources tell me that the new store opens on April 13th, just one week from when I'm typing this. You'll have to leave pretty early to beat me there. I've never even seen a Sonic, despite going to Florida recently (the only low-rent meal I had there was at a strip bar right when we got off the plane), and I'm long overdue.
I'm being told just now that they also have one working for nearby Swansea. Fall River and New Betty can't be far behind, at that point. Somerset was a bit behind schedule.
The chain has plans to open 36 franchises in the Greater Boston area. "Greater Boston" technically means the eastern third of Massachusetts sans the South Coast and Cape Cod, but it can mean whatever you need it to mean if you think that one will hit it big in Hyannis. I've even read estimates as high s 40 in some articles.They also plan for a smaller amount of franchises in New Hamster and Maine.
You'd better bring a lot of green to the Sonic man if you want to open a franchise. Don't even bother calling unless you have two milly in the bank. My people tell me that it would cost a million to build one up from the ground, or a half million to turn a financially-faltering Wendy's-type building into a Sonic.
If you hurry and establish one before anyone else within 50 miles does, you could have a novelty hit on your hands. Buzzards Bay should try to get one, it would really help their Main Street out.
From what I can see on the Sonic menu, it's the same garbage that you see at the other joints. Burgers, chicken strips, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, fries and so forth.
They seem to have 8 different burgers, the most impressive being one mashed between two pieces of Texas toast. They also have 8 different kinds of hot dogs, each worse than the last.
They do have cool side order options, including chili fries, onion rings (a must in SE Massachusetts and extra-especially in Rhode Island) and mother-loving tater tots. They seem to be shake and slush focused for drinks, although I'm sure that you can get a Coke if you need one.
They also have a Taco Bell-ian/Burger King-ish breakfast menu, but you gotta draw the line somewhere, kids.
If your burger sucks (and if you're armed), why not see if you can throw it into the face of the guy in the car next to you?
UPDATE: This column went to the Smithfield Sonic! We had just taken Twin River for a quick $150, and decided to live large for a meal.
You can go inside, or you can pull up to an individualized service screen parking spot. They have people who skate the food out to you... or run it out if you go when it's raining, like we did.
I do wonder if enough kids roller skate these days to fully staff a Sonic in a small ton. At least the Somerset one is within skating distance of Fall River.
If you eat inside, they take your order, give you a number, and run it out to you when it's ready.
I felt just like Richard Petty!
The food blows pretty hard, like the mighty North wind. We only have ourselves to blame, as we just got a Coney (what they call hot dogs), fries and a strawberry-banana shake. The shake was really good, I wish that I had another right now.
The food?
The hot dog was around the quality of what you'd get at a Food Mart-style gas station if you were fortunate enough to grab one right when it neared optimal temperature. The french fries had a Wal-Mart Great Value sort of taste and appearance, but they're edible if you hide them in ketchup. I did have a seagull refuse one, a first for me.
It stayed down, which is saying something. I can see a lot of this food being regurgitated out of a car window on side streets in Smithfield by people who stopped at a Sonic after a day spent defeating a 30 pack.
Mobil-riffic!
That's why they grow the more powerful strains of marijuana, folks.
I don't believe that they are endorsed by the hedgehog from the video game, although it seems that he'd work cheap and would be a natural. He might be in PETA or something.
Some franchises never take off in New England. Krispy Kreme is the most famous example, as New Englanders violently prefer Dunkin' Donuts. You also don't see Papa John, Domino's or Pizza Hut survive here long... we have too many serious Italians and Greeks running house-of-pizza shops around here to tolerate processed pizza. Taco Bell, however, usually does well wherever they put it.
How will Sonic fare? Only time will tell. I hear that Smithfield does 500 orders a day. I have no idea if that is a profitable rate.
Even with a poor review from this column, it behooves the fast food ninja to make the hajj to whatever Sonic opens near your home town. I wouldn't recommend driving to Rhode Island from Plymouth to get some Sonic, unless they open one in Wareham or Kingston.
We only got Sonic because we were gambling nearby, This is important, as we knew that we were writing a Sonic article, and we weren't planning to bother with the drive from Buzzards Bay. Things worked out for the best.
