Vampire Panic In New England

New England is home to Harvard, Hawthorne and a lot of US Presidents. We have intellectual stripes that few states can match.

We also would blame tuberculosis deaths on vampires and desecrate corpses to kill them now and then.

New England had a period running from 1784 through 1949 where 80 bodies were exhumed from graves to be treated as vampires. Various folk-remedy methods of vampire extermination were utilized.

This wasn't medieval stuff... a vampire was exhumed in Rhode Island about 20 years before Ronald Reagan was born, not too long before the Wright Brothers got an airplane off the ground. This was 200 years after the Salem Witch Trials. People were living during that exhumation who, in the same life, watched a moon landing on TV.

What's up with these people? What's the dilly? As you might imagine, several factors were at work.

Understand that the Internet sucked in 1892, with "sucked" meaning "didn't exist." Literacy, while on the upswing from near-zero in feudal times, was still a rare thing, especially in rural communities. The newest medical journals were slow to get to western Rhode Island farms. Doctors were rare, many were quacks, and even President McKinley had a doctor check a bullet wound by sticking a finger in his abdomen and poking around... in 1901.

If educated city-folk were that dangerous, you can imagine how much damage a farmer could do when faced with a disease or infection that he had no idea about.

Tuberculosis was only really figured out recently, and doctors would just throw up their hands when they saw it in 1892.  Their cures were often worse than the illness- Doc Holliday was sent to a sulfur spring to treat his tuberculosis in 1887.

Rhode Island farmers had even less understanding of tuberculosis, which they referred to as "consumption." The name was fitting. A person with tuberculosis would lose weight, become pallid, refuse to eat, fear light, labor to breathe... they wasted away before your eyes. It would also tear through families, many of whom were piled 8 deep in a house and sharing one bed.

While a doctor might recognize this as tuberculosis, a farmer would have a different diagnosis set. It might include the spirit of a deceased relative leaving the grave and feeding on the life energy of their surviving family.

Belief in vampirism goes back to Mesopotamia, and was still in effect in many parts of the world by 1892. This was before Bela Lugosi and Twilight, so no one thought of a vampire resembling a Hungarian count or a pouting teenage boy. When it wasn't being described as a sort of energy force, a vampire was viewed as more corpse-like than a Brad Pitt-looking fellow.

While a diagnosis of vampirism might get you laughed out of Tufts, an illiterate farmer might think that it sounds as good as whatever the city slicker was telling them. You have a definite cause-and-effect thing working, always valuable to a man playing doctor who can't read. A diagnosis of tuberculosis requires medical knowledge and intense examination. All you need for a Vampirism diagnosis is for the TB to run through the rest of your family.

Consumption happened a lot in rural communities. It was the leading cause of death in the northeast in the 1800s. To their credit, most farmers recognized it as a natural illness without paranormal overtones. That's why farm families crank out so many kids. Children are Labor, and even Dowry. They are also vulnerable, which is why many farmers banged out 12 kids in hope that 5 would survive to run the farm.

However, historians have uncovered at least 80 instances where corpses were exhumed and desecrated because someone thought that they were vampires.

Cases run from Maine to Minnesota , but New England holds the title. We do have places like Yale and enlightened cities like Boston, but we also had many areas chock full of susperstitious farmers.

We are also heavy-handed with the punishment. We performed the first legal execution of a juvenile in America... for Bestiality, I believe.

That tendency towards draconian superstition, much of it brought over from Europe, gave New England the title belt with both Witchcraft and Vampirism.

There's a good reason why Shirley Jackson didn't set The Lottery in Manhattan, and why Stephen King set Salem's Lot in Maine. The stories work here.

A relatively isolated area in Rhode Island and Connecticut could do a pretty good Salem's Lot impression, as a great % of the recorded Vampire exhumations went down there.

You can't blame them totally- there was a prominent exhumation in Vermont in 1817, Thoreau wrote about one in 1859  and even America's Hometown of Plymouth has someone buried face down to prevent them from being able to dig their way out of a grave- but they were into it the most.

A newspaper from Connecticut in 1784 denounced exhumations. The Tillinghast family of Exeter, which saw consumption run through it after the father's 1790s dream of a blight killing half of his orchard, lost half of their children even though they exhumed 17 year old Sarah and did a ritual. Jewett City, Connecticut, Saco, Maine (15 miles from where Salem's Lot was based), Loudon, New Hampshire, Belchertown, Massachusetts, Woodstock, Vermont, Cumberland, Rhode Island, Manchester, Vermont and Griswold, Connecticut- among dozens of other New England communities- went all Buffy on someone in the course of their histories.

Exeter, if not the epicenter of the vampire craze, serves as the main neighborhood. They acted like Serbian gypsies. They also are notable for their brutal exhumation techniques, their near Reagan era survival of vampire superstition and for being the home of America's vampire queen.

Mercy Brown, pictured below, is the most famous of the 80 recorded cases where a vampire-themed exhumation went on.

Mercy was one of an unfortunate group of children that George and Mary Brown bore. George was a farmer living a hard life working a rocky Rhodey homestead. The consumption came for his family, taking Ma Brown in 1893 and a daughter the next year. The mother and daughter were Mary and Mary Olive. There was also a sister named Mercy Lena.

Mercy fell sick and died in 1892. Then her brother Edwin fell sick. This set off a superstition algorithm involving multiple consumption deaths in the same family equaling undead predation.

That was enough for the villagers. Perhaps fearing that Mercy would move on to their own families after polishing off the Brown blood bank, several locals- after a vote- approached George with a folk remedy. It may have been the last conversation of the Dark Ages.

Although he gave his permission, George was not in attendance when a Frankenstein-style mob moved on the crypt that held the remains of Mercy Brown. Distinct among the group, which was most likely smaller than a mob, were a wildly protesting doctor and a Providence Journal reporter.

Mercy was a winter death, and she was stored in the above-ground crypt that we have a picture of somewhere in this article. She was kept this way until the ground thawed enough for a burial. You should note that her crypt was very much similar to how they stored ice back then.

They checked the coffins of all the Brown women. Two of them were Corpsing along as they should have been. Mercy was a whole other story.

Mercy didn't look that bad for a corpse. The cold had preserved her well. They cracked open her chest and cut out her heart. It still had blood in it. Bingo! We got us a vampire!

Since this was 5 years before Dracula was written (Bram Stoker had an article about the Brown exhumation among his papers, and may have based Lucy Westerna on Mercy Brown), the people- who only acted like Serbians, and didn't actually use Serbian words like vampyr- probably just called her Mercy or Lena... especially around George, who most likely had to be handled diplomatically.

Vampire slaying methodology varied from region to region. Both Plymouth and Maine, connected by maritime trade, favored burying the corpse face down. Vermont was more brutal, and their methods spread down the Connecticut River into eastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island.

Mercy's heart was placed on a nearby stone and cooked to a cinder. The ashes were then fed to her ailing brother, most likely in a tea. It worked so well, he was dead in two months, and is buried next to the sister that he consumed.

Opinions vary as to whether it was effective. The doctor pointed out that Mercy's lungs showed tuberculosis. He no doubt spoke up when the remedy failed to cure Edwin. The locals pointed out that no Browns got sick after Edwin.

Michael Bell, the authority on such matters, says that exhumations occurred in America until the mid 20th Century. The last one Bell is aware of went down in the Pennsylvania mountains in 1949. A construction crew in Griswold, CT dug up an ancient cemetery in 1990. One of the graves had been broken into. The corpse was beheaded, the heart was torn out and the legs were broken off. The damage was done 5 years after death.

Mercy wasn't the last one, but is the most famous one. Her desecration got national publicity, all negative, and western Rhode Islanders were known as superstitious and "vicious" by neighboring communities, with the Boston Globe suggesting inbreeding as a cause for the vampire panic.

We checked out her grave recently, as one of our road trips took us into that Rhodey/CT midst. Route 95 goes through there now, and Exeter is a charming bedroom suburb of Providence. You can still see the Old Days if you poke around some.

Massachusetts Lighthouse Tripping

The fun part about my job is that, while covering other stories, I can stop along the way and take pictures of lighthouses. I grew up near one, and am sort of accustomed to foghorns and circling lights. I never miss a chance to get a picture of one if I am out and about.

This is Nauset Light, one of the Three Sisters. She's essentially a replacement sister and sort of married into the family, but she sure does look nice. She's 48 feet tall, made of cast iron and is encased in brick. She's set back a bit, as Cape beaches were eroding long before the discussion of eroding beaches became fashionable. She was built in 1877. Lovers of snacks should know that this lighthouse is the represented in the logo for Cape Cod Potato Chips.

This is the much-loved Chatham Lighthouse. She's old enough (1808 birth) that Samuel Nye, her first keeper, was appointed by Thomas Jefferson. She went automated in 1982, and is prominent in the film The Finest Hour. The house next to it is an active Coast Guard Station, and even serves as a base for Homeland Security-type stuff. I actually drove by this without a hitch  the day before Tropical Storm Hermine came to town, but when I returned during the height of the storm, the traffic was like Boston. While I failed as a photographer in "getting a level horizon," I did manage to catch the light when it was flashing towards me. 

Old Scituate Light, the lighthouse that the American Army Of Two defended. She was built in 1811, the Bates sisters did their thing in 1814, and the construction of Minot's Ledge Light pushed her out of service in 1850. This being Scituate, she was brought back into service 2 years later when MLL was destroyed in  an 1851 tropical winter/spring storm. I suppose you can imagine the "I told you so" action that was going on among the old salts back then. MLL went back in service in 1860, which sent Old Scituate Light back to the bench. Scituate bought it in 1910 for $4000, and it was in a state of disrepair for most of the last century. They fixed it up well enough that you can tour it these days. 

Our photographer appears to be using the rocks to position himself to shoot Old Scituate Light, but I know him well enough to say that he is most likely looking at porn, fantasy football or both. Sharper-eyed readers may get a kick out of knowing that the only picture of his we used is the one that has water drops all over the camera lens... but we did lead off with it, so props to the Big Man.

Just in case you think that went to a shabbier lighthouse and just told you it was Scituate Light, we threw in a pic with the sign. We try to keep it real here at Cranberry County Magazine. This lighthouse is steeped in history. It is where the USS Chesapeake fought and lost to the HMS Shannon in 1813, a battle famous for the "Don't give up the ship" command was uttered by a dying Captain James Lawrence just before his surviving crew, well, gave up the ship.

Here's how you challenged a ship to a fight in 1813... "As the Chesapeake appears now ready for sea, I request you will do me the favour to meet the Shannon with her, ship to ship, to try the fortune of our respective flags. The Shannon mounts twenty-four guns upon her broadside and one light boat-gun; 18 pounders upon her maindeck, and 32-pounder carronades upon her quarterdeck and forecastle; and is manned with a complement of 300 men and boys, beside thirty seamen, boys, and passengers, who were taken out of recaptured vessels lately. I entreat you, sir, not to imagine that I am urged by mere personal vanity to the wish of meeting the Chesapeake, or that I depend only upon your personal ambition for your acceding to this invitation. We have both noble motives. You will feel it as a compliment if I say that the result of our meeting may be the most grateful service I can render to my country; and I doubt not that you, equally confident of success, will feel convinced that it is only by repeated triumphs in even combats that your little navy can now hope to console your country for the loss of that trade it can no longer protect. Favour me with a speedy reply. We are short of provisions and water, and cannot stay long here."...  Captain Phillip Broke

A year later, two American girls chased away a boatload of British marines, so we sort of won back the honor of the coast. Eff England!

Not all naval action around Old Scituate Light involves us trying to kill Europeans. This rock represents the grounding of the Italian freighter Etrusco in a 1956 blizzard. The crew was saved by the Coast Guard. The ship, stuck on the rocks of Cedar Point for quite some time, was a local tourist attraction until it was freed by dynamiting most of the ledge.

Duxbury Beach, MA

Fun Fish Facts: Bluefish

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!

Holiday Weekend Weather, And Early-Season Tropical Storm Information

We wish you the best on this Memorial Day weekend. Many plans, both solemn and joyous, will be influenced by the weather. We'll try to get you prepped for this.

Today should be nice. Aside for an isolated-but-powerful thunderstorm pushing ESE off of Nantucket at 8 AM, sunny skies should rule the early part of the day. Cloudiness will increase in the afternoon, and we'll have the chance for some sweet late-night thunderstorms.

High temperatures will push 80 on Cape Cod (a SW wind will help cool us off), and aim for the 90s inland. Here are some record high temperatures for the day that I stumbled across:

Boston -- 92 set in 1931
Providence -- 91 set in 1931
Hartford -- 93 set in 1977
Worcester -- 88 set in both 1911 and 1929
Milton/Blue Hill -- 90 set in 1929

HHH, friends... Hazy, Hot and Humid.

Sunday looks to be a mix of clouds and sun, and it will be a bit cooler (60s-70s). Some rain may arrive on Sunday night, which is where we get to that spaghetti chart with the tropical storm in it from at the top of the page up yonder.

Don't worry about a tropical storm hitting us Monday. Our water isn't warm enough to support it, even if it raced up at us. Although the season has begun, New England's tropical storm threat runs more August-October. Tropical storms are heat engines, and the waters south of us (water temperatures are in the 50s) presently have no fuel for her.

However a tropical storm does look like she will sample a bit of South Carolina cooking. Presently known as Tropical Depression Two, she is forecast to become Tropical Storm Bonnie by tonight.

Bonnie should be no big deal, sort of a nor'easter with an attitude. After striking the Carolinas, she looks to take a run up the coastline at New England, guided by an area of high pressure offshore and with an eastern-moving frontal boundary throwing her precipitation at us. That's where we get our taste of Bonnie.

She'll be a soaking rainstorm if we get a direct or even indirect hit out of her. The worst for SE Massachusetts looks to be in the late afternoon, but the threat of rain will be on us all day. If you have some shindig planned for Monday, you should have a strong indoor backup contingency plan.

She doesn't look to do much for the surf, as she won't be that strong when she's near us. There could be some rough surf on the South Coast and the Cape once she's been churning South of us for long enough. Don't board up the house or anything.

June tropical systems are rare in New England, and May ones are pretty much unheard of. This is a pretty concise list of New England hurricanes, and you don't see much/any early season activity vis a vis the Tropics. Even July is pretty weak historically up here.

Tropical Storm Agnes, which was a hurricane south of us, came ashore near New York City in June of 1972, but the effects on New England were minimal. Remnants of tropical storms like Alison (2001), Arlene (2005), Alberto (2006) and Barry (2007) also tapped New England in June. Barry dropped 3 inches of rain on Taunton. The dominant feature with these storms for New England, and especially eastern New England, were rain. Expect more of the same with Bonnie.

Ominous Storm Notes.... I used to roll with a girl named Bonnie when I was a younger man, and with God as my witness, and she once rendered me unconscious.

Why Can't Southerners Drive In Snow?

Is It Really That Difficult?

(Editor's Note: This is from a 2014 article at a site we used to write for...)

Bourne had a bit of snow falling this morning, and it snowed through 10 AM or so. It was good for about 2-3", at least where I am in Sagamore. The schools in Bourne almost but didn't delay or cancel. The roads will be a bit slick, especially if they don't plow them. They may even not plow them, as towns sometimes choose to save Snow Removal funding for more serious events. This is no big deal. 3" or so, maybe 6" on the Islands. We golf in snow like that.

This same storm- granted, with a touch more intensity- just went through the South. Normally warm places like Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina are getting snow, ice, or both. These are regions of the country that generally don't get snow. Being able to build a snowman in Savannah, Georgia is almost as rare as being attacked by an alligator while swimming in Cape Cod Bay.

You can say that the Confederacy had a philosophical mindset about the snowfall only if you remember that Anarchy is a philosophy. Cars are frozen in place on the highways. Children are stranded in schools, or even- in Hotlanta- in a school bus by the roadside. The Governor is urging citizens to remain in their homes. The term "zombie movie" is used in a descriptive manner by CNN. The storm is being called "the Atlanta Snow Jam" by one newspaper, who have "unspeakably horrible commute" in their headlines. Atlanta had about 1000 motor vehicle accidents, and triple digit casualties.

Atlanta had 2.7" of snow.

There is a State Of Emergency in just about any state that once produced cotton in large quantities. It is a justified condition. In both southern/national headlines and my Facebook, I hear tales of 18 hour commutes, highway parking lots, shelters being opened, people missing or unaccounted for, airport delays, scared kids in buses, and general all-around chaos. The last time this region was so worried about getting someone out of a bus, it was Rosa Parks.

People with even a moderate interest in Weather History, or people who were living in Massachusetts in the 1970s, immediately think "Blizzard of '78" when they read the stories coming out of Alabama (the link leads to an article with "Aaaaughh!" in the headline). You hear the same tales of frozen highways, car-camping, old people freezing to death, pregnant women stranded in their homes, and what have you.

Now, the difference between the two regions in this case is that Atlanta has about 2 inches of snow, and Massachusetts got 2 feet of snow in the Blizzard of '78. Two feet and change, actually.

Before I discuss what I think causes these differences, I want it stated early in the article that the Dirty South are no punks. Most of the Civil War was the South slapping the North around, and the North only really won through attrition. If General Armistead charged a little harder at Gettysburg, you could pretty much look at the numbers and be like "a kid from Louisiana can beat two kids from New York, even if you give the Yankees all of the railroads and food." This snow chaos we have in South Carolina and the relative calm in Massachusetts is not a case where, as General Pickett once said, "I think the Yankees may have had something to do with it."

So, why does snow that a housewife on Monument Beach might not even notice cause such chaos in Mississippi?

We're going to focus on vehicles for starters, in a manner which can be concurrently positive, negative, and a perceived positive that actually works out to be a negative once you think on it a bit. When chaos is ensuing and you need to place blame, it is not a bad idea to think of something you may have been mistakenly confident about.

That's a snow plow. You don't need me to tell you that, because- when it snows- you see them all over Bourne. Someone from Louisiana might look at that same plow sort of like how you or I would look at an armadillo. You'd know what it is, but seeing one in action would be a first.

Plows, and their good friends Salt and Sand, are essential when trying to clear snow from a road. Sand and Salt either provide traction or they melt snow/reduce the temperature at which water freezes. The plows do the bull work of removing the piles of snow that build up.

If you like numbers as much as I do.... chew on these.

- Helsinki, which is in Finland, removes about 200,000 truckloads of snow from their streets in a harsh winter.

- Montreal, which gets 5-6 feet of snow per winter, spends $158 million on snow removal for a year.

- Boston, which has 850 miles of roadway, has over 500 "pieces" of snow removal equipment, and I don't think that they count shovels.

- Miami has never had accumulating snow, and has only had flurries a few times.

- Florida and Louisiana have an average annual snowfall of 0.0". Alabama and the Carolinas, which have mountains, get roughly 1.3" of snow per year.

- Massachusetts gets 43" of snow a year, a bit more inland, a bit less near the Cape.

- New York gets 123" of snow a year, less as you near NYC.

- After the "Great Snow of 1717," much of New England was buried under 25 foot drifts.

- The record snowfall in the US from one storm is 189 inches... in California, of all places. Mount Shasta, to be precise.

- Atlanta has roughly 2.7" of snow so far. Boston, which is nowhere near holding the national record, got 27.1" of snow in 24 hours during the Blizzard of '78. The effects on the people in each city were similar.

- South Carolina, which has some mountainous territory, gets .3 days of snowfall a year. That's about 8 hours, generally spread out over a dozen or two mountain weather events.

-  If you add up the average amount of hours it is snowing in Michigan in a year, snowfall fills 44 days.

- Finally.... Bourne, which has 20,000 people in the summer, has enough town plows and subcontractors out on the road that the girl at the Highway Department wouldn't even venture a guess when I called to ask how many plows Bourne had. From what I hear on the news, Atlanta, which has 5 million people in her metropolitan area, has 10 plows. They recently (yesterday) bought 12 plow blades, which they are going to attach to municipal vehicles.

Bourne has all of those plows because they NEED all of those plows. We'd look just as silly on the snowy roads as Alabamians (?) do if we didn't have plows out clearing the streets. Why doesn't Alabama have plows? The last heavy snow in Alabama was 1993's most-likely-aptly-named Storm Of The Century. They'd be fools if they bought and maintained 500 snow plows. The environment doesn't merit it. It's why people in Kansas don't have surfboards.

A bias exists, and it gets worse as you head North. People in Massachusetts laugh at people from Georgia when snow falls. People from New Hampshire laugh at how poorly Massachusetts flat-landers drive in snow. People in Canada laugh at people in New Hampshire. Eskimos laugh at Canadians, and Santa Claus thinks everyone South of him (at last count: all of us) are wussies.

But are there other factors for the Great Atlanta Snow-In?

I spent some time searching for Southern driving apologists on the Internet. You hear a lot of talk about snow tires and chains. While Massachusetts is snowy a little bit, I don't know anyone who uses chains on their tires. I'm sure that there are people in Alberta who don't know anyone who doesn't use chains.

There was also some discussion regarding the relative predominance of dirt roads in the South, with other people pointing out that some people from places like Mobile had never driven on anything but pavement (with the only variation ever being wet pavement). People who have lived in both climates (many northerners move south, and they dilute the "southerners can't drive in snow" argument as they multiply... our own Snowbirds are guilty of this, especially in the winter) say that dirt roads are actually better for snow, but become worse when the snow melts.

You also hear a lot of pickup truck talk. If you don't have a pickup truck in the South, you're kind of like a sissy. They're everywhere in the Confederacy, sort of like grits. Most of the problems lie in relation to the pickup having almost all of her weight in the front. This leads to those spinning crashes you see on The Weather Channel so often during Southern snowfall. Weather watchers call those the "F-360."

You hear NASCAR mentioned a lot, and it is important to the discussion. It comes down to interests vs environment.... nature vs nurture, if you will.

Southerners adore NASCAR. They follow it extensively, and being a fan of NASCAR means that even a dummy is going to pick up a lot of how-a-car-works knowledge. That should lead to how-a-car-performs knowledge, which should lead to a better, more educated driver. Throw in the better intersection behavior you see in Southern Hospitality culture and the Hurricane Belt earned-wisdom sense of "let's just work together and get through this storm," and you'd think the car-loving Southerners would do all right in storms.

All that is true, but it is somewhat offset by the fact that NASCAR is essentially Tailgating and Hostile Passing at 190 mph. "Driving well" in Daytona is "being 6 inches from someone's rear bumper on a turn." A little exchange of paint is almost like a Hello, especially among the veteran NASCAR drivers.

Of course, Southerners don't generally try to drive like their NASCAR heroes when commuting home from their office jobs in Savannah. However, what a Duxbury housewife thinks is tailgating might be different than what someone who roots for Dale Junior thinks tailgating is. When a Yankee with a brain in her head backs off someone on the highway in a snowstorm, the distance might be 100 yards. A serious NASCAR fan might view a proper distance as 20 yards.

The NASCAR expertise of the Southerner is offset by the snowy experience of the Civil War victors, even when the aggressive/possibly insane Boston driving style is figured into the equation. Pocasset people know to pump their brakes, and how to turn into a skid. We develop a sense of how to drive in different rates of snowfall. We look at a balding tire in October and think that we'd better change it soon with more foreboding than someone from Ole Miss does. Crikey, we're even a much better bet to have the little bear paw ice-scraper thing than an Auburn fan would be.

To be fair and honest, I think that, if people who are deep into NASCAR lived in more wintry climates, they would evolve to be better snow drivers than Cape Codders. But they don't, and they aren't.

In fact, looking at relative impact and using my old Civil War logic.... 2.7 inches of snow in a day hits Atlanta like 27.1 inches of snow hits Boston. Therefore, we drive about 10 times better in snow than one of those Roll Tide SOBs. This is a personal guess of mine, and I'm using a rubric that State Farm probably doesn't recognize. If the Civil War were fought by my rubric, the key to beating Bobbie Lee would have been to lure him into Maine.

In closing, I want to say that I have a lot of sympathy for our Red State cousins. They are getting a snow event that they can tell their grandchildren about. It is hitting a region where no one has a puffy coat, and where fireplaces- if they exist at all- are ornamental. The ice will take down power lines, so people used to Mississippi in the middle of a heat wave will instead have Jack Frost nipping at their noses. As I publish this at noon, there are kids in Georgia who still haven't gotten home from school yesterday.

And there, but for the grace of God, Jimmie Johnson, and the snow plow, goes You.

Sunday Drive Homework Assignment: Cape Cod Fall Foliage Picture Contest!

We had planned to get our bad selves out on the Cape for the end of the foliage season, but we are having some trouble with the Cranmobile. Unless we commandeer the CCRTA bus, we won't personally be shooting up the Cape with our cameras.

This is a shame, because Cape Cod has a stranglehold on the tail end of New England's fall foliage season. People who have been putting off their leaf-peeping for reasons good or bad have no real options left on the table.

Many people think of Cape Cod as being entirely made of sand, therefore being unaware of the Peep Options down here in Barnstable County.

We'd like to help promote Cape Cod's foliage season, which is where you come in!

Many of you Cape Codders will be out on the roads today. You will be driving through the heart of the local fall foliage. Many of you enjoy the benefits of flash photography.

Why not work towards a Greater Good?

Send us some pictures. If you can leave them in the comments section, feel free. If not, leave them in the comments section of whatever Facebook post you saw this contest advertised at. If worst comes to worst, hit us up at Monponsett@aol.com.

Be sure to tell us what town your picture is from.

Plymouth and Wareham can play, but they have to punch their way in.

We'll choose the best of the bunch, and reward the winner with some useless accumulata swag that we have kicking around. They'll also own Cape Cod bragging rights, which may get you a free beer in the right establishments.

We'll use the picture once. You own it after that. If someone tries to pay us for it after, we'll refer them to you.

The judges are me (Stephen), Jessica, and this guy we know called Cranberry Jones.

We'll take entries for a few days, and then the article will drop like the leaves themselves once the judges are satisfied.

Good luck!

Late-Season South Shore Foliage

We did a few Foliage trips around the South Shore last week.

"South Shore" is sort of an indiscriminate term, as places like Middleboro and Wareham really shouldn't count, but we didn't get Fall Riverish enough to call it a South Coast/South Shore crossover.

That fact doesn't really matter much- especially in an article about leafs on a tree- but it matters a lot to the people who it matters to.

We try to keep moving when we work...

Sometimes we shoot out the window. Worry not, the driver isn't shooting. He drives, the passenger spots and shoots. The driver determines the general direction that we go, while the spotter is in charge of when we stop. 

Maybe you work differently... or maybe I'm too lazy to crop the dashboard out of this pic, and decided to joke around it. 

We let our daily business dictate our photo work a lot, so we sort of ran a Wareham-Carver-Plymouth-Kingston-Duxbury back down to Bourne route.

We've been meaning to do Cape Cod, as we veteran leaf peepers feel that Cape Cod doesn't peak before November. Unfortunately, the Cranberry Chevy has been running poorly recently, it's an expensive fix, and we may have to be Innovative. We may even have a contest.

I'll worry about that later, as it is very late at night and I have pictures to share with you.

I like writing in the middle of the night. The night helps me focus. 

I'm pretty sure that I waltzed out of Duxbury High School in the 1980s just a few years before stuff like Asperger Syndrome and ADHD became the go-to diagnosis model for American school psychologists. If I was a 1970s birth, I'd be full of Ritalin and asleep right now.

I tend to be distracted during the day. Even in the relative isolation that I managed to carve out for myself, stuff- people walking around, approaching vehicles, the discharge of a rife now and then- happens on my street that I have to pay attention to.

That's not the case during the Witching Hour. The darkness obscures all visual distractions, reducing me to Tyrannosaurus Rex-style motion detector status. Anything moving around in my yard at this hour is most likely something that I might have to kill, probably with my hands (I support America's gun rights 101%, but I'm a bit too clutzy/nutty to responsibly own a firearm myself). That sort of tension adds a nice edge to my work.

Hey, you try writing about leaves... 

I've said it before, but Southeastern Massachusetts is tough for shooting Foliage. We lack the elevated spots that you get in places like New Hampshire, where you get those sweeping mountain valley views that you see in the calendars. We sometimes have to leave some dude's truck in the picture.

I'd shoot off of the Bourne or Sagamore Bridge, but that area is cursed with scrub pine. You get a greenish/orangey/semi-brown mix shooting from up there, sort of a bronzed Aquaman.

I have plans for that region, which we will get to in a future article.

Our responsibility runs out at the Rhode Island border. We love Rhodey. We're just a Massachusetts thing.

Even then, we stick to the Eastern part of the state. It simplifies things. 

Shoot, we could give you Colorado pictures if you want, but I don't think that they grow cranberries out there.

It's best if we stay in Massachusetts.

We do have good foliage down here. It's more of a rural driving expedition thing than a hiking thing, although you can see some nice Leaf if you go deep in the forest. You even get Early Peak in the areas of the forest where the sun doesn't shine that brightly.

We'd also recommend using an online map service to plan your trip. You can work a few lakes into your route (we didn't do so on this trip, but you can), and be sure to keep it Rural.

Orange was the hardest color for us to find. Various shades of red are everywhere, with a slow fade to brown taking over as the Fall part of autumn starts to assert herself. Yellow is second easiest, and orange is the hardest.

I see Blue in some Vermont photos, but I'm not a savvy enough Leafpeeper to know what trees do that or why we don't have them here.

We'll try to expand our reach into the northern states next year.  We got to Maine in September, but it was pre-peak. After that, we were lucky to get out of Plymouth County. Busy month,,,

We do perform an important service here. We get it out on the Internet that southeastern Massachusetts, and especially Cape Cod, still has peak foliage.

If you live in or are visiting New England, it is quite simply Too Damn Late for you to see peak foliage unless you get your bad self down to southeastern Massachusetts. You could go to Vermont, but it's brown and desolate up there... and everyone smells like syrup.

We don't want you to have to go through all that, when you can dip an hour or two south of Boston and see perfect late-season fall foliage.

Even with our best efforts, we tend to be more Suburban than Rural. This is why we have to zoom in on tress so closely,when panning back or whatever they call that may be more what the shot calls for.

It also gives us the Flood o' Color that we love so much. It is very colorful down here. I didn't have to edit these shots at all, which wasn't the case with our previous foliage work. 

This is good, because my mouse has no Right Click button now. Not being able to scoot down to Radio Shack is one of the downsides of working the Werewolf Shift, but it is a condition that I tolerate.

I swear that, when I went to the other side of the tree to shoot it without the guy/s house in the background, the color wasn't as satisfying. Therefore, he suffers so that you can zone out on some Reds.

If homeboy objects we'll remove the picture or crop his house out of it or something.

We like our readers to be happy. Sure, we'll fight with them on Facebook now and then, but it's all in good fun.

I tried and failed to frame the Myles Standish Monument between two trees with my cheapo Wal-Mart camera that was last seen being hit directly by a wave during our nor'easter coverage a few weeks ago.

I could have zoomed in more, but it might have made the picture blurry.

I am very much a photographer of the Take Fifty To Use Ten variety.

We have two or three more articles on Foliage coming up

1) A piece where we discuss lining the Cape Cod Canal with foliage-friendly trees in a crazed attempt to make it a 2075 AD tourist attraction.

2) A contest where we troll Facebook for people to take Cape Cod foliage pics which we will publish. A cheapo prize will go to the winner.

3) The article with the results of the contest.

We loved this month, because the nor'easter didn't kill the foliage. It did damage, but it didn't bring about a premature end of the season.

Check this tree below, which lost her leaves directly under her. Raking the yard under this tree is a breeze...

... unless, of course, there's a breeze!

Peep ya later!