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.

Regional Accents In Massachusetts

Shot from the cah, not fah from the bahn, in Cahvah.... OK, it's Ryegate Farm in Plympton, but I didn't feel like driving up to Harvard for one stupid cah-in-yahd picture....

Massachusetts is known world-wide for her brutal accents. I don't need to tell you that, you live it.

Our job today will be to examine what makes up the Boston Accent, how far it spreads, where it stops, what stops/changes it, and what it then becomes. We also wish to define lesser-researched terms like "South Shore Accent" and "Cape Cod Accent."

I want to state right here that, although I have Historian credentials, I got into Journalism as a sportswriter, and anything beyond sports-writing greatly involves the chance of my intellect running into a wall. As the causal agent in the intellect/wall encounter, I might not be aware when it happens. If you read an article on quantum physics that Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote and you disagree with it, he's probably right and you're probably wrong. That might not be the case today when you and I speak about Linguistics.

I should also add that the author is fiercely parochial. I firmly believe that Plymouth, America's longest-running settlement for white people, is home to the true American accent. Once you start heading West and South, this true American accent gets corrupted.

Massachusetts was English territory, and English is the main language here. However, Massachusetts also was an ocean away from England, and we sort of got our own thing going on eventually. Massachusetts has had a lot of immigration, so we now have a lot of English being spoken by non-English people who are taking an earnest crack at it. Throw in the great mixtape of Time, and here we are discussing different local accents.

Remember, if you go by Years, our main dialect is Algonquian. If I remember, I'll call the Wampanoag Language Research people and ask if the more eastern Wampanoag speakers drop their Rs.

Any accent flexed in Massachusetts falls under the broad umbrella of New England English. This is a grouping of 3-10 local accents, depending on who you count. Two super-dialects exist within this grouping:

-Western New England English is spoken in Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Vermont and northern New Hampshire.

- Eastern New England English (which encompasses the Boston Accent), which was the language of most of New England for much of her White Guy history, is utilized in eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and coastal Maine.

We'll draw a map for those who got confused by that.

Western New England English, which you might know as Hick Speak or How They Talk In Places With Mountains or Those People Who Use Rs, is first up to bat. It seems to run along the Connecticut River, and was spread by trade.

While grouped in the same general accent, Connecticut and Vermont speak differently, but they are more like each other than they are ("ah") like Boston. The same goes for Western Massachusetts.

Western Massachusetts is sort of a merger zone for the CT and VT versions of the accent, and Merger Zones are a subject we'll revisit soon enough.

As with most things New England, I doubt Connecticut's loyalty. However, the consensus among linguists is that the Mountain Speak hasn't been overridden by the powerful Noo Yawk influence coming from the big city to the SW.

Anyhow, the Syrup States are some other website's problem. My area of concern is east of Connecticut through Cape Cod, and then up the coast to Maine.

BOSTON

Boston is the hahhtland of the Boston Accent, and- by proxy- the North East New England English accent. They are most frequently associated with dropping their R sounds, a habit known as non-rhotic speech. We also use Broad A sounds, which is where my own powerful Boston accent screws up the narrative... I can't imagine in my head what the non-Boston version of the trap-bath split is.

You've heard a zillion actors take a crack at the Boston accent. Cheers was famous for it. Norm made a weak effort at the accent. Sam didn't try at all. Fraser and Diane sort of flex a Brahmin accent, and Carla sounds like she's from the Bronx. Cliff (the actor who played him was from Connecticut) tried hard, overdid it, and sounded very much like a non-drawling Mainer.

Johnny Depp, who can do anything, couldn't do the Boston accent. Jack Nicholson, with a shelf full of Oscars, never even tried to fake one in The Departed. Ben Affleck did the very rare "had the Boston accent, sort of had it altered in acting school, and then had to re-learn it when Boston movies came into vogue" movement. Chief Brody can't do one, even with his Islander wife helping him.

I know from how we market this page that, if you're reading this, you don't need me to explain to you what the Boston accent is.

The most powerful and natural usage of a Boston Accent that I ever heard was when I was installing office furniture in the 1980s with the V Crew, a bunch of Southie guys who took a lot of Valium. While I can't repeat it here, it involved the meanest V Crew guy loudly encouraging a man who he thought might be a black homosexual to go through the crosswalk more quickly. While the racial slur was textbook non-rhoticism, he managed to stretch "queer" out to three syllables without even thinking about using an R sound. I'd write it, but I have no idea how to. It would need an A, a Y and a perhaps several Hs.

There is at least one Facebook page where you have to even SPELL in a Boston Accent.

As far as "where does the accent start to change" part, it may be easier to look at the borders. We already looked at the WNEE accent out west. The Boston accent slams into that once you get out of Worcester.

We'll get to the South Shore and the Cape in a moment, but we first need to do some of that Merger Zone work.

MAINE 

There are two Maine accents. The main Maine accent is the inland one, where you ask a guy a question and he answers with an "ayup." That old dude from the Pepperidge Farm commercials rocked this sort of Maine accent. Stephen King, when he speaks instead of writes, also has a strong Maine accent.

They say that the Pepperidge Farm guy (Parker Fennelly, born in the 19th Century) has pretty much what would be a textbook Yankee accent. All of New England sounded like him before the Industrial Revolution. Boston accents, imitating England-English dialects of the 1800s, sprung up 200 years after the Yankee accent. It was all Ahhhhhhhhhhh after that.

When you get too close to Boston, the accent shifts heavily to Massachusetts. Boston-influenced Mainer is the other Maine accent. The Boston accent follows the coast, through parts of New Hampshire, from Cape Cod to southern and central Maine. Maine is where it merges with the other Maine accent.

Inland Maine is heavily influenced by the Vermont accent and even the French accent dropping down from the Great White North.

There's a touch of Maine to the Cape Cod accent, but we'll get to that in a minute.

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SOUTH COAST

Rhodey is an itty-bitty state with a unique position in this discussion. They are the home of the Southeast New England English Accent accent.

In short, Rhode Island has a very New York tinge to their accent. They are non-rhotic, but very distinct from Boston. The second word of "Rhode Island" starts with a "D" when a true Rhode (Island) Scholar is speaking, and is closely related to her neighbor, Lon-Guy-Land.

It is notable in that they are not connected to New York other than through Connecticut, and Connecticut isn't as Noo Yawk-sounding. That's not easy to pull off.

It might have to do with tourists, and definitely is related to Rhodey's healthy Italian population. Italians are able to resist the Boston accent somewhat, but they go under in a second for a Rhode Island accent. Rhode Island is also the top location in America for another Romance language bunch, the Portuguese.

It pushes out of Rhodey onto the South Coast somewhat, but it hits a wall once you get out of her cities. "New Beffuh" was coined by someone having fun with this accent.

Probably the best representative is Peter from The Family Guy, a show that is very up-in-your-face Rhode Island. He sounds like he's from New York, which is OK in Rhode Island. "Plunderdome" Buddy Cianci is was also a known heavyweight among Rhodey accent users.

CAPE COD

You'd be tempted to say "Ted Kennedy" here, but remember that he was born in Dorchester. Cape Cod won him over, but- as a Dorchester kid myself- I can tell you that the Dot never leaves the Rat.

Cape Codders have several factors at work when they speak. This is a key merger zone, and you'll notice that whoever I stole that Accents Map from didn't even try to score Cape Cod.

Whether the Cape Cod accent exists as a distinct entity is subject to some debate. It's a little bit of Maine, a smidgen of New York, a touch of Connecticut, a whiff of Rhode Island, a hint of Florida and a heaping dollop of Boston.

They are at the tail end of the Boston Accent, and it is the main influence on year-round residents. Ask someone from the Cape to say "Yarmouth" or "Barnstable" if you need an example, although I'd recommend doing so once the Summer People leave.

Summer People come from all points of the globe, bringing their accents with them and sometimes staying for 1/3 of the year. This can be very influential, as most Cape towns double in population in the summer. Families in cottage neighborhoods tend to spread out among that neighborhood when the kids get older, meaning that a Brewster neighborhood may have a rather large bloc of people who speak with the same sub-species of a Noo Yawk accent.

Many other Cape Codders are snowbirds, meaning that they have some other strong influence on their speech for 6-10 months a year. This effect is compounded by the fact that so many of our Snowbirds do their thing in Florida. Fortunately, a lot of Florida's snowbird population comes from Massachusetts, so the tinge is weakened somewhat.

In short.. although "cosmopolitan" is not a term normally ascribed to Mashpee, it does technically fit. This is the best explanation I can give you for the differences between Boston and Cape Cod's accents.

The Kennedy clan wield the most famous version of the accent, although there is a heavy Boston influence. People under 40 may or may not know that "Diamond" Joe Quimby, the eternal mayor of Homer Simpson's Springfield, is doing a Kennedy impression. Between Quimby and the Kennedys, the Boston accent is sort of the American Politician accent.

THE SOUTH SHORE

Time changes many things. I sure look worse now than when I was a kid... and I wasn't a good-looking kid, believe me. Time also changes accents.

If you ever read "Cape Cod Folks," which was written about 1860s Southern Plymouth, you'll be amazed at the dialogue. People who live where my Hahvahd Yahd ass does used to talk like drawling ("Becky was mad, and wouldn't speak to teacher, along o' teacher's goin' with Beck's beau.") Maine people. I saw not one dropped R, and the author, a socialite English teacher from New York, would have noticed such a thing.

Like we said earlier, most of New England spoke with the Maine accent right up until it became fashionable in Boston to drop Rs after vowels. It took some time to drift out into the deep suburbs and rural areas.

I'm not old enough to do anything but guess at this, but I'd say that the South Shore started changing when Going To The Beach became a major American leisure activity. The changes accelerated when Route 3 was built, opening up the South Shore as a home for Boston workers.

When busing hit in the 1970s, anyone with money fled Boston. Much of the South Shore was undeveloped, or existed in cottage/cabin form. This changed, and most towns on the South Shore saw their population double from 1950 to 1980... some even doubled from 1970 to 1980.

This influx of Southie/Dorchester/Roxbury/Hyde Park people changed the phonic character of the South Shore. By the 1980s and perhaps long, long before, the South Shore was the second home for the Boston Accent.

There is a possibility that the South Shore may soon out-Boston Accent the actual people from Boston. Boston always has and will continue to draw immigrants, both from America and abroad. They will do so at a rate much, much higher than somewhere insular like Pembroke will. Southie is only 80% white, and is 8% black. Duxbury is 99.4% white. Southie is rapidly gentrifying, while Cohasset doesn't look that much different demographically than it did in 1986. This will change the Boston accent... in Boston.

That's right, folks.... we're really not that far from a day when a mob movie is being shot in Massachusetts, and people from Southie get turned down in casting because they don't sound "Southie"enough for the mob movie. This actually happened once (visually) with Dawson's Creek, a show about Cape Cod that was shot in North Carolina because Cape Cod didn't look Cape Cod enough for the producers). When that day comes, don't be shocked if the set of the gritty urban mob movie looks a lot like a Marshfield High School reunion.

I hunted for the South Shore accent all over those there Internets. I may eventually find what I'm looking for, but the best line I saw came in a so-bad-I-won't-link-to-it "People from California Try To Pronounce New England Town Names" video. Looking at "Scituate," some gnarly dude said "It looks like the degree you get if you study Science Fiction in college."

You may also enjoy this forum where someone moving to the South Shore posted a query as to "Which South Shore Town Do I Move To If I Don't Want My Kids To Get The Boston Accent?" Unfortunately for her, the answer is "Plymouth, 1835."

There are some differences between the coastal South Shore accent and the interior Plymouth County one, but they are minor enough that we won't bother with them unless a fight starts in the comments.

The best simple explanation is that the South Shore Accent is similar to the tourist-altered Cape Cod accent, but every tourist on the South Shore is from Hyde Pahhhhhk.

We Need The Reader's Help: Boston and Cape Cod Accents

We're fishing for help with an article we're doing on the range of the Boston Accent. Since all of America isn't using the Boston Accent, one must assume that the Boston Accent stops somewhere. If so, where does it happen, and what does it then become?

The Boston Accent is a tricky thing to explain, as is the cutoff point. Sometimes, when I can't word the preamble properly, I just transcribe Cranberry County Magazine staff conversations...

Stephen Bowden: "I moved from Dorchester to Quincy to Duxbury in a span covering about 5 years. When I went to school in Duxbury, I was almost immediately pulled from class and inserted into Speech Therapy, where they attempted to exorcise my Boston accent like it was demonic possession. I spent hours saying words like 'farther' and 'Jimmy Carter' over and over."

Stacey Monponsett: "I moved to Massachusetts from France as a child. I was initially disappointed that I hadn't landed in one of the cowboy regions. When I settled in Boston, I assumed that everyone in the city spoke like The Godfather, and that, once you drove out of the city a few miles, everyone spoke like Andy Griffith. I can recall being very frustrated when I moved into the suburbs and everyone still sounded like the Boston people. I then, having kept my disappointment to myself and not getting the opportunity to be corrected, assumed that you had to go to Western Massachusetts to get a cowboy accent. This delusion lasted until I went to Smith."

Cranberry Jones: "Why don't we stop in Fairhaven for lunch?"
Jessica Allen: "I grew up there, You're saying it wrong. It's not 'Fair-haven," it's 'Fuh-haven.'"
CJ: "'Fah-haven?'"
Jessica: "No, Fuh-haven."
CJ: "I grew up 20 miles from you. I can't believe that we differ this much phonetically."
Jessica: "Why don't we stop in New Bedford for lunch?"
CJ: "New Beffuh!"
Jessica: "Never mind. I'm no longer hungry."

Girl From Rural Kentucky At A Bourne Hotel: "Excuse me, Sir... would you talk to my friend for a moment?"
Stephen: "What do you want me to say?"
Kentucky: (laughs) "Whatever you want..."
Stephen: (taking phone) "Hey, how you doin'?"
Girl On Phone: "Are you an actor?"
Stephen: "No, I'm a reporter."
Girl On Phone: "Say 'Harvard isn't that far from Boston Harbor,' please"
Stephen: "'Harvard isn't that far from Boston Harbor.'"
Girl On Phone: "Well, I'll be dipped..."
Girl From Rural Kentucky: (grabbing phone from Stephen) "See? I told you it was real. Y'all owe me twenty dollars, bitch!"
Girl On Phone: (heard faintly) "I thought they just made that accent up for movies."

Stacey: "Being a French immigrant to Boston had one benefit.... I was the only one at AOL Sports who was able to say 'Brett Favre' effortlessly. His last name is sort of like how Americans say 'five,' but not really."
Abdullah: "Southerners add a syllable, I bet."
Stacey: (performs the worst Southern accent ever) "Fav-ruh."
Abdullah "All of those 'R' sounds that Boston people drop? They are sent to Texas, and put into words like 'wash.'"

America is a land of great diversity. You can have a Cape Verdean girl hand you Mexican food on the Irish Riviera, or you could French-kiss a Russian escort girl at a Swedish massage parlor... all in Massachusetts. This diversity ranges into Accents, and America must have thousands of them.

Several of these accents stand out. California, holding a coast that is about Georgia to Boston, probably has a thousand other regional accents aside from the Valley Girl one... but not if I just shut my mind to the possibility. Southerners have their own thing going on. Anyone with a TV has probably heard the Noo Yawk accent, and perhaps can even differentiate between it and the Lon-Guy-Land accent.

This differentiation leads into today's theme... Is there a difference between the Boston accent and the Cape Cod accent? If there is, where does it begin to assert itself? Does the South Coast favor one or the other, or do they have their own thing? Where do places like Maine and Rhode Island fit into this?

We're seeking your feedback on the matter. We'd like informed opinions, wild guesses, "I've lived in all three" sort of observations, lines of demarcation, bad jokes/puns, "I'm from here and my wife is from there" Mars/Venus tangents, "I'm from Connecticut and you're all goofy-sounding" disses and whatever else might pop into your head.

Feel free to take advantage of this page's COMMENTS feature, or you can drop some knowledge in the comments section of whatever Facebook group you saw this article in. We won't quote anyone directly, unless they get off a good line. I'll try to chase down a linguistic expert while you're doing that, and we'll see what sort of non-rhotic fun we can have later this week. We thank you in advance for your help.

It just occurred to me that there are 6 billion or so people on the planet, and I am most likely the only one thinking "Where do you find a Boston linguistics expert on an August weekend?"

Sonic Expanding Into Massachusetts

Smithfield, RI

I have friends who don't eat fast food in any form. They're the smart ones, no doubt, and nature should reward them with longer lives and slimmer waistlines. Pulling into one of these fast food joints literally takes minutes from your lifespan... but we're all dying at some point, right?

Once you go all in and commit, part of the fast food lifestyle is discriminating between different brands. Some people have no brand loyalty at all. Others will deliver an Eff Wendy's rant while holding a quarter pounder that, when you peel the bun off of it, looks like that Noriega guy who used to run Panama.

What kills the fast food lifestyle for many is the paucity of choices. You have the King, you have Wendy, and you have Ronald. If your town or mall rules, you may also have a KFC or a Taco Bell... maybe even both in one store! The presence of a KFC/Taco Bell nearby was a selling point for me when I moved to Buzzards Bay, although this was before I met Jessica and started getting food that comes from the stove and so forth. A man can get used to that.

You still have to pull off the highway and get lunch in 3 minutes sometimes, and I cook poorly enough to invoke a situation where a Happy Meal is a safer nutritional choice than me trying to not burn chicken. At worst, Logan can at least make money suing McDonald's.

Now, Logan will also have the opportunity to get salmonella or Legionnaire's Disease from a new restaurant. Sonic Drive-In is setting her sights upon the virgin territory of New England.

Also known as Sonic, the Oklahoma burger joint has been spreading across the nation since her 1950s inception. She has been slow to come to New England, with just 4 stores in Massachusetts (Peabody, Lawerence, Wilmington and Stoughton) and one in Smithfield, Rhode Island. That ish is about to change, Big Man.

Sonic is expanding the franchise to Somerset, Massachusetts. My sources tell me that the new store opens on April 13th, just one week from when I'm typing this. You'll have to leave pretty early to beat me there. I've never even seen a Sonic, despite going to Florida recently (the only low-rent meal I had there was at a strip bar right when we got off the plane), and I'm long overdue.

I'm being told just now that they also have one working for nearby Swansea. Fall River and New Betty can't be far behind, at that point. Somerset was a bit behind schedule.

The chain has plans to open 36 franchises in the Greater Boston area. "Greater Boston" technically means the eastern third of Massachusetts sans the South Coast and Cape Cod, but it can mean whatever you need it to mean if you think that one will hit it big in Hyannis. I've even read estimates as high s 40 in some articles.They also plan for a smaller amount of franchises in New Hamster and Maine.

You'd better bring a lot of green to the Sonic man if you want to open a franchise. Don't even bother calling unless you have two milly in the bank. My people tell me that it would cost a million to build one up from the ground, or a half million to turn a financially-faltering Wendy's-type building into a Sonic.

If you hurry and establish one before anyone else within 50 miles does, you could have a novelty hit on your hands. Buzzards Bay should try to get one, it would really help their Main Street out.

From what I can see on the Sonic menu, it's the same garbage that you see at the other joints. Burgers, chicken strips, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, fries and so forth.

They seem to have 8 different burgers, the most impressive being one mashed between two pieces of Texas toast. They also have 8 different kinds of hot dogs, each worse than the last.

They do have cool side order options, including chili fries, onion rings (a must in SE Massachusetts and extra-especially in Rhode Island)  and mother-loving tater tots. They seem to be shake and slush focused for drinks, although I'm sure that you can get a Coke if you need one.

They also have a Taco Bell-ian/Burger King-ish breakfast menu, but you gotta draw the line somewhere, kids.

If your burger sucks (and if you're armed), why not see if you can throw it into the face of the guy in the car next to you?

UPDATE: This column went to the Smithfield Sonic! We had just taken Twin River for a quick $150, and decided to live large for a meal.

You can go inside, or you can pull up to an individualized service screen parking spot. They have people who skate the food out to you... or run it out if you go when it's raining, like we did.

I do wonder if enough kids roller skate these days to fully staff a Sonic in a small ton. At least the Somerset one is within skating distance of Fall River.

If you eat inside, they take your order, give you a number, and run it out to you when it's ready.

I felt just like Richard Petty!

The food blows pretty hard, like the mighty North wind. We only have ourselves to blame, as we just got a Coney (what they call hot dogs), fries and a strawberry-banana shake. The shake was really good, I wish that I had another right now.

The food?

The hot dog was around the quality of what you'd get at a Food Mart-style gas station if you were fortunate enough to grab one right when it neared optimal temperature. The french fries had a Wal-Mart Great Value sort of taste and appearance, but they're edible if you hide them in ketchup. I did have a seagull refuse one, a first for me.

It stayed down, which is saying something. I can see a lot of this food being regurgitated out of a car window on side streets in Smithfield by people who stopped at a Sonic after a day spent defeating a 30 pack.

Mobil-riffic!

That's why they grow the more powerful strains of marijuana, folks.

I don't believe that they are endorsed by the hedgehog from the video game, although it seems that he'd work cheap and would be a natural. He might be in PETA or something.

Some franchises never take off in New England. Krispy Kreme is the most famous example, as New Englanders violently prefer Dunkin' Donuts. You also don't see Papa John, Domino's or Pizza Hut survive here long... we have too many serious Italians and Greeks running house-of-pizza shops around here to tolerate processed pizza. Taco Bell, however, usually does well wherever they put it.

How will Sonic fare? Only time will tell. I hear that Smithfield does 500 orders a day. I have no idea if that is a profitable rate.

Even with a poor review from this column, it behooves the fast food ninja to make the hajj to whatever Sonic opens near your home town. I wouldn't recommend driving to Rhode Island from Plymouth to get some Sonic, unless they open one in Wareham or Kingston.

We only got Sonic because we were gambling nearby, This is important, as we knew that we were writing a Sonic article, and we weren't planning to bother with the drive from Buzzards Bay. Things worked out for the best.

Check Your Irish

A few notes on the reach of the Irish Riviera....

- Before doing any demographic research, I went to various Facebook pages on the Cape and South Coast, seeing if the people there felt that they should be included in the Irish Riviera.

The Cape people feel that they are a whole other entity. They are correct, IMHO. Cape Cod is actually the New England Riviera. They draw people from all over, where the visitors on the South Shore have a bit more Paddy to them.

No one from the South Coast even replied, to my knowledge.

- As you can see, the heart of the Riviera runs from Hull to Duxbury, with a sizable inland area running to the Bridgewaters. Brockton is a lighter green, but still Irish enough to represent hard.

- You could make an argument about running the Irish Riviera from Plymouth through Bourne down to Falmouth, and maybe hooking it through parts of Sandwich, Barnstable and Mashpee.

- Other than those lonely white dots, you can pretty much roll from the tip of Cape Cod to Worcester on a sea of green.

- Sharon,  a big lonely dot of white in a sea of green in the middle, only has 12% Irish. 14% of their population, and their biggest group by ancestry, is Russian.

- The North Shore has a bit of an inland Riviera going, but it's a B- to the South Shore's 4.0. Her anchorman is North Reading.

- It gets very Latino when you get north and east of Boston. East Boston is 54% Latino.

- The more Irish parts of Cape Cod are about as Irish as the less Irish parts of the South Shore.

- Fairhaven (27% Portuguese), Westport (30% Portagee, 14% French), Dartmouth (37% Portagee), Fall River (44% Portagee) and New Bedford (37% Portuguese, and they have more Sub-Saharan Africans at 8% than Irish at 7%) establish a firm roadblock in front of the Irish Riviera's reach onto the South Coast.

- Onset and East Wareham have the most Micks on the South Coast. while the Popponessett section of the Cape bleeds the greenest. A run from Pop through Hyannis sometimes gets Irish Riviera votes, mostly because of the Kennedys.

- Wellfleet on the Cape and the whole South Coast west of Mattaspoisett need to import some Irish, pronto.

- Even a first grader can look at this map and tell you where everyone fled Southie and JP for when busing started.

- A girl I worked with at AOL is from eastern Massachusetts, and has 4 sisters. Each of them has dated someone named "Murph." Not the same Murph, either.

- You kind of have to squint at it to see it on that map, but Southie is still pretty friggin' Irish. You won't have trouble finding some Irish Spring in Charlestown, either.

- Butter-soft Duxbury is more Irish than any bad-ass part of Boston where Whitey Bulger ever stalked, or at least since busing hit. I don't see any mob movies coming our way, however... although we did have a rapper get shot in town, so there's progress being made.

- Rhode Island is 19% Irish. They are America's most Portuguese state, and also have a pile of Eye-tal-ians.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!