Fast Food Oversaturation In Wareham?

If your doctor told you that you needed more cholesterol, you might want to get into the Fatmobile and bring the pod to East Wareham.

Sonic Drive-In, an Oklahoma-based restaurant chain that banks much green in the South, is slowly edging into Massachusetts. They have set their sites on Wareham, via the Patel family, owners of a bunch of Taunton-area convenience stores.

We had to go to Somerset to get these pics, but of course you know that I stopped for a salad on the way and didn't eat any artery-clogging fast food. We include the pictures for SE Massachusetts people who have never been to a Sonic. They're rare around here.

The same area of Wareham is also getting an Olive Garden.

As near as I can tell, the Sonic is going onto the property currently occupied by an oil-change shop, so your fries will have a Pennzoil taste to them. The Olive Garden is said to be going across the street from Barnacle Bill's.

How much is too much?

A lonely stretch of East Wareham is now host to a veritable takeout Mecca. You can get Burger King, Subway, McDonald's, D'Angelo's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Krua Thai, Pizza Boy, Rice Bowl and Dunkin Donuts. I'm not throwing Papa Gino's, Lindsay's or Bailey's into the mix, as you can't order from your car there. I'm pretty sure that the 99 only closed because the building floods in heavy rains.

It's the Cardiac Highway!

We're not Food Snobbing anyone. Stephen, one of our writers, hasn't cooked his own food since 2011 or so. However, about one hundred yards of East Wareham, a depressed region of a small town, now has every fast food place in the Northeast.

They could use a White Castle or a Carl Jr's/Hardee's, but there is only so much Cranberry Highway.

Buzzards Bay had a Burger King fail, which isn't easy. Other than the Hooters: Cape Cod and the Falmouth/Kingston Pizza Huts, it is the most high profile failure of a major fast food chain in the area.

You order off this screen, into the sort of speaker that you used to see at drive-in theaters. Someone skates out with it, and you get into the goods. I need both glasses and a taller car.

Jessica and I passed on the tater tots, as I ate them every day for 4 years in high school. I got the SuperSonic Bacon Double Cheeseburger (pictures below), which came with fries and a soda for about $10. The burger was a-ight, but the fries were Ore-Ida quality.

My meal had over 1500 calories and 2200 milligrams of sodium before I counted the milkshake (it had about 3000 calories with the milkshake... meanwhile, famine victims in refugee camps are happy to get 1200 calories a day), and the unknowable portion sizes makes it impossible to gauge how many calories I stole from Jessica's food. The recommended daily allowance for sodium is 3400 mg, but I consider that to be a piddling sum ascribed to a 105 pound woman. I'm a slim 240 man, so I should get to have twice as much sodium as mortals are allowed. I plan on buying a salt lick and just posting it up in my office somewhere.

I didn't get a pic of it, but when I took the bun and tomato off of the burger, it looked somewhat like William Dafoe.

Jessica got the Chicken Strips Sampler Platter, which was 3 whack strips, more Ore-Ida fries, and onion ring and some toast. That also ran ten bucks, and you can see it below somewhere.

Jessica's chicken did not look like a celebrity.

My man Hardcore Logo got the Chicken Strips Kids Meal, which came with a shake and some Justice League stickers. He didn't let me steal any of it.

The rollerskater (who was a guy) was friendly enough. He's out hustling for his dollar, so I'm not making fun of him. I have had worse jobs. He was the first fast food employee I have ever tipped, aside from the Dunkin' and Marylou's girls.

That's your restaurant review. I made my journalistic bones as a sportswriter. Stacey's French, but she also isn't writing this article. We did go from Cape Cod to Somerset for these pictures, so we deserve some credit.

They must have been out of the Brazilian Man rollerskating waitress neon signs, which is understandable.

Does the population of Wareham have enough kids who know how to roller skate to staff a Sonic these days? You may not want to go there until the girls get their skating legs under them, lest you get a milkshake to the face (doh!) like the cop in the Happy Days intro.

Will this be enough for Sonic- who for some reason can't seem to come to some sort of spokesmanship agreement with the Sega hedgehog- to hold up on the Cranberry Highway against the heavyweights?

We'll goof on the Olive Garden in some future article where we have pictures of one. We consider going to an Olive Garden for Italian food to be akin to going to Red Lobster for seafood. It works if you don't have Italians around to call BS on it.

Olive Garden competing against Mezza Luna should be a devastating loss, but people like franchises. Don't count the OG out of it by any means.

Here's Jesse's dinner. I stole her onion rings before the picture could be taken... because I'm eeeeeevil.

Note that Sonic and Olive Garden are two more businesses who declined to move into (and perhaps revive) the Main Street area of Buzzards Bay. The only big names willing to dance with Buzzards Bay are Subway and Dunkin' Donuts, and we know that Dunkin' would set up in Aleppo if they were allowed.

How much fast food can one region consume? Will the added presence of Sonic be too much for BK or lil' Miss Wendy to bear? Wendy's in Wareham is sort of smelly, and Sonic may just walk them out behind the barn and put them out of their misery.

... or maybe Wareham needs more fast food? Does more fast food exist? Wahlburgers may be a bit high end. I'm not sure if Jack In The Box still exists. In-n-Out Burger or Phatburger (Fatburger?) may not make it here. I'm not sure if dropping a White Castle in Buzzards Bay or East Wareham works, especially for B Double. Chick Fil-A will help along people looking for a less gay-friendly chicken sandwich, but would you run the Bourne rotary for one?

Will the East Wareham economy survive if it is reduced to a bunch of people selling shoddy hamburgers to each other? If that happens, will employees eventually just be paid in hamburgers?

Will the very town of Wareham fracture along supper preference lines, with the higher-end West Ham and their Longhouses and Red Robins break away from their more ghetto McChicken-eating cousins in East Wareham?

Only time will tell.

Playing ring toss with onion rings makes the hardened arteries well worth it.

Get Your Baby Chickens In Wareham

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I ate the chicken, and then I ate his leg."

We rolled deep into the TSC last week, to check the chicks. While "tractor store" wouldn't be the very last place I would look to buy chickens at (there is a strong farming connotation), it also isn't what you open the phone book to when you're looking for one. I'm not sure if getting your chickens at TSC is the same as getting pizza from a gas station, so I won't weigh in either way.

I don't farm much (I can't even grow weed), but it seems that the tractor would be the sworn enemy of little hard-to-see-from-the-tractor creatures who scurry around in the barnyard, such as the chicken.

TSC is in the Cranberry Plaza in Wareham, just off the fabulous Cranberry Highway. If you ain't there... you're somewhere else.

Cute little suckers, aren't they? I don't know enough about chickens to A) recommend raising some or B) tell you horror stories to keep you from doing so. I read "The Egg And I" once, that's about it. I'm not even sure what baby chickens are called, although I'm thinking "chicks."

I do know that, if you buy the wrong one- and the definition of "wrong" may be as simple and wide ranging as "male"- it'll be doing the old cock-a-doodle-doo for you every damn day at whatever hour the sun rises until you one day go outside and strangle it with your bare hands.

Life's too short for that sh*t, Hoss... even if you get free eggs.

They grow the dark meat chickens in their own little chicken ghetto, it seems...

Hey nowwwwwwwwwwww... I usually have to pull out the credit card for this kind of action.

99 cents is a damned cheap price for something that will grow up to either produce eggs or fill a dinner plate. I'm not sure how McNuggets are made, but it sure seems to me that these little fellows are about the same size and shape.

They are only selling chicks until a week after Easter, so be sure to hustle down and get clucked.

Flooded Cranberry Highway Impassable In Spots

Route 6/28 through Wareham, aka The Cranberry Highway, is impassable for all but the highest-profile of vehicles.

Drenching rains are pouring down on the 'Ham, and the area in front of the old 99 is an urban river.

This is the second time this week that the Cran has been too flooded to drive through. Any good rain does it these days.

Note that this is a major evacuation route for Buzzards Bay and Wareham, especially Onset, in the event of a hurricane. You'll want to get ghost early if your evacuation plans include East Wareham,

We'll be back if an update is necessary.

Click the "East Wareham" link at the bottom of the article for the map location of the flooded road.

Cranberry Highway Flooding Becoming A Chronic Problem

This picture was taken from where the old 99 Restaurant was on the Cranberry Highway in Wareham.

The town may have a bit of a problem here. This is the main road in East Wareham.

Granted, we had furious rainfall yesterday. However, this has been a long-running problem in the area.

I was driving in this area during Hurricane Irene, when 7 inches of rain fell. The flooding, which only covered a hundred yards of Cranberry Highway in yesterday's event. spilled into the Wal-Mart parking lot. I saw a people who were nearly washed away by it.

The road was impassable, and flooding was bad enough that a car was stranded and abandoned by the 7-11. I saw one guy stall out in the mess yesterday, and he had to shove his car out of the water.

I'm guessing at this, but Dick's Pond and Sand Pond may also be prone to sending their overflow into the Cranberry Highway, as the road flooding I have seen along this road over the years went down near each them.

This could be a major problem if a hurricane strikes us full-bore. This road, which is pretty far back from the sea and was flooded yesterday by rainwater, is the only way to evacuate Onset.

I have no idea how to fix stuff like this, but someone must. It seems to be a pretty major problem.

Ocean State Job Lot Opens In Wareham

East Wareham was down, but they were never out. 

Things looked bad for the east side of the 'Ham when Wal-Mart left the Cranberry Plaza. Coming on the heels of Staples hauling up stakes a few years ago, it looked like a deathblow for a whole section of town. Wally was the engine that drove the local economy.

More than one local who I chatted with mentioned how leisurely it was to drive on the Cranberry Highway since Wally moved along. It used to be awful, and you were taking your life in your hands any time you tried to cross it... especially on foot.

It's tough to replace Wally. You don't do it with just one store it seems, as two stores have rushed in to fill the void created by the Drang nach Westen of Walter Mart. Cardi's (of Wareham) is coming soon, and the Ocean State Job Lot just opened.

Coming soon... Cardi's!

So, with Wally just down the road a bit, and two new stores setting up shop in Wally former nest, what's not to like?

I do worry some about the Buzzards Bay version of the Ocean State Job Lot, as I can't imagine that the demand for OSJL's particular inventory can support two stores within a mile or two of each other... but I also do this for a living, so what the Hell do I know?

 Locals recall that Buzzards Bay once had a Burger King, but that it moved down into Wareham. Dunkin' filled the void, and would be the leading candidate to shift into the OSJL's Buzzards Bay location if they decided to just host one store in the area. I can see Dunkin' wanting very badly to be posted up on the Belmont Circle rotary.

But that's putting the cart in front of the horse. For now, we picked up some new jobs, we filled an ugly gap in a crucial local marketplace, and we'll see how things shake out from there.

This sort of kills my plans to write about the abandoned Wal-Mart being used to house and supply UN troops (Chinese and North Korean), who are being based here for when the one-world government comes to confiscate our guns.

I was going to get my friend Tristan to pose outside the abandoned Wal-Mart in a homemade UN jacket as a sneaky-looking North Korean occupier. He's of Japanese descent, but he'd pass in a pinch.

Now, I'll never get on Infowars.com. Maybe I can get a Jew or a Freemason poisoning a well.

I want the ship clock up there for a blank spot on my office wall....

... as well as this thing to pick cookie sheets up with that looks like Cookie Monster somehow got a baby up in Kermit T. Frog.

Wal-Mart Departure = Deathblow For East Wareham?

In this town, on this day, the Wal Mart has giveth, and taketh away....

A seismic shift in Warehm's economic existence is going down today, as the Wal-Mart on the Cranberry Highway closes her doors for good. They are moving their operations into West Wareham.

Their lease in East Wareham wouldn't let them sell groceries, and the new store will be right where 28/25/6/495/195 converge. People like to beat up Wally, myself included, but you can understand their motivation here.

This is a massive change to the face of the town. East Wareham loses her Boss business, and the effects will reach far beyond the 4 walls of the store.

West Wareham, which as a backwater until recently, got Wareham Crossng in 2007. That, and this Wal-Mart, killed off 350 acres of forest. It turned a rural area into a traffic destination. There are those who say that one of the Walton heirs personally came to Wareham and stomped all of the Eastern Box Turtles on the property to death.

The Weweantic River, which feeds off the streams near Wally, is said to be less than pleased with the Walton's arrival. She may be a new channel to dump more nitrogen into Buzzards Bay, and doom what is left of our shellfishing.

The Crossing radically changed West Wareham, and the Wally will change it more.

Wally will also change East Wareham, his former home. Wally is leaving a plaza that has already lost Staples, TJ Maxx, and Friendly's... each of whom (I'm not 100% sure about the Friendly's, and Jessica is over there doing the pics as I write this) moved to the more-happening West Wareham area.

Not many businesses of any power are now on the Cranberry Highway in East Wareham. The biggest business there which isn't serving food or pouring gasoline is either Benny's or Sullivan Tire. Ooops, I almost forgot Home Depot... although I wonder how long they plan to stay there?

Can you really anchor a business district around what is left in East Wareham these days? I do wonder if the region will be able to support the Fast Food Fab Five (McDonald's, Burger King, KFC/Taco Bell, Wendy's and Subway) without both the WalMart customers and her employees. I'll be less than pleased if I have to go to Exit 6 in Plymouth to get Papa Gino's pizza, I'll tell you that much.

Fortunately, because there's a Dunkin' Donuts every 200 yards, the coffee people will be OK.

When the foodies leave, that's when you can start digging the grave. That chops the low-level jobs from the region by the dozens, Those businesses tend to anchor themselves around the big business in the area, and they won't survive picking off the few people who need to go to Benny's.

Stop n Shop now anchors the plaza that Wally used to own, with help from Radio Shack, Delken's Laundry, the Dollar Store, ProCuts and a nail joint. Throw in a few banks and some squalid motels, and that's the backbone of the business district.

This section of town is doomed... and it has been in the spiral since 1987. That was when Route 25 was expanded to the Bourne Bridge, which took all of the tourist money away. That killed the dog, although the tail was wagging until Wally hauled up stakes for the other side of the tracks. Expect no help from the government. Our fair Gateway has been the neglected stepchild of Cape Cod for decades.

The bad part is that, on the surface, this looks like a positive. Wareham just shifted their Wally a few miles down the road, so only the poorest motel-living people will lose access to Wally's Asian-crafted goodies. Rather than killing jobs, the move up to Super status created 85 paying gigs for people in a pretty poor town. Traffic congestion is East Wareham should be lightened considerably.

The worst part is when you think about it deeper than that. There is no silver lining... that's just how the edge of the blade looks when your section of town is on the chopping block.

I have a few ideas as to what to do with the old Wally building, but that will be for a future article. I still need to find an Asian kid to pose for my Jade/Helm occupying UN/Chinese soldier photos.

In the meantime, I look at East Wareham and just shudder. There's a bad moon on the rise.