Leftovers From Our Foliage, Cranberry And Halloween Travels

I think that the people on the right turn before Edaville Railroad have had just about enough of TomTom's flaws.

The first article Jessica and I did together was us mistakenly thinking that Edaville was closed and abandoned, like the Lakeville Speedway or something.

A phone call from a detective proved that we were incorrect.

It all worked itself out. We were harmless. "Respectable citizens. Multiple felons, perhaps, but certainly not dangerous."

This fellow came up on me while I was shooting a pic of the cool barn he lives in. The barn made the article, but the horse had to wait for us to get to the Leftovers article.

We do a lot of trespassing, although we generally have no reason to trespass on the property of people whom the Ultimate Warrior referred to as "normals."

You kind of have to earn our presence on your property, and 99% of our small trespass violations involve us getting a pic of something that the homeowner was most likely showing off anyhow.

We're generally well-received, and we have a good sense of when Jessica should talk to the person and be sweet/nice, and when I should act crazy and try to crack them up... or, in some cases, scare them away.

We have developed an effective Mojo, and can generally move about now without any bother.

That's Green Harbor, in Marshfield.

I say that because there appears to be a Green Harbor Resort in West Yarmouth, as well.

I'm not sure if the Yarmouth one is named after a Green Harbor out there.

Either way, the Green Harbor in Marshfield is named after William Green, who opened a commercial fishing enterprise there in 1627.

Yarmouth, however is more likely better-known worldwide. A lot of tourists from a lot of different states have trampled through the Resort. Is it enough that more people associate the name "Green Harbor" with Yarmouth than with Marshfield?

I'd love to see a feud, but it probably won't go down that way. My vote is with Marsh Vegas.

Since we're trying to start fights, why not throw a good one up in the mix?

Is Wareham part of Cape Cod?

We'll let both sides speak.

No: Mainland side of the Canal, more thug-life than any Cape town (including Barnstable), and did I mention that they are on the wrong side of the Canal? Bourne's membership in the Cape Cod Club is sometimes questioned, and Wareham is west of Bourne.

Yes: They have that Gateway sign, they have a Cape League team, they have a sizable summer community, they bear the Cape's traffic and they market heavily to sell that Cape vibe.

Many years ago, Wareham was on the team. You got off the highway in Wareham, and crawled through the tourist traps and clam shacks to the Cape. Wareham, with miles of coast and lakefront space, claimed many tourist dollars on their own.

Duxbury and Marion have Summer People population, but they don't weigh as heavily on the affairs of the town as they do in Wareham... and Cape Cod.

I think that, prior to to the highway being extended to the bridge, Wareham was Cape Cod. Now, I'm not so sure.

We've still got some foliage runs left in us

I think that Cape Cod's foliage peaks in November, perhaps even mid-November in some places. We're driving out there either Thursday or Friday to see where the local color is.

We have a larger article coming up about a Foliage Project, but I need to talk to someone who owns a tree farm.

It'll be cool, trust me.

Ironically, the Kingston Water Department is in this building.

Shooting foliage on cloudy days is tough, but if the wind is calm, you can go All In on shooting houses reflecting in water.

Lemons, Lemonde, babe...

I really love the Monponsett Inn's swan benches, but they're bolted down.

Maybe I should make a Turkey Bench...

Good luck this month, Gobbler...

Turkeys that you see around here in December are usually cocky and uppity.

You would be too, if you'd just dodged the cemetery. It catches up to all of us eventually, however.

Leftover spooky graveyard pic... check.

I may have included it in the Halloween article series, I'm not sure.

Speaking of Halloween...

A friend (Jaime Bedford) posted this on FB, I stole it, and I plan to tell her about the publication of it ex post facto. She's a home slice, she should be OK.

This was a house on Duxbury Beach. This picture was taken the day after the Perfect Storm/Halloween Gale stopped beating up the neighborhood in 1991.

It is famous locally for a cool legend. The owner came down before the storm and had a glass of beer. He or she (not sure which Bedford it was, Jaime is a new Bedford) left that glass- unfinished- on the table you can barely see through the door.

Th storm lifted the house up and washed it back about a first down or so from where the photographer was standing. 10 foot storm waves battered it back and forth, hither and yon.

The glass did not spill.

For an added bonus story.... I was standing about where the men in that photo were standing when the Bedfords came down to see how their cottage fared in the Gale. Power and phone lines were down, so they may have not known exactly how bad it was, or even known that the house had been wrecked. Sh*t like that happened before the Internet, kids.

I was perfectly positioned to see their First Impressions. Their expressions were horror meets awe. Iraqis probably had the same look during the WMD War. My house was wrecked, too... I had the same look.

Let's end on a happier note.

Massive Eyesore Wind Farm Being Erected On Bourne Border

A cranberry bog owner wanted some more revenue, as being one of (or) the largest land owner in Buzzards Bay doesn't pay what it used to.

What to do?

Build four wind turbines on the Bourne edge of your Plymouth property!

Each turbine will stand 492 feet tall, just about the size of the Custom House Tower in Boston. They will be the largest structures south of Boston and east of Hartford. 19 states in the USA do not have a building as tall as these incoming monstrosities. Only 25 states have a building 10 stories higher than this proposed project.

In the 1954 version of Godzilla, Raymond Burr's reporter describes the monster as being "as tall as a thirty story building." Godzilla would need to stand on Bunker Breed's Hill to touch the top of this windmill.

Good luck, guys.

They will blight the landscape. Just look at the bloody things. They look like War Of The Worlds.

This will drive your property values down if you live within sight of these things, even before the eternal VUMP VUMP VUMP of the turbine blades spinning gets factored in.

There have been studies conducted that deny any health risks. This stands in contrast to 40+ health complaints from the far smaller Falmouth turbine. Noise estimates are optimistic, as a turbine in Kingston clocks in at twice as noisy as the studies predicted.

Once they're up, they won't be coming down... but if they do, they will rain debris all over several neighborhoods, and maybe even Route 25. They can also throw ice, and they are pretty much a bird shredder... a sad thing to drop on the Buzzards Bay border.

Here's a video of a turbine killing a buzzard, if you like your irony served heavy.

Future Generation Wind lawyers simply put their heads down and steamrolled through any local's complaints. A guy on Morning Mist Lane, who was holding the Falmouth Board Of Health reports in his hand, was told that he could stop the flicker effect by planting a tree.

Keith Mann presently lives near the property. That may not last, as the new income may allow him to move somewhere without a wind farm on the horizon. I notice that he is doing no cranberry farming at all so far this year, although cranberry farmers start late down on the Cape.

The farm will make about 1700 houses worth of electricity. It will be sold back to Eversource for credits, which Mann will sell to several schools and towns. Due to the fickle nature of wind, it's not going to shut down the oil/gas-fired plant down the road, it will just augment the electricity they're already making. It will not create 5 permanent jobs. It will just make rich people richer.

Bourne residents complained, but Ted Kennedy and the Koch Brothers were barely able to defeat a much more massive Cape Wind nightmare. No Kennedys or Koch Brothers live in Bourne, and Bill Keating (our only resident with any weight behind his voice) lives very far from this beast.

I live near this, so I'm sort of anti-farm right now. I may even be unreasonable. If you feel positively about this project and think I am being unfair, I'll happily give you a page of this website to state your views. Just let me know in the comments, leave an email addy.

The same goes if you are really pissed, and think that I'm lobbing softballs here.

I know Keith a bit, and he's a poor choice for a villain. He's actually a pretty good guy. Remember, this plant may save him from selling his less-profitable-every-year acres of land to some developer who would plant a ghetto there.

I just think the project, uhm, blows.

Plymouth, who signed off on this, could give a f*ck. They're losing that nuclear plant money, and will be begging for revenue soon enough. Mann could probably build one in the middle of Plimoth Plantation if he wished to do so.

Only an isolated Bournehurst village will have to stare at this, especially where Mann sited it right on the Bourne border. No one there wields any political power, either.

Bourne loves it, at least the Town of Bourne does. The parts for this monster will need to move through Bourne, and these cops sit there all day, waiting for one of the two daily allotted deliveries. 4 SUVs, 4 cops, and they close the road when the big pieces run through.

We'll do another piece when they start erecting it. We'll have to sneak by Bourne's Finest to get the pics, but we do what we gotta.

Stealing a quote from Patch, but NIMBY now means "Next It May Be You."

Massachusetts Town Names That No One Else Can Pronounce

Scituate

Sort of like "sit chew it," but not really.


Leicester

"Molester" without the first name of the slap-happy Stooge. Remember, the "r" is non-rhotic.


Billerica

Silent "e," and "rica" is pronounced like My Friend Flicka.


Gloucester

The people who make the Gorton's Of Gloucester commercials pronounce it wrong. It's actually sort of like "Gloss Stir"... if you pronounce that last R, that is.


Worcester

I was a security guard at the Worcester Centrum one year, and I saw Kenny Rogers botch this one. "Me and the boys travel across the land, but we always love it when we come back to War Chester." Someone up front shouted the proper word, causing Rogers to make a confused face and say, a bit more properly, something that sounds a bit like Rooster. The town is sometimes pronounced like the steak sauce, and vice-versa.


Somerville

The best way I can explain this without maxing out the syllable-syllable-syllable thing is to say that the Beach Boys or the Heat Miser should live here. Ironically, this is where Winter Hill is.


Leominster

Lemon-stir, quite possibly named so that people with a jar of water and some sugar would never forget how to make lemonade. Bree Sisson, the WBZ newsie from Jacksonville, always stumbles over this one. I forgive her.


Chicopee

Sort of like "chicory," but not really. This mostly just fools foreigners, but it fools them badly.

Sandwich

One thing that I discovered when I moved to Cape Cod is that about 20% of the people I know pronounce this as "Sammich." It goes up to 35% if the town name is dropped mid-sentence.


Tyngsborough

"Ting," not "Tying." Also, note the over-lettering of what should be "boro." Many towns, including Middleboro and Foxboro, refuse to use the ugh ending. No, none of these town names end in a way that rhymes with "cough."


Rehoboth

People who write dictionaries- who may just have one guy who specializes in the little ruh-hoe-buth parts of dictionaries- know how to tell you how to pronounce this. I can't do it, at least not in print.


Cataumet, Waqouit, Weqauquet, etc...

Cape Cod's town names are easy, but they make up for it by having impossible village names.


Woburn

The "o" is pronounced exactly like the "u" is pronounced in "tuba," because... well, f*ck you.


Haverhill

More "shave" than "have." A rare pronounced R sound in a Massachusetts town name.


Cotuit

"O" as "uh," then the last part of "Do it to it." Yes, the "o" is a "u" sound and the "u" is an "o" sound. We may one day be invaded by a foreign power, but they will not sneak up on us if they have to talk at all.


Fairhaven

You'd think that "fair" is in this word, but you'd be wrong. The "ir" was put in that word just to fool the British. The remainder of the prefix is pronounced like a longer way to run... provided that The Sound Of Music is set in Mission Hill.

Duxbury

Childe Stephen made a relatively quick leap from Dorchester to Quincy to Duxbury in the 1970s. Duxbury is about where, after Busing, the Boston accent runs into the more clipped Cape Cod accent. I spent 4th and 5th grade being removed from regular class for Speech Therapy, and all of it was me, over and over, having to say words like "farther" and "carnivore" as they exorcised my Southie accent like I was Regan MacNeil. As for pronouncing Duxbury, some people pronounce the end like Miss Sisson's first name, some say it sort of like "berry," and some say it sort of like the last part of Kitty Purry. The first part is like "Ducks," and not at all like Frank Dux from Bloodsport.


Tyringham

"Tier," not Tie."


Cochituate

Next....


Hyannis

More "Buy Ann this" than "Uranus."


Nahant

Just as confusing backwards as forwards.


Eastham

Looks easy enough. The end can be a deal-breaker. I threw this article up on the Eastham FB page, and there is some debate ongoing. 'Ham or 'Hum, choose your side wisely. It is tied very heavily into how one pronounces "Chatham." I'm an Upper Cape guy, this is Outer Cape stuff, and I can't be the one who makes the call.


Housatonic

Should be in Texas, and used as an adverb.


Wellesley

Also should be used as an adverb.


Mattapoisett

This isn't that hard to pronounce, but you have to stare at it for a second before you do so.

Quincy

Your favorite TV coroner pronounces his own name wrong, there's a Z in this.


Assinnippi

A little bit of Mississippi, in Norwell.


Assonet

Sounds like a crude name for pantyhose.


Cambridge

More "I came, I saw..." rather than Cam Neely's first name.


Padanaram

The nice part of Dartmouth, but it sounds like a level of Hell.


Truro

A rare Massachusetts word that pronounces both "r" sounds. It fools people who try to fake a Boston accent by dropping every "r." The actor who portrayed Cliff Clavin would have Jacksonian seizure if "Truro" came up mid-sentence on the teleprompter.


Amherst

No "H."


Acushnet

"A cushy net," minus the "y." The town seems to be named after a hammock.


Groton

Rhymes with "cotton," I think. I don't get there much.


Athol

Pimping Plympton!

We have a large coverage area. We include Plymouth, Brockton, Barnstable, New Bedford, Fall River and Taunton in this area. None of those are Shanghai or London, but they are rather large when compared with Duxbury, Acushnet or Truro.

Plympton (pop. 2800 or so) is also much smaller than New Bedford or Brockton. Plympton is furthermore much smaller than Duxbury or Falmouth. It is Small Town, even by Small Town standards. I think of Plympton as a small town, and I live in a village of 4000 people.

However, the roads we travel making this website have led us to Plympton many times recently. We've been here for Halloween decorations, fall foliage, cranberry bogs and harvest festivals. I haven't had to even get near Fall River when doing these articles, which are admittedly rural in nature.

We'll use today's article to thank little Plympton for hosting us!

Plympton, once you dot the i's and cross the t's, is sort of the October capital of Southeastern Massachusetts. We recognize that the state champ is Salem, and that the reasoning is sound.

However, Plympton is as rural as eastern Massachusetts gets.

For 11 months of the year, there really is nothing there. I don't fear insulting Plympton residents by saying that, because I think that those people like it this way.

Some People Like Cities, or even the just-off-a-highway ease of a bedroom suburb. Some People, to put it simply, Don't.

I had time to kill with five students once when I was teaching. I got them on Mapquest, which was more of a novelty at the time. We were going to Halifax for a class fishing trip, so I thought I'd have them recognize the region a bit before they went.

While doing this, the kids- who were all from Dorchester and Cambridge and so forth- remarked on how sparsely populated the region is. I gave them the "people there like it that way" explanation that I used a few paragraphs ago. This led to a discussion where all of these city kids who live in tenement buildings with 500 people in them were pretty much united in their belief that the country people might be on to something with this trees-as-neighbors philosophy.

They phrased it more colorfully. "That's the kind of sh*t where Jason jumps out with the axe," said one. Another, who I'd gather had seen The Beverly Hillbillies opening at least once, thought that you could discover oil by shooting into the ground there.

Just for laughs, I had them zoom around on the map some, to try to find the Most Isolated Guy In The Region. I don't want to out the guy- whom it is safe to assume is a man who wishes to enjoy his privacy- but he lives in Plympton.

We did a few trips to Plympton in October. As opposed to, say, March, October holds plenty of reasons for someone to visit Plympton.

We hit Billingsgate Farm in early October. They are somewhat famous, as they are off Route 106 on the road from the Plymouth area to the Bridgewater area. Any commuting Bridgewater State College University kid from Duxbury or Marshfield probably spent some time rolling down 106.

We popped in to get some fresh produce (we like buying local when we can), and we also got a pumpkin. We were psyched to find that they had a pumpkin patch, a corn maze and all sorts of other stuff that you don't get to see in normal suburbia.

They also have a hay ride for the kids, which is something every kid should do at dusk as Halloween nears.

You can kind of see why people like Plympton just by looking around the fringes of the farm stand area.

Plympton has a lot of farms. You can spend several weekends during the Harvest Season banging around Plympton. I know this because I have spent several of the last few weekends banging around Plympton.

Even if you never get out of the car, Plympton is cool to drive though. This, early November, is the end of the foliage season in this part of the state.

If you do get out of the car, you have a lot of options. One of the better ones is Sauchuk Farm. Sauchuk is a working corn farm that doubles as a harvest theme park.

We were there on Halloween, just before they closed and we went trick or treating.

Sauchuk Farm rules if you are a kid. You have several awesome options. This is after you soak in farmland as far as the eye can see.

My kid liked the corn maze, part of which is visible in the picture above. We got deep in it without ever finishing, as we went out the same way we went in. We cheated, but we got to the elevated part for some panorama shots.

Estimates for maze-completion ranged from an hour to 30 minutes (with help), but I bet that we could have got 90-150 minutes if we continued to let the 8 year old be the head navigator.

We also liked the Corn Cannon, which is a deluxe potato-launcher thing they use to fire corn cobs 50 yards into the field. If you hit the furthest target, you get a pumpkin!

They had a food tent with fried dough, kettle corn and hot dogs, among other things. Eat there AFTER going on the bouncy house thing (no walls nor roof, not a house, but I don't know what you call it otherwise), if you know what's good for you.

They had a hay ride sort of thing that went out to the pumpkin patch. We didn't get that ride, as we arrived sort of late and decided to instead get lost in the corn maze. We also did the duck races, where the ducks are powered by hand pumps.

Of course they had a cow train, as any self-respecting farm should.

We could have spent a year there, as long as we didn't have to do the farm work. Farmers have a hard life, and I probably serve the world best here, entertaining.

We had to split, however. We had trick-or-treating to do, and the place shuts down at 6. Farmers go to bed early, so to better be up before the sun. Circadian cycle, or whatever they call that. That corn doesn't hoe itself, or whatever you do to corn.

We got one last shot before we split.

We spent Devil's Night in Plympton, as well.

We were invited to Snow Family Farm by Lindsay Snow herself, whose family was hosting their 24th annual Halloween party for the neighborhood. For the high price of nothing at all, they park you, feed you, light up a bonfire and take the kids on a haunted hayride. No one even came close to asking me for money.

My favorite part of this was the bonfire. Actually bonfires, plural. They had some steel drums with various Halloween stuff carved into them.

We'll end with those, because it's November 2nd and I really need to let go of my love for Halloween. We have Fall Foliage and Cranberry Bogs to shoot.

Thanks, Plympton!

Halloween Displays VI: Halloween Night In Duxbury

We finished up our South Shore Halloween Display Rampage in Duxbury.

120 pound pumpkin, carved.

Laying down the law, zombie-style.

Too much pumpkin pie?

This looks like one of those bugs that came off the Cloverfield monster, especially where I get the shaky-cam effect even when I stand still.

Children will walk through a graveyard if they think they can get a Twix.

I'm not sure what that is, other than "well-carved pumpkin."

Thank you, Duxbury!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Halloween Displays Part V, And Some Halloween Stories

.We still have a pile of Halloween stuff to go through, so I'll just create some lyrics as we go along.

I have to bang this out by 3 or so, or it will be a midnight publication. We're busy bees today, as anyone with a 9 year old would understand.
.
I probably have enough material for 2-3 more articles, so don't be despondent if I missed your house.

One of my favorite time-killing reads are conspiracy theories. Several of them are based in  Horror.

There is supposed to be a lost episode of The Simpsons where Bart is killed. He gets sucked out of a plane, it's actually a rather sad episode.

The strange part is at the end. As the Simpsons (who, for some reason, seem to have abandoned the baby character) visit Bart's grave, they walk past other tombstones in the cemetery. They are all the stones of people who have appeared on The Simpsons.

Each stone bears a date of death. For someone deceased like Michael Jackson or Phil Hartman or whoever, the date is exact. The really spooky part is the stones of everyone who is still living. They are ascribed a date of death in the future.

It's all the same date.

My other favorite conspiracy with Horror and Entertainment involves Stanley Kubrick and The Shining.

I was previously unaware of this, but we didn't actually land on the moon. For many years and perhaps even now, we have actually been defenseless against Soviet ICBMs. What I thought was our best defense- our ability to respond in kind- is actually a myth.

You need rocket science to get those missiles flying, and we don't have people who can do that.

When Sputnik hit the air, the Soviets seized a Cold War lead that we couldn't match until we could do the same. We were unable to for many years.

What we can do well in America is make kick-ass movies. More than one war has been won through Bluff, why not this one?

Stanley Kubrick, who had just filmed a groundbreaking space movie, was recruited by the US government to fake a moon landing. Such an accomplishment would make the Russians sweat Fear, and would scare them from even thinking of launching on us.

Kubrick did the job, but guilt set in. Then, a brilliant director decided to dabble in the gutter of Hollywood.... Horror.

If you watch The Shining, you'll see a lot of things that could be read as Apollo 11 references. Other than the kid's sweater, not a lot of them make sense to me. You, however, may be more open-minded.

If so... enjoy.

Top Unsolved Murders In Massachusetts

1) The Molly Bish murder

A teen lifeguard disappears from a lake. The search goes on forever, but they eventually find her body. Her killer is nevr brought to justice.... at least not by Massachusetts authorities, because I think that the suspect from the drawing may have been hung in Iraq.

2) The New Bedford Highway Killer

In the 1980s, a series of junkies and prostitutes disappeared from the New Bedford/Fall River area. Many of them were found along Route 195 and other local drags. They looked at a slew of suspects- including a lawyer, a guy who liked to rough up whores, and even the Lisbon Ripper- but no one was ever convicted for it. Although the crimes have stopped, the suspect may still be at large.

3) The Lady Of The Dunes

A mutilated corpse was found laying among the Provincetown dunes. She was nearly decapitated. They never found out who she was, or who killed her. Whitey Bulger was a suspect, but this was a rare case where Whitey was exonerated because the crime was too brutal.

I work with a girl named Stacey. She's really short. Her husband isn't.

One Halloween, Stacey went out with the kids. She threw on a Patriots sweater because it was cold. She's a foot and a half shorter than her husband, she has a doctorate, and she's in her 30s.

Unless she's fibbing... whenever they would trick-or-treat elderly people, Stacey's two kids would get candy and praise. At some houses, the homeowner would then look Stacey over once or twice, adjust her glasses, look at the husband, make a calculation.... and then reach into the bucket and fork over a Snickers to Dr. Monponsett. "Aren't you just a pretty little Patriot??"

"I was very offended at first," said Stacey, "But as the night went on, I ended up with a fat stash of candy. My husband laughed every time it happened, but he wasn't laughing when I refused to give him any Twix bars. F*** him."

Every picture in this aticle is from one house, which I believe is in Whitman.

We took a lot of pictures. I should remember what town that the best house was in, but I don't. I actually met the lady, too. She was very cool.

Either way, she's leading the tournament right now, although I have a ringer lined up on Washington Street in Duxbury.

We have a pile of shots to go, and we'll add to them tonight when we go hunting and gathering.

We'll have either a late-night update or a Sunday edition, unless football gets in the way.

Feel free to check out our other Halloween Display articles:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Halloween Displays IV, and A Rich Man/Poor Man Comparative Analysis

(EDITOR'S NOTE: We lifted this article from a site we used to write for, and it dates back to 2012. "2012" explains why we planned to egg Taylor Swift's house, as she had then been smitten with Konnor Kennedy and had bought a house adjoining the Kennedy Compound. She has since divested herself from both entities. 

Also, my kid was Wolverine that year, he's a stormtrooper this year. 

The pictures in the article, aside from being Halloween-themed, have nothing to do with the story.

This article is the fourth installment in our Halloween Displays series, and the pictures come from Whitman, Hanson, Halifax, Plympton, Carver, Wareham and Plymouth.)

One way to make a childish activity fun for Mom and Dad is to use your child as the bait in a half-assed sociological experiment. This Halloween, we did just that.

He didn't care. He got to dress like Wolverine, and he hauled in enough candy to bring a dentist to climax.

The experiment was thus: Take a kid trick or treating in two neighborhoods of varying wealth, and try to take note of any differences that might make themselves apparent.

We had to choose two neighborhoods. Mommy had the Whammy, an absolute veto.... which eliminated Brockton, Roxbury, etc... and some pre-Halloween recon eliminated the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port when we found that no one but the staff was around there after Labor Day. 

Let the record show that I would have had No Problem At All with egging Taylor Swift's house if she didn't show my people some proper confectionary love. Fortunately, it never came down to that.

The Kennedy logic also eliminated many of the marquee Cape Cod neighborhoods. We have nothing but love for Summer People, but they aren't of much use when you need candy in late October. Demographics are everything. We needed more of a bedroom community, and a wealthy one at that.

We narrowed it down to Jersusalem Road in Cohasset, and Washington Street in Duxbury. Even though Cohasset's main drag has more of a Gatsby feel, Duxbury had the advantage of centralized parking (we used what most locals still call "Sweetser's") and more occupied houses per square mile. The average house goes about a milly or so, and you can bang out a bunch of them without walking a costumed 10K.

As for our seedy site, we chose Wareham. We wanted to use Shangri-La, but the sidewalk/streetlight ratios didn't work out in favor of those with a wandering five year old Wolverine. We decided instead on a trailer park between Mazzilli's Farm Stand and Barnacle Bill's Seafood Shack. The double-wides are too tightly packed to get a car moving through at any kill-a-child speed, and we could do 50 units without any great hardship.

Your average home on Washington Street is owned by someone in the finance industry. Your average person in the trailer park works at Benny's or the Lobster Pound. The average salary on Washington Street is probably equal to the salary of 20 people in the trailer park. The average salary in the trailer park is probably half or a third of what the kid's car costs on Washington Street.

Does it matter? Does it translate into generous candy giving?

Due to us having to pick Mommy up in Sagamore at a certain time, Wolverine and I decided to start in the Wareham trailer park. We got out a little before dark, and we set right to our task. Wolverine (the Michigan yellow/blue Wolverine from the comics, not the leather jacket one from the movies) is five, cute, and fully invested in the candy acquisition process.

In case you think that this article is going to make fun of the poor... don't. Wareham came correct. I'm proud to say that every trailer we knocked on answered, and nobody came cheap with the goodies. Wolverine didn't have to disembowel anyone with his kid-sized adamantium claws due to Grinchy candy withholding.

The only standout facet was that some of the candy was of the cheap variety, a la individual Starbursts, Dum Dum lollipops, and the small solo generic Reese's cups with the gold foil. This was offset by the fact that they gave it out in great amounts. Besides, in this economy, and in that neighborhood, we should have been (and were) happy to get anything.

Some of the trailers were decorated, and some weren't. I may have seen 5 pumpkins... not bad, until you remember that the park is next to a farm stand. Hay bales, corn stalks, scarecrows and various gourds were easily available 20 feet away. I suppose that if a poor neighborhood has to skimp somewhere, they should skimp on decor rather than candy.

Finally, and this is important.... Wareham residents are cool enough to hook up the Elders with a beer now and then. One must be properly fortified when taking the kids about. I even was offered a bong hit, but that doesn't really count because I knew the guy. Either way, my bibulous handouts are important to me, I'm the judge/author, and they factor into the analysis.

I wasn't 100% shocked by the results. I had no concrete reason to think that Wareham would fail to be rewarding. Nothing really jumped out about the candy to cancel the theory one of my friends put forth that "Everyone shops at Wal-Mart."

We were working against the clock, so Wolverine and I hopped into the Benz a bit after sunset, picked up Mommy, and hauled our candy asses up Route 3 into Duxbury.

Now, the wealthy don't have all the advantages when being stalked by a trick or treat posse with a purpose. For instance, wealthy people's houses are farther apart than trailer park homes are. We probably covered 10 trailers in the time it took us to walk up the driveway of the first house we hit on Washington Street. For Duxbury to shame Wareham, the candy-per-step ratio would have to be amazing.

Also, Duxbury residents may or may not have been aware that they were a part of an experiment. They also most likely don't share my view of their role as Giver in the Redistribution Of Wealth theory I was aiming for, as they were more likely to assume that whoever was knocking on the door in costume was just another wealthy person from a nearby neighborhood.

I use the ambiguity because Washington Street has a go-to rep among local trick or treaters, and the residents there may feel an urge towards overkill. We were among 200 or so people trick or treating Washington Street during the hours that we were operating... not too shabby for a town with 15000 people at about 45% elderly.

Here's Duxbury, in a few bullet points.

- There were probably 50-100 yards between houses, if you count the walkways and so forth.

- Every door was opened by a grandparent or a trophy wife. There was one Yummy Mommy at the end of Fort Hill Road who actually could have not handed out candy and just used "You got to look at me up close" as an egging deterrent argument.

- I didn't think that people still put bags of candy unguarded outside of their door with a "Take One Per Person, Please" sign on it. People in 4400 sq. ft bayfront houses do, however.

- People hand out the full size candy bars in Duxbury. Those rich folk gave it up smooth.

- Not only do you get the name brand goods, but you also get the more rare stuff... Caramellos, Hilliards, Pop Rocks, Fun Dip, Flake Bars and so forth. You know... the good sh*t.

- No one handed out money, but it happened a few times during my youth in that area.

- Many residents had the same variety bowl of candy that the Wareham folks did, probably most.

-  One house- and I swear I'm not making this up- had a video screen set up in front of the doorway. The homeowner was able to hide in the house and speak to us through the video screen, which showed a Grim Reaper sort of visage. The Reaper spoke whatever the homeowner said. He also had music going through a loudspeaker, which made his house sound like a nightclub from 100 yards away.

But wait...there's more.

He also set something up where horror film images were holographed onto the house itself, so you'd turn around and be facing a 15 foot Wicked Witch. To offset this, he had his daughter and MILF wife outside, distributing the actual candy.

I'd say he spent about $3500 or so on the electronics, and that may be a conservative estimate.

- Beers were not offered in Duxbury. This was not through rudeness. Every cop in Duxbury was on Washington Street, to the point where I would have been able to discharge firearms on other streets with total impunity had I chosen to do so. Public drinking was out of the question.

- People in Duxbury hand out toys, coloring books, Pez dispensers, crayons, toothbrushes, McDonald's coupons, cheap sunglasses and so forth.

Overall, I'd score them about equally candy-wise, with Duxbury enjoying a huge edge in decorations. Duxbury had enough people handing out full-sized candy bars to offset the greater distances between houses. Wareham people are giving enough by nature to offset the median household income differences.

Wolverine did ridiculously well. That bag of candy you see at the top of the article is what was left today, about five days after Halloween, after several sessions where the adults had at it, and after a children's birthday party. The goody bag was full enough that Wolverine was having trouble carrying it at the end of the session.

We'd have had more, but Wolverine likes lollipops. When offered a bowl full of large Snickers bars and lollipops, he'd grab 2 tiny lollipops instead. I actually had to intervene when he chose a Dum Dum pop over a full Milky Way bar... "He wants one of these, too."

I'm just happy that Trick or Treating hasn't faded away to oblivion like Christmas Carols or whatever. That day is probably coming, and the world will be less exciting when it happens.

Halloween Decorations, Part I 

Halloween Decorations Part II 

Halloween Decorations Part III