Should Route 3A Have A Nickname?

Granted, there are more important issues on the table. Syria and Iraq look messy. The Trumpcare rollout has been slightly less than smooth. North Korea is advancing their nuclear technology. There are many problems in the world more important than naming Route 3A something cool.

However, those problems require complex solutions, ones that will most likely not be figured out by a wandering stoner journalist lining up his next road trip. However, I'm just the man to bring this issue to your attention and maybe float a few names out there to sort of jump-start the process. I'm not smart enough for a brainstorm, but I do generate an impressive squall line now and then. That's good enough to name a highway.

One thing that Bourne, Wareham and Sandwich do well is name highways. Sandwich has the Old King's Highway (Route 6A), Bourne has the Scenic Highway (mainland Route 6, between the bridges) and ?ham has the Cranberry Highway. You could also throw in the Mid-Cape Highway and the Grand Old Army of The Republic Highway, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Running a road along the Canal and giving it a catchy name didn't get the Muslims and the Jews to stop bickering or anything, but it adds some character to the area, makes it easier for traffic reports and helps the tourists along.

Meanwhile, the 50 mile stretch of road between Bourne and Quincy- Route 3A- has no nickname at all. Wikipedia says it is known as the "Cape Way" highway, but that sort of doesn't really work either functionally (these days), as no one goes to the Cape that way anymore, and stylistically (ever). "Cape Way" blows like the mighty north wind.

Every year at around St. Patrick's Day time, we run whatever Irish-themed articles we have kicking in the archives. "Check Your Irish" is a good one, as is "The Irish Riviera."

One thing you'll learn if you read either article (or read both, I need the money) is that the area between Quincy and Bourne is stuffed with Irish-Americans. That, and the seasonal/coastal nature of the area, garnered the "Irish Riviera" nickname for the area.

Many inland towns have high Irish populations, but the big unbroken run of 33+% Irish goes from Weymouth to Plymouth.

If you stare at a map long enough, you'll also notice that Route 3A runs right through the same area. While 3A itself is inland some and doesn't host the actual Riviera, it connects to every piece of it through a sort of river/tributary system.

If you weigh the factors of 1) no effective Route 3A nickname and 2) the green wave of Irish-Americans in that Plymouth-Weymouth stretch, a solution comes to mind. Give it an Irish-themed nickname.

There are many sorts of nicknames, some official, some not. At least one pol who I asked said I'd have to go to MassDOT. That's if we want to go official. If we just want to introduce a nickname or three into the public domain and see if one of them catches on, all we have to do is write an article and post it a bit.

Let's kick a few around, shall we?

- "St. Patrick's Highway" has a nice ring to it, but it may violate the concept of keeping the church and state apart. That's probably my only official-sounding one.

- "Paddy Road" sounds like an Irish Mob movie, but it is also very catchy.

- "Mick Street" and the Happy Meal-sounding "McStreet" might offend someone, but it won't be someone Irish. The Irish, who were compared with dogs for a lot of US history, are incapable of taking offense. Don't believe me? Approach any college and say "You should be more like the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. How about the Bridgewater State University Crafty Jews?" You're not going to get a callback, player. Meanwhile, Irish-Americans who have never been near Indiana root for Notre Dame. If you think Christianity has anything to do with that, suggest that the bartender at your local sports bar stop what he is doing and hunt through the channels for the Oral Roberts University game.

- I am reluctant to put quote marks around O'Boulevard, because it already has a half of one in it.

- "The Green Mile" has ominous connotations from the movie that will be gone in a generation or two. It will also fit perfectly into those "Massachusetts Roads Make No Sense" memes, along the lines of "The Green Mile is 50 miles long." This nickname also lets us experiment with painting those yellow lines in the road green, which is just the thing to do in resort areas with a hard-drinking population base.

- "Shamrock Lane" sounds like a stripper, but it is also very catchy and relatively inoffensive to people who aren't a bit too familiar with Stripper Naming. The movie with the giant monster (Cloverfield or John Goodman, take your pick) sort of ruined any "Clover Road" possibilities.

- "The Guinness Bypass" would be ugly the first time someone de-barked a Route 3A tree.

- "The Capital Highway" would be a simple power grab. Ireland stopped being the place with the most Irish one potato famine ago. America now has the most people of Irish descent, by a large margin. In America, Massachusetts is known as the most Irish state.  In Massachusetts, the South Shore is recognized as the most Irish part of the most Irish state. Why shouldn't the South Shore thus have Capital status? Ireland can put the Capitol wherever they wish, but we can make a great claim to the Capital status. We should make a reality of that claim by naming Route 3A in such a mindset.

- "The Leprebahn" is a mishmash spelling of the little Irish pixie and the Autobahn in Germany where you can drive 200 mph if your car (and skills) will support it. We could paint the stripes between the lanes Gold, like the pot o' gold that the leprechaun guards. To save money, we can just declare that we painted them gold, leave them as the present yellow that they are, and hope that it either A) fools the tourists or B) amuses the locals. Stacey, an editor here, is arguing strenuously for a spelling of "Leprechahn."

- "The Edge" is not only a cool name for a road, but it is U2 related. U2 is an Irish rock band that the kids are listening to these days, or 1986 or whatever. That in itself doesn't merit a road, but could the actual real Edge guy be persuaded to record a quick ditty in exchange for having a highway named after him? I float this possibility only because Route 3A doesn't have her own song, like Route 128 does with that Roadrunner song by the Modern Lovers... although someone once told me that Roadrunner somehow references Cohasset (Editor's Note: Christine Frka, a former Frank Zappa groupie, lived and died at the Cohasset house of Modern Lovers founder Johnathan Richman,,, h/t to Nathaniel Palmer) . The Edge could hand us that title with ten minutes work.

- "Beating A Dead Horse Street" comes to mind when it's time to end this article.

Plymouth Hurricane Primer: Inundation and Evacuation In America's Hometown

Plymouth doesn't have the coastal flooding problems that towns like Duxbury have, which is amazing, because Plymouth has as much coastline as Scituate, Marshfield and Cohasset combined.

Plymouth floods, no doubt. If you've ever been in Bert's, and wondered why the big boulder was displayed inside.... the Blizzard of '78 put it there. A trip to Cedarville will show you several houses which are one storm away from a straw/camel's back scenario involving the seaside cliffs they rest on. Plymouth was also Ground Zero for the worst hurricane seen in New England by the palefaces, but we'll get to that in a moment.

Plymouth gets mad hurricane Disrespeck for several reasons. One, it is blocked by several barrier beaches, which range from as small as Long Beach to as large as Cape Cod. E/NE winds that push storm unimpeded waves across the mid-Atlantic towards towns like Scituate and Duxbury find a Cape Cod-sized roadblock when aiming at Plymouth.

The Cape, an dat ol' sketchy South Coast, also protect Plymouth from direct hit hurricane shots. Any storm that hits Plymouth has hit New Bedford or Wareham first, and those towns absorb a lot of the initial shock. I watched Hurricane Bob- which tore Cape Cod to shreds- from nearby Duxbury Beach, and the waves didn't even hit the seawall.

Plymouth has a wide variety of coastline designs, or whatever God calls it when He makes Ellisville different from Cedarville. You can park 100 feet from the shore at Bert's and have a wave break over your car. You're a few feet higher off the beach over by Issac's, and you're 8 stories above the waves at the same 33 yard distance if you are working the 18th hole at White Cliffs Country Club.

Plymouth also elevates rather quickly from the shoreline, so the ocean is unable to push that far inland, even with Katrina-style winds blowing behind it. That means very little to you if you live on Water Street, but it is why you don't see flooding miles inland like you do with Duxbury and Marshfield. This is also influenced by the heavily-wooded nature of Plymouth, as opposed to the just-add-ocean marshes in the Floodier towns to the north.

We have two maps for you to look over. The one at the top of the page is a Hurricane Inundation Map. That shows you what parts of Plymouth would flood in what intensity of hurricane. The people who make these maps (a group effort by FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and the NHC) are assuming a worst case, direct-hit scenario with full hurricane conditions striking at mean high tide.

The map DOES NOT account for freshwater, inland flooding. You're on your own there, homie... although you'd want to know how far you are from any river, and the relative elevation of your house. Shoot, 7 inches of rain will sweep some roads away, so be prepared.

The colors of the Inundation map work like this.... light green = Category 1, darker green = Category 2, yellow = Category 3 and red = Category 4. Plymouth has not had direct Category 4 hurricane conditions since the Pilgrims showed up. FEMA even takes a 100 Year Flood estimate for extreme scenarios, which is represented by the color Crayola used to call "flesh" until they realized that minority kids also like to color. I think it's called "Off Whitey" now.

Due to Plymouth's large size, it can be hard to distinguish some of the colors with the picture I have for you. You can solve that by going here. You can zoom in all you want from there.

The hardcore areas in town seem to be a Kingston border-to-Long Beach run. It's not so bad after that, as the hills of the coastline begin to assert themselves. You get some flat coastline- and a river mouth- right where the nuclear power station is. Pilgrim is in the Inundation zone, even for a moderate hurricane. It's odd using terms like "moderate" to describe something as ghastly as a hurricane, but this is how we do at the NWS.

If your street is any color but the white of the map background, you might want to start making plans on escaping. You might have to wait 50 years before you need to get Ghost, but it is better to have a plan and not need it than it is to need a plan and not have it.

Your plan would be influenced by the second map we have for you today, the Evacuation. Sounds biblical, no?

The proffered Evacution map is easier to follow. Red means "those people have to evacuate," and yellow means "so do you."

Plymouth takes her storm threats very seriously, and the police will be following this map as a guide for which streets and even which houses would be asked to leave when Mr. Hurricane comes knocking.

The immediate shoreline will be evacuated all through the town, even the cliffs areas. This is in effect even for a minimal huuricne. You don't have to leave if you don't want to, but you also don't want to be relying on the cop you told to f*ck off earlier to pull you out of the maelstrom. Irony and Karma both bite for the ass.

The bonus areas in Plymouth that might require inland evacuation are the Eel River area and Ellisville. You have to earn them with a higher-intensity storm, but the threat is real. Larger storms look to be a good bet to evacuate people out to 3A in White Horse Beach and all around the Eel River.

That's the cell phone version of the map, you can view the Evacuation map in more detail by clicking here.

Plymouth folk may have the tendency to disregard hurricane preparations, as they have large land masses taking the heavy shots for them. However, history paints such people as fools, because Harry Cane can f*ck you up smooth in Pilgrim Town. He has before.

Remember, we're only about 380 years removed from the Great Colonial Hurricane.That powerful 1635 storm dropped in unannounced on the Pilgrims, and blew down everything in sight. Experts say that it may have been the worst East Coast hurricane since European colonization, and hit Plymouth (after coming ashore along the CT/RI border) as a Category 3 monster. It may have been Category 5 further south of us.

A storm like that would be bad, bad news for Plymouth, and that would be BEFORE we factored in the inundated nuclear power plant.

Keep your head up, people. This magazine relies heavily on your site visits, and my lifestyle can not afford to have Plymouth residents dying en masse. We've got nothing but love for you.

Saquish, pictured in the background below, would be an island in a hurricane. Rotten last paragraph, I know, but I like to end articles with nature shots.