The Battle Of Marshfield

As we approach April 19th, it is easy to view the American Revolution as a US vs. England thing... even if most of the Americans still thought of themselves as English (Paul Revere never shouted "The British are coming!" during his ride, entirely because of this phenomena. Paul actually was shouting the less poetic "The regulars are out!") when the fighting started.

The US/England thing is easy to understand now, a few hundred years after the fact. What is less-known is that there existed considerable static between towns during the pre-revolt period.

The basic cause of this discord was the issue that would launch the Revolution. Some people thought that the colonies should break free from the crown, while others thought that we should remain in the kingdom.

As that famous American we know as Mel Gibson once said, "an elected legislature can trample your rights just as easily as a king can."

Others disagreed with Mel, and there was thick tension in the air throughout the 1760s and 1770s. If you voiced the wrong political opinion at the wrong tavern, you might be chased from the town by a mob.

... and maybe hung from this tree.

Here are a few examples of what would happen to you if you failed to say "Screw The Crown" quickly enough in pre-war New England. Its a lot of reading, but it should prove entertaining.

- "At Taunton also, about 40 Miles from Boston, the Mob attacked the House of Daniel Leonard, Esqr.,3 one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace; & a Barrister at Law. They fired Bullets into the House & obliged him to fly from it to save his Life."

- "Peter Oliver Esqr., a Justice of the Peace at Middleborough, was obliged by the Mob to sign an Obligation not to execute his Office under the new Acts. At the same Place, a Mr. Silas Wood... was dragged by a Mob of 2 or 300 Men about a Mile to a River in Order to drown him, but, one of his Children hanging around him with Cries & Tears, he was induced to recant, though, even then, very reluctantly."

- "The Mob at Concord, about 20 Miles from Boston, abused a Deputy Sheriff of Middlesex, they making him pass through a Lane of them, sometimes walking backwards & sometimes forward, Cap in Hand, & they beating him."

- "All the Plymouth Protestors against Riots, as also all the military Officers, were compelled by a Mob of 2000 Men collected from that County & the County of Barnstable to recant & resign their military Commissions. Although the Justices of the Peace were then sitting in the Town of Plymouth, yet the Mob ransacked the House of a Mr. Foster, a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, a Man of 70 Years of Age, which obliged him to fly into the Woods to secrete himself, where he was lost for some Time and was very near to the losing of his Life."

- "A Jesse Dunbar, of Halifax in the County of Plymouth, (was) ordered it into a Cart, & then put ... into the Belly of the (slaughtered) Ox and carted him 4 Miles, with a Mob around him, when they made him pay a Dollar after taking three other Cattle & a Horse from him. They then delivered him to another Mob, who carted him 4 Miles further & forced another Dollar from him. The second Mob delivered him to a third Mob, who abused him by throwing Dirt at him, as also throwing the Offals [innards] in his Face & endeavoring to cover him with it, to the endangering his Life, & after other Abuses, & carrying him 4 Miles further, made him pay another Sum of Money. They urged the Councilor’s Lady, at whose House they stopped, to take the Ox; but she being a Lady of a firm Mind refused; upon which they tipped the Cart up & the Ox down into the Highway, & left it to take Care of it self. And in the Month of February following, this same Dunbar was selling Provisions at Plymouth when the Mob seized him, tied him to his Horse’s Tail, & in that Manner drove him through Dirt & mire out of the Town."

- "In November 1774, David Dunbar of Halifax aforesaid, being an Ensign in the Militia, a Mob headed by some of the Select Men of the Town, demand[ed] his Colors [flags] of him. He refused, saying, that if his commanding Officer demanded them he should obey, otherwise he would not part with them: upon which they broke into his House by Force & dragged him out. They had prepared a sharp Rail to set him upon;12 & in resisting them they seized him (by his private parts) & fixed him upon the Rail, & was held on it by his Legs & Arms, & tossed up with Violence & greatly bruised so that he did not recover for some Time. They beat him, & after abusing him about two Hours he was obliged, in Order to save his Life, to give up his Colors."

- "A Parish Clerk was taken out of his Bed in a Cold Night & beat against his Hearth by Men who held him by his Arms & Legs. He was then laid across his Horse without his Clothes & drove to a considerable Distance in that naked Condition. His Nephew Dr. Abner Beebe, a Physician, complained of the bad Usage of his Uncle & spoke very freely in Favor of [the royal] Government, for which he was assaulted by a Mob, stripped naked, & hot Pitch was poured upon him, which blistered his Skin. He was then carried to an Hog Sty & rubbed over with Hog’s Dung. They threw the Hog’s Dung in his Face & rammed some of it down his Throat;"

- In Freetown, they used to paint Loyalists yellow, as "the Mob found that paint is cheaper than Tar and Feathers."

- "Patriots from Duxbury did kidnap Marshfield Loyalists Paul White, Dr. Stockbridge and Elisha Ford, and carted them to the "Liberty Pole" in Duxbury. There they were "forced to sign recantations" of their Tory sentiments, likely in response to mob violence."

By 1768, the crown deemed it necessary to send 4000 troops to pacify Boston, which was also getting ugly. Other than the potential for a Lexington-style suburban incursion by British troops, the countryside was (mostly) left on her own.

You know how it went from there. In 1770, the redcoats fired on the colonists, in what is known as the Boston Massacre. In 1773, the Boston Tea Party went down. In 1775, on April 19th, warfare broke out at Lexington/Concord.

As you can still see in modern occupational wars like Iraq or Afghanistan, the occupiers tend to stick to the cities. You have airports and docks to move supplies in, and cities usually sit astride rivers and highways that other trade flows through. The countryside tends to belong to the rebels.

This was the case in Massachusetts. Remember, the Revolution didn't start until the redcoats marched far enough out into the countryside to find farmers crazy enough to pick a fight with the world's best light infantry. While they may not use exactly those terms, every schoolkid in America can tell you the basics of Lexington/Concord.

What they can't tell you about (unless they read this column, of course) is the Battle of Marshfield. There's a good reason for this... there was no Battle Of Marshfield.

The non-battleground from this non-battle.

However, history is often drawn by tricks of fate, coincidence, miscalculations and itchy trigger fingers. An itchy trigger finger set off the Boston Massacre, started the Revolution, and was still happening when the National Guard went hippy-hunting at Kent State almost 200 years after the redcoats landed in Boston Harbor. If Marshfield in 1775 had been visited by ol' Mr. Finger, our history lessons would have been very different.

While an apt high school kid could tell you that Boston was occupied by the redcoats before the Revolution, they might not know that Marshfield also bore this status. Marsh Vegas, as it was then not known as, was a Loyalist hotbed. People in Vegas had no problem at all with the crown, at least the ones with the money and influence. They preferred change through diplomacy over revolt.

Even noting the fact that Marshfield patriots in 1773 had their own Marshfield Tea Party (on Tea Rock Hill), Marshfield was the most Loyalist town in New England.

This put them at odds with the neighboring towns. Duxbury and Plymouth were hotbeds of Patriot activity, and you saw with the Dunbar brothers how Halifax handled Loyalists. Not wishing to be mashed in Hog Dung, the loyalists in Marshfield sent a letter to General Gage, who was in charge of Boston. They demanded protection, and Gage complied, sending 100 men and 300 muskets on two schooners (the Dianna and the Britannia) down to Marsh Vegas in 1775. They were under the command of future Parliament member Captain Nesbit Balfour.

These redcoats disembarked at the mouth of the North River and marched 6 miles to the Nathaniel Ray Thomas estate. He was only the second most famous occupant, which is why you know it today as the Daniel Webster House. It looked a bit like a smaller version of the mansion from Django Unchained.

The redcoats set up their barracks on the grounds of the estate, and proceeded to piss off the locals. They would go to taverns or private homes in Duxbury and Plymouth. They behaved well enough, but they would have been hated in Duxbury even if they walked across water to get there. There is at least one story of a mob chasing a British officer into a Plymouth store, and not letting him out until he surrendered (and they broke) his sword.

Naturally, the entertainment in Boston served to get the locals' moxie up. Duxbury had already hosted Stamp Act protests, burned a dozen Englishmen in effigy and kidnapped loyalists for Liberty Pole parties. The presence of 100 redcoats a town over was, as they liked to say then, intolerable.

You didn't see a lot of South Shore people at Lexington. Paul Revere went west, not south. By the time that word of Lexington/Concord got to Duxbury, they would not have had time to get up to Boston for the battle. We did send some men up to Lexington/Concord, but most of the South Shore got off no shots at the redcoats fleeing Concord.

They didn't need to march up into the Metro West area to get at the regulars... they had 100 of them right there on the South Shore, sleeping on the lawn of a Marshfield mansion.

The South Shore towns had militia, and they had been training for this moment. They dropped everything on April 19th and gathered at what is now known as the John Alden House in Duxbury, under the command of  Colonel Theophilus Cotton.

No one knows what went on in the John Alden house that night, nor on the day of the 20th, when a council of war was held. What we do know is that Cotton, of Plymouth, failed to attack. He may have hoped that the British would leave on their own, or he may have feared a rabble-vs-regulars fight, or he may have been waiting for more people.

He got more people quickly enough. Companies arrived from Rochester, Middleboro,  Carver and Plympton to join the Duxbury, Plymouth and Kingston patriots. Fishermen from various local harbors, always fixin' for a fight, threw themselves into the mix. Colonel Cotton soon had five hundred men, five times the number of the British that they wished to oust from Marshfield. Other estimates give him 1000 men.

They marched to within a mile of the British regiment, not without some argument.  The cautious Cotton still refused to attack. A company from Kingston (led by Capt. Peleg Wadsworth), perhaps seeking to atone for their now-unfortunate town name, advanced without orders to within firing range of the British camp. Ish was about to get hectic.

However, there were no British to kill. The British garrison, who would have surrendered if fired upon, had instead run like a scalded dog.

The schooner Hope, along with two smaller sloops (the sloops had been "prest" into service, and were two of the first AmRev prizes taken by the Brisih Navy) arrived at the mouth of the Cut River in Green Harbor. They gathered up the soldiers and whatever Loyalists they could find and fled for Boston. The citizens of Marshfield alerted the British to the arrival of the ships by firing guns from Signal Hill. These were the only shots fired in the Battle Of Marshfield.

Then, the ass-kicking began. The South Shore is interesting, if not unique, in that our violence goes down after the troops leave.

Escape route...

Marshfield had 1200 people at the time, and only a few of them could get on those ships. Everyone else was left to fend for themselves, as the British Army and Navy were busy up in Boston.

Marshfield, a Tory town without the necessary Tory army to keep it safe, exploded in an orgy of assaults, tar-n-featherings, jailings, property confiscation, business boycotts and exile. Whoever could afford a boat ride to Nova Scotia fled. Everyone else stayed, and suffered abuse for it.

"Our fate now decreed, and we are left to mourn out our days in wretchedness. No other resources but to submit to the tyranny of exulting enemies or settle a new country," said Sarah Winslow of Marshfield not too long after the British surrender at Yorktown. Her father said, "I was the butt of the licentious, and had received every species of insult and abuse, which the utmost rancour and malice."

Those who did get away weren't always welcomed back. A ship from Nova Scotia, loaded with returning Marshfield Tories, was refused permission to disembark in the Neponset River by the town of Milton. The Tories eventually were let off at the North River, where they were promptly arrested.

Marshfield, much like someone tied to the Liberty Pole or being made to run a Gauntlet, finally caved in. Three months after the British Army was chased from Brant Rock, a town meeting resulted in Marshfield agreeing to support the Revolution. They sent their men off to fight, just like other towns.

Marshfield, for a long time, had more subdued celebrations of July 4th than neighboring towns did. Some years, they didn't celebrate the holiday at all. This sort of got played out in the 1950s and especially 1970s, as the demographics of the town were wildly altered by urban immigration. The incoming Bostonians loved July 4th, and by the time of my childhood, the Vegas coastline represented as hard as anyone.

Duxbury and the surrounding towns contributed mightily to the cause. Taking the 300 British muskets they found at the Thomas estate, they marched to Boston and joined up with George Washington. Duxbury men were involved in fortifying Dorchester Heights, which forced the British out of Boston. Unlike just about everyone involved in the Siege of Boston, the Duxbury men had already seen the British Navy flee before them once by the time the Limey Poofters sailed away from Boston.

Duxbury men served with George Washington at Valley Forge, and fought with him at Germantown and Monmouth. Washington was known to favor the fishermen of coastal Massachusetts as rowers. Duxbury men also manned a fort built out on the Gurnet. It saw no action in the Revolution, but they got to let off a few shots during the War of 1812.

It is interesting to ponder how the Brits would have reacted if Capt. Wadsworth had decided to charge the overmatched regulars. We know how the immediate battle would have worked, as Captain Balfour told us himself. The Brits would have surrendered with the first Rebel shot.

There's a difference between 100 soldiers and the entire Royal Navy, however. As we saw during the Battle of Wareham in 1812. the British would sail a squadron into town and burn every ship in the harbor for piracy. How wold they react after the loss of a whole garrison, especially if the battle which lost them turned into a massacre? Probably not well.

Duxbury did not embrace shipbuilding until after the Revolution, but they did need their harbor, and had nothing beyond a crude fort to keep the British from sailing in to set the whole town ablaze. Duxbury was a backwater, perhaps not meriting an invasion, but Plymouth was a high-profile revenge target.

Taking Plymouth would effectively cut off Cape Cod and the South Shore from contributing to the war effort, and would have the Brits very well positioned for a march on Rhode Island. The South Shore would have almost certainly got some Grey's Raid kind of action.. Never drink Earl Grey Tea, it's associated with the son of the Grey's Raid captain who attacked Fairhaven, New Bedford and Martha's Vineyard.

The Battle of Marshfield may have indeed proved to be a Phyrric Phirryc Pyrrhic costly victory, and the whole war effort may have been jeopardized by the desire of some Plymouth County farmers to seize a contested Marsh Vegas front yard.

However, all of that never happened. Colonel Cotton, viewed by many as a wussy, was actually a fine leader. He went all Sun-Tzu on the English, not moving to attack until victory was assured. He cleared out one of the two English-occupied towns in Massachusetts, and he did so without wasting an ounce of gunpowder.

Colonel Cotton is actually twice-famous, as he led a group of patriots in 1774 who tried to move Plymouth Rock to a better viewing area. He split the Rock while doing so, and you can still see the split today. That's a story or another day.

So, as you do something 'Murica today to commemorate the Patriot actions in Boston, Lexington and Concord, lay back and twist one in honor of the 500 South Shore bad-asses who chased the British away.

Even the house is crooked... or the photographer.

• 
  

The Trillion Cran March

You know that a publication named Cranberry County Magazine is going to bombard you with burgundy as Thanksgiving nears. Our photographers were all over eastern Massachusetts, seeing who had the goods. 

We focused heavily on Plymouth, Carver and Wareham. You could also draw a triangle running from Duxbury to Freetown to Yarmouth Port, and assume that we stumbled through every bog in it.

Cranberry County University mathematicians estimate that our photographers captured 1,000,000,000,000 cranberries on film. That's a trillion, babe....

Even a rotten photographer like Stephen can do OK if he works with acres of berries directly in front of him where he can't miss them.

The urge to push him in from behind while he was taking this shot was almost overwhelming.

I totally want to wade two strippers into that and have them wrestle for three rounds while drunks throw money at them.

Let's roll through the cranberry harvest process. First, you get a cranberry bog.

Then you flood it, and hire this dude to roll through it with his cranberry-loosening tractor which probably has some technical name that I'm unaware of.

Once he's done, you have acres of floating berries.

Enter the workers...

Cool man, rotten shot...

Sorry for the blurry, but this is the tube which sucks up all the berries that the Cape Verdean guys pulled into a pile.

I think this is where the water goes after the berries are sorted out of it, or it's where they're getting the water. I don't know this farm stuff that well, I was raised in f*cking Dorchester until it was too late to make a farm boy out of me.

The cranberries then get pumped up into a big truck, where they get sent off to Ocean Spray.

The big truck in question.... you would need a corresponding truck full of sugar to create a 15000 sq foot serving of cranberry sauce.

Sometimes, the truck spills some cranberries, people run over them, and you get roads that look like this. This is in Carver... and, no, it's not the Cranberry Highway. That's in the 'Ham.

Cranberry Jones got his nickname at Yale, where he spent his freshman year eating nothing but cranberry products in an attempt to turn his skin burgundy. It didn't work, he had the runs for 7 months and he's now our organized crime contact.

We've got the boys working hard, and we'll be back over the weekend with some more shots.

November South Coast Fall Foliage

November is pushing it as far as leaf-peeping goes on the South Coast of Masschusetts. You can only really do it if you haven't had a nor'easter to tear the leaf cover down. Most everything is turning brown by now, but foliage works in strange ways, and differences in sun exposure can set trees in the same area off at different times. We'll seek out the good stuff for you.

We'd like to welcome our new shutterbug, Joeyna. She was all over Marion and Rochester for us, at about the same time that I myself was out rolling South Coast Style. Between us, we got enough shots for a decent article. Mine (Stephen) are the blurrier ones. Joeyna, as you can see, has an affinity for shady lanes.

If you see a car stopped in the middle of the road aiming  camera up into the trees, you may have just crossed paths with a Cranberry County Magazine photographer. We walk among you, although we sometimes take the SUV.

If you ever see me in the comments being snarky to someone, understand that Cranberry County Magazine's main office is about three of those farm stand structures put together, and CCM doesn't have those cool orange trees. Never take me seriously, I don't.

I like to think that trees are sentient, and that they view Leaf Drop the same way that a stand-up comic utilizes the Mic Drop. "Hope that you enjoyed the show, people. Come back, same time next year." (leaf drop)

Since I have brain-lock for this pretty cool shot, I'll drop some links to remind you that we have done leaf-peeping articles on mid-October South Shore, late-October South Shore, late October South Coast, early November Cape Cod, an odd plea to line the Cape Cod Canal with fall foliage color trees, and- now, right here- early November South Coast. We may take one more crack at the Cape, it depends on how effectively I will be able to celebrate the passing of the Ballot Question 4 thingy.

A lot of people consider Buzzards Bay to either be the end of the pre-Cape South Coast, or the Cape's mainland buffer zone. It's the South Coast today, because we have a few shots of the Bourne Bridge, shot from the Trowbridge Tavern deck, aiming towards Buzzards Bay. At least one of the CCM camera clickers started their trip from the Trow, and perhaps both.

Motherf***ers be hatin' on the shutterbugs, putting up stone walls and ADT between us and the pretty trees. If you need a barometer to measure the intelligence of the CCM staff by, know that Abdullah thinks that ADT is what the hyper kid in the high school claass has, while Stacey (who is French, and may somehow hear things with that same zuh zuh zuh accent she speaks with) thinks that it's the drug that they give you when you get the AIDS. Either way, dude shoulda let us in his yard to shoot his trees.

Dammmmmmmn..... stuffed at the goal line! It'd be cool of we jacked this guy's gate, went down his driveway, and- instead of a mansion- there was some shabby single-wide trailer home.  Some people throw all their money into the house, other throw it all into the driveway.

My crappy camera in poor light, fired off of the Trowbridge Tavern deck. This is why most of my shots are close-ups, and why I hire the Joeynas of the world.

I need to work on my Level Horizon photography technique, but it's hard to level the camera and steer the car and twist the Game Green and watch out for kids and stuff like that. Also, this guy might, like, uhm, live on a hill or something.

Joeyna is newer to street photography than I am, and doesn't yet know that people just love it when obscure regional website photographers pull the car up onto their lawn so as to cut the power lines out of their Big Yellowsh Tree picture... or she's considerably smarter than me, and is therefore much less likely to get rocked in the lip by some justifiably angry homeowner.

We apologize to this gentleman for not getting to his house before the Leaf Drop, because it looks like he has a pretty cool Fall Foliage setup happening in his yard. We got you marked, player, and we'll be back next October. Bet your bottom dollar.

This is J at work. I went further inland than she did, making it to Halifax and Taunton and New Beddy during my loop. This was a Saturday drive assignment for me, and I was listening to WUMD's 9AM-2PM reggae show on 89.3 FM. The strength of WUMD's broadcast signal sort of guided my vehicle.

I love red trees, even when they grow in yards that are on a brutally sloped hill. You know how it is out in the sticks, dog.

A) Nice farmer's porch, and B) whoever has the upstairs bedroom must be on at least a nodding acquaintance basis with whatever squirrels and birds use that tree. It must be like the old Stephen Wright bit... "Hey, Tweety, how ya doin? I'm just having breakfast... want some eggs? Ooops, my bad."

It's like following the yellow brick road, just upside down.

Either the trip ended back up at the Trowbridge Tavern, or we're throwing a bone to the better photographers reading this article who looked at the first Bourne Bridge shot and said something along the lines of "Zoom in less with that shoddy camera, Stephen!"

South Coast Fall Foliage

A lot of people think that the South Coast isn't a Player when fall foliage in New England is discussed. You may be one of them... and don't try lying to me, because I can see you. Stop looking at me like that!

I'm here to tell you that the South Coast represents hard every Autumn. You may have to wait longer than you would with Vermont, and you may not have any mountain vistas like New Hampshire does... but you can have a nice foliage drive if you keep your expectations realistic. 

Like any Natural Beauty scenarios, it's best if you get out of the cities and into the sticks. This is pure Tree Math, folks... cities tend to not have a lot of trees. We'll discuss that a few pictures down from this one, but know that I love and respect New Bedford and Fall River. One of my favorite views in Massachusetts is when you're heading west on 195, you round the corner, and New Beddy is laid out before you. It's just not my favorite view when I'm writing Fall Foliage articles.

When whoever that guy in the Veteran grave there was earning his resting place the hard way back in 1863 or so, there was almost no chance of him knowing that- one day- his grave would end up in a look-at-that-rain-falling picture on an obscure regional website written by a stoner with a bad camera. It'd be like going back 100000 years and having a caveman say "Take the Patriots and the Over." I don't know what the people of 1863 did for fun, but I bet it didn't involve driving around taking Foliage pictures. The Internet must have sucked in the Civil War. 

I would have 100% stopped to pick blueberries if they were open... I get pulled over by the police a lot, and it'd be fun to see the cop get to my car window and be confronted by a friendly photographer with dyed-blue lips/teeth/cheeks/fingers. "Uhmmmm.... you're all set, guy... the town line is over there, why don't you go cross it?"  

Weather was all over this article. I went out during a tropical rainstorm (I think it was when Tropical Storm Nicole was getting sucked up into a trough and all of her rain hit us last Saturday), which isn't the best time to shoot pics of tree leaves... but it was when I had the free time to do so. The rain also kept people off of the roads, which makes things easier for me.  The preceding drought did me no favors, as droughts tend to hurry up the peak of the season. I'll discuss that whenever the Middleboro 4H picture comes up. It also kept me from getting out of the car for pictures, like it did here in New Bedford. Nice tree, though... especially for a city.

Fall River has trees with foliage, too... but, being Fall River, that tree appears to be incarcerated. Note that I am applying the Apocalypse Now method to my driving-in-a-car-style photography... "Never get out of the boat." My photography is better if I'm not soaked. 

I got out of the car for the Mattapoisett River shot. Mattapoisett is where the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts went down, but I was safe this far up the river... especially because I was standing on Route 6 and shooting down from a little country-road bridge.

Not the best shot in the world, but the article needed some Red. I was impressed that I managed to crop the bank out of the picture in a snap-shot while I was driving. 

Power lines are also the bane of the in-the-car photographer. This was another shot out the window, one where I failed to crop the power lines out. You can also sort of see the sun, so I can only blame laziness. 

The basic route was out of Bourne, through Wareham into Marion, and then up Route 105 until I was more Plymouth County than South Coast. Think I'm lying? There's the 105 sign... and you can't fake that. 

I hooked down Route 79, cut through the Freetown State Forest (I drove into the 4WD part in a Dodge Stratus standing about 3 inches off the ground, passed a man in a truck with huge tires leaving that area, and briefly saw him just smiling at the about-to-get-stuck Dummy... fortunately, I grew up on a beach with 4WD-only areas, recognized his Look, and banged a U). I then made it to Route 6, and have this photo as proof. I took 6 back into Buzzards Bay.

I think this shot is from a South Shore article, and may actually be southern Pymouth. See for yourself in this South Shore foliage article, or maybe in this Early Season South Shore article. We may also do a Cape Cod foliage article, they haven't peaked yet. Ignore the dates on these pictures, my camera is funny. These pictures are from about 8 days ago. Sorry, I was busy.

The South Coast was heavy on the Orange and Yellow. I had trouble finding Red, and came to regret passing on some Wareham/Marion red foliage while being overconfident that I would find more in my travels.

This tree is a certified MVP candidate. It's a shame that I drove up on it during a Biblical downpour. Look, even the leaves fell off of it in a cool manner! I pulled off the road and blocked a side street to get this pic, and the tree was so lovely that the guy who I didn't realize I was blocking drove around me, rolled down his window and- instead of cursing me- said "She's a beauty, huh?" I think it was in Freetown... if you think otherwise, let me know. You most likely know better than I remember.

Marion, home to both this picture and the first picture in this article, was laid out by someone who was into fall foliage. Every street has a Fall Foliage canopy. I detoured into Marion because a girl at the Trowbridge Tavern heard I was shooting foliage and said "You should go into Marion, the stuff is hanging over every street." Marion, Middleboro and Halifax easily could support their own articles if I decided to go By Town instead of By Region

This one is from the Freetown State Forest, an undisputed corner of the spooky-as-f*ck Bridgewater Triangle. This was just before I ran into the 4WD guy smirking at Trish, my Dodge Stratus. If I had snapped a picture of his smirk, he'd be in a million "So, you're really about to do that?" Internet memes by this time next year. He'd be like that Willie Wonka meme pic, or the one with Kermit the Frog drinking his tea.

Gotta love this tree... it's like Paul Bunyan or Shaq took up Bonsai as a hobby.

The non-orange trees nearby are very jealous of this bright orange one that gets all of the media attention. They should stop hatin' and try to foliage harder or something.

One of the supposed benefits of living in a city is that you don't need to buy a rake... and then this happens.

I was all psyched as I pulled up on this bright red tree, which hs been the MVP of previous foliage articles. The sun even came out. However, Massachusetts had a bad drought all summer, and droughts do to foliage season what smoking does to smoker life spans... sort of shaves X amout of days off of it. I missed this tree's peak by a short enough time span that the leaves under it hadn't blown away yet. To make things worse, some carpenter was parked in front of the building!  

Working in some more red here, although there's a small chance that this might be Duxbury. I do a lot of driving, I take a lot of pictures, and misunderstandings occur.

I'm pretty sure that this is Acushnet, and is that not one spooky-looking motheruffing tree? It looks like it was used to hang witches. The homeowners- who I like already, for both the tree and the stone wall in the foreground- should have gone All In and had some Amityville Horror attic eye-windows installed. I honestly don't know if I would trick-or-treat that house.

While lacking red (red leaves may fall off earlier, I don't know), the South Coast has plenty of Orange, which is the main Autumn color anyhow.

I could have gone into the guy's yard to get a shot without the power lines, but I'm already imposing myself on him by aiming a camera into his yard. While I'm not even 5% tough, I'm not a small man, and most non-tough people would want to have a gun when confronting me... which is No Problemo on the ol' South Coast, especially in the sticks. The homeowner deserves his/her privacy, and a guy shooting pictures of Pretty Trees doesn't deserve to catch a slug... so I just snap pics out of the car window, thank you. 

I think this is just me zooming in on the same foliage from the Southern Plymouth shot, but if you've read this far... why not have some more foliage?

Here is me having some Level Horizon problems that hack photographers encounter as they learn their craft... but dude has a stockade fence, a stone wall, a foliage tree and Ol' Glory, so he's in this article, hater. He's in there like swimwear. OK, it looks like the tree has a pet house, but my man made up for that with some pure Stone Wall Patriotism.

As we have pointed out in our South Shore foliage articles, the South Coast doesn't really have any moutains that I can get those Vermont-style calendar shots from. This is Sea Level foliage, player. We're doing the best that we can for you.

This tree rocks a nice Jamaica-flag style green/yellow mix, and we'll throw it in the article.

This is either Carver or Plymouth, out in the Myles Standish State Forest area. The MSSF was a little weak for foliage, as Pine dominated. Lovely ride, though... the kind of road where you see a man walking down the street with a shotgun, and you just sort of nod hello to him. I decided not to snap a picture of him, sorry...

This is one of my Chill Spots, aka Little Sandy Pond in Southern Plymouth. Although I left my house to do this article, the true starting point was here.

I ascribe my "Never get out of the boat" theory especially hard around cemeteries. I didn't even stop the boat, let alone get out of it. I try not to f*ck around anywhere near Bridgewater Triangle cemeteries.

I had to go length-wise to get this tree.

Here's another house I won't be trick-or-treating at. Frodo Baggins might answer the door wearing the One Ring. This looks like the Shire, but it's actually Dartmouth, and the spookiness is lowered by the proximity to the Mall. You can never get too scared by a haunted house when you know that you can be at the Chuck E. Cheese in a good five minute panic run.

I'll tolerate some Blurry if it gets me some more Red, and I hope you will too.

Let's not resent a little Green as the main course for a picture in the foliage article.

I like that someone clustered these trees, you see a cool burst of color as you speed by in the Trish Stratus. I was working with poor light, but it was a nice bunch of trees, trust me.

I was gonna ask the guy if he would move his beater car out of the way so I could get me some Big Leaf/Barn House action, but that laooks like the house of a man who owns a shotgun. It adds character, I suppose...

Much love to the South Coast!