Most Liquor Licenses Per Town

One of the common local myths circulating around any town in Massachusetts comes to life every time someone says "No town in Massachusetts has more liquor stores than (insert his town here)." I have heard the term ascribed to Provincetown, Worcester, Amherst, Winthrop, Scituate, Clinton, Bridgewater, Marshfield and a dozen other towns. The easier to swallow version of this myth is the same quote, but on a per-person basis.

Opinions vary wildly, and this is probably one of those articles where I'll get told to eff off in the comments section. I'm good with that. I will say that there are different lists with different criteria.

Boston generally wins Drunkest City In America. That title is shouldered by a heavily Irish population base, an unmatched pile of college kids, a nice flow of business travel, long suffering Red Sox fans, a solid nightlife industry and did I mention the Irish?

Roadsnacks, in an influential 2015 study using much of the same criteria as me (but using other factors like Package Stores, Divorce Rates and Twitter references), came up with a Top Ten of:

Plymouth
Scituate
Salem
Walpole
Adams
West Yarmouth
West Bridgewater
Andover
Hudson
Newburyport


WCVB, using a self-reporting technique of "Has More Than Five Drinks Per Session" and going by counties, had:

Hampshire County
Nantucket County
Sufflok County
Plymouth County
Barnstable County
Dukes County
Bristol County
Essex County
Franklin County
Middlesex County
Norfolk County
Worcester County
Berkshire County
Hampden County

They had Hampshire standing alone, Nantucket and Suffolk taking Place and Show, a glut with the same ranking (on that list, it runs from Barnstable to Norfolk Counties with each holding the same score) and the non-UMass western regions being a bit drier.

There are dry towns in the state where no Licka gets sold. Those towns remind me of the Civil War story of the Irish soldier slipping off the march into a dry-town inn and asking the innkeeper for "a glass of water, with a wee bit of the Creature added, unbeknownst to you or myself."

I was going to try to find out Liquor Stores Per Town, but that seemed like too much work. There exists no easily-Googled database. I'd have to Google up which towns have how many liquor stores, then divide or something by how many people live in each town. A good method, granted, but very work-intensive for a sunny Saturday morning in May. There would also be a large Margin Of Error.

What I shall instead do is use this map of 2011 liquor licenses per town from the Boston Business Journal. Old numbers, obsolete, but providing insight. I can then cross-reference my numbers with the population figures of the town in question, and... Voila! We have a new stat, one which I will name once I think of something catchy.

(Editor's Note: Or he can save 12 hours of math by just using this chart)

This map is just for places you can drink IN. Take-out drinking from packie stores isn't accounted for on this list.

I may as well make a few guesses here before I start looking at the numbers, thus becoming like more enlightened than you. Once I have had a look, I'm disqualified from guessing. You'll catch up to my enlightenment once you read the article, but by that time, I'll be looking up some other new ish, and the cycle will begin anew.

I'm thinking that "the Irish Riviera" will miss out on her rightful title, mostly because "Cape Cod" is a touristy place and will have her numbers padded by people on vacation. I have no doubt that New Beige and Fall-down River carry the "South Coast" on their backs, but if places like Acushnet and Mattapoisett represent hard, the region may be able to take down a contender.

Anyhow, here are the towns from our region and their ranking on the list. The criteria is residets-per-liquor license. If I had package store numbers, these rankings might be radically different.

Rank.... Town.... Residents... Licenses... Residents per License

1 PROVINCETOWN 3,390 62 55

Provincetown takes the title. At least one publication that I saw summed it up as well as I can... "Tourist haven in the summer... desolate, isolated winters."

"55 residents per license" means that, if every single man, woman, child and baby in Provincetown went out for a drink to a local bar, each bar would only have 55 people in it... less, once you factor out bar employees who live in Provincetown,

By contrast.... if a similar event happened in Duxbury, there would be 1444 people in each bar. If it happened in Boxford (ranked #318 and last in the state), there would be 8600 people in each bar.


3 WELLFLEET 2,748 26 106
5 OAK BLUFFS 3,731 29 129
6 EDGARTOWN 3,920 30 131
9 NANTUCKET 10,531 73 144
10 AQUINNAH 354 2 177
14 TRURO 2,134 10 213
16 ORLEANS 6,315 27 234
21 CHATHAM 6,726 26 259

The Cape represents hard, although runner-up towns like Great Barrington could complain about tourists and summer people swelling the numbers. If you assume that summer people double the population of Chatham, and that there are also a disproportionate amount of hotels filling up with families, you might have to triple or even quadruple the licenses-per-town rankings. All of a sudden, these supposedly hard-drinking Cape towns start tumbling to 150th in the state.

Provincetown is immune to that. Tripling their RPL only moves them to 3rd in the state.

Monroe- ranked second in the state, just above Wellfleet- has 1 license in a town with 96 residents. By contrast, the Mayberry hometown (may have been  County, or both town and county) of Andy Griffith fame had 5600 residents... in 1968.


27 DENNIS      15,473 53 292
34 TISBURY  3,805 11 346
40 BARNSTABLE 46,738 112 417
42 YARMOUTH 24,010 56 429
43 FALMOUTH 33,247 76 437
44 SEEKONK 13,593 31 438
46 HARWICH 12,387 28 442

The pattern continues through the Top 50.

Let's pause right here to tip our glasses to the western part of the state. While I'm only showing EMass towns, rest assured that about 90% of the towns that I'm leaving out are in the Berkshires.

"Mountain man/mountain man/drinks like a fish/and he hits like a ram."

Both of the islands assert themselves mightily. Island people are sort of kin to mountain people. Both are a bit strange. It's a different sort of strangeness, but it shares a common intensity. They're both about equally lost in a city.

54 FOXBOROUGH 16,298 34 479
58 EASTHAM 5,445 11 495
59 BREWSTER 10,023 20 501
60 HULL 11,067 22 503
64 WEST BRIDGEWATER 6,679 13 514
67 PLYMOUTH 55,188 103 536
68 MATTAPOISETT 6,447 12 537
71 COHASSET 7,182 13 552
74 FAIRHAVEN 16,124 29 556
75 WAREHAM 21,154 38 557

Rankings 50-75 have a few trends jumping out at me.

1) The South Coast is beginning to assert herself. Props to Seekonk for sliding into the top 50. Mattapoisett, Fairhaven and Wareham also step up to the bar by the time that #75 is called.

2) The South Shore and especially the Irish Riviera took awhile to show themselves. Scituate is nowhere to be seen.

3) I wonder if (and how much) Foxboro's numbers are pushed up by the Patriots being in town. I don't get out to Foxy Bro as much as I used to, and am not sure what sort of effect 8 home games (and X playoff games any year) has on the town's drinking establishments. They say that businesses on Cape Cod are made/broken by 8-12 weekends a year. I wonder how much 8-12 weekend days a year is worth in Hooch Sold?


78 BOURNE 19,023 33 576
80 BOSTON 599,351 1,033 580
82 KINGSTON 12,339 21 588
87 NEW BEDFORD 91,849 150 612

Cape Cod is starting to fade out... not because we don't drink hard enough, but because we've exhausted most of our towns earlier in the rankings.

Bourne does drink harder than Boston, something I'm a bit shocked to see. If Boston had better beaches, they might be able fight their way up the list a bit.

Note that many of Boston's Irish fled Boston in the 1970s, driving up the numbers in the otherwise sleepy Irish Riviera.

New Beddy closes out our presence in the top 100. 30% of the top 100 are towns in our coverage area.

108 MASHPEE 14,261 21 679
109 RAYNHAM 13,641 20 682
111 OTIS 1,394 2 697
112 HINGHAM 22,394 32 700
119 AVON 4,303 6 717

Hey! That town of Otis is in Western Mass, and it's not the rotary in Bourne.

My people in Raynham tell me there is great happiness that they conquered all but one Bridgewater.

In Massachusetts, the Avon lady is a bartender.

We forgot SWANSEA, they're 128th

131 MARION 5,217 7 745
132 SANDWICH 20,255 27 750
140 ABINGTON 16,365 21 779
141 BRAINTREE 34,422 44 782
145 QUINCY 91,622 116 790
158 FALL RIVER 90,905 111 819
160 MANSFIELD 22,993 28 821
162 WALPOLE 23,086 28 825
172 WRENTHAM 11,116 13 855
177 ACUSHNET 10,443 12 870
179 NORTON 19,222 22 874
183 ROCKLAND 17,780 20 889
184 DARTMOUTH 31,241 35 893
186 STOUGHTON 26,951 30 898
190 MARSHFIELD 24,576 27 910
192 EAST BRIDGEWATER 13,879 15 925
193 PEMBROKE 18,595 20 930
195 NORWELL 10,271 11 934
198 SCITUATE 17,881 19 941
199 WESTPORT 15,136 16 946

Fall River is pretty much right in the middle of the rankings. New Bedford and Fall River, which I thought would carry the South Coast, ranked a modest 87 and 158 respectively. Seekonk (44), Mattapoisett (60 something) and the Wareham/Fairhaven team (74 and 75) all represented harder.

At least 10% of the liquor licenses in Wareham are held by places that only serve breakfast. (Your Hometown Here) may have more or less, I just wanted to float that stat out there.

Sandwich finishes off the Cape.

Fall River trails Quincy, which is the same size but more Irish-heavy. The Squantum neighborhood of Quincy is about as Irish as it gets.

If a bar gets their license revoked in Scituate, this thought-she'd-be-ranked-higher Irish Riviera superheavyweight would fall out of the Top 200. She'd rank below hard-living Oakham (pop. 953, 2 licenses) in the state

205 REHOBOTH 11,484 12 957
206 SOMERSET 18,268 19 961
209 TAUNTON 55,783 57 979
219 NORTH ATTLEBORO 27,907 27 1,034
223 MIDDLEBORO 21,245 20 1,062
224 WEYMOUTH 53,272 50 1,065
225 HANOVER 13,966 13 1,074
230 HALIFAX 7,700 7 1,100
233 HANSON 9,956 9 1,106
234 BRIDGEWATER 25,514 23 1,109
243 EASTON 22,969 20 1,148
247 ATTLEBORO 43,113 37 1,165
248 LAKEVILLE 10,587 9 1,176
249 HOLBROOK 10,663 9 1,185
250 WHITMAN 14,385 12 1,199

You'd think a town known as "Hangover" would be higher than 225, but No.

If Taunton gets a casino, they could jump up a lot of spots. Considering Boston is 80, a jump into the Top 10 may be a lot to ask for.

Bridgewater, which has the University, is the lowest-ranked Bridgewater. East and West pub much harder.

252 FRANKLIN 31,381 25 1,255
253 BROCKTON 93,092 74 1,258
259 LYNN 87,122 67 1,300
270 DUXBURY 14,444 10 1,444
272 FREETOWN 8,935 6 1,489
300 BERKLEY 6,433 3 2,144
304 CARVER    11,547     5 2,309
311 DIGHTON  6,748 2 3,374
315 ROCHESTER 5,218 1 5,218

The infamous "City of Sin" ranks an effete 259.

If the Gurnet Inn was still open, sleepy Duxbury would be ahead of Brockton and Lynn.

Rochester and Dighton hold down the South Coast, and Lakeville is the more "Let's go out" of the Freetown-Lakeville conglomerate.

Duxbury and Sandwich ranked similarly, something our staff predicted. Both towns are sort of the Rich People Conscience of either Cape Cod or the South Shore (I'm told by our Fairhaven editor that Dartmouth fills a similar role on the South Coast). Granted, Sandwich is about twice as pubby as Duxbury, but the Cape is sort of off the scale due to summer tourism.

Shame on you, Rochester!

Here's a quick region-by-region tally:

CAPE COD

Provincetown
Wellfleet
Nantucket
Martha's Vineyard
Truro
Orleans
Chatham
Dennis
Barnstable
Yarmouth
Falmouth
Harwich
Eastham
Brewster
Bourne
Mashpee
Sandwich


SOUTH COAST

Mattapoisett
Fairhaven
Wareham
New Bedford
Marion
Fall River
Acushnet
Dartmouth
Westport
Freetown
Rochester


INTERIOR BRISTOL COUNTY

Seekonk
Raynham
Mansfield
Norton
Rehoboth
Somerset
Taunton
North Attleboro
Easton
Attleboro
Berkley
Dighton


INTERIOR PLYMOUTH COUNTY

West Bridgewater
Abington
Rockland
East Bridgewater
Pembroke
Norwell
Middleboro
Halifax
Hanover
Hanson
Bridgewater
Lakeville
Whitman
Brockton
Carver


THE IRISH RIVIERA

Hull
Plymouth
Cohasset
Kingston
Hingham
Quincy
Marshfield
Scituate
Weymouth
Duxbury

Necessary research....

The Dirty Dozen: The Most Dangerous Places On (Or Just Off) Cape Cod

South Beach, Chatham

"Ahhhhh... nice beach here.... soft sand, warm water, clean air... think I'll take a swim. Oh, look! A seal! What's that shadow swimming next to him?"

Due to the cycle of the sea, seals began hanging out in large numbers off Chatham. After that, it becomes simple algebra.... sharks eat seals, seals hang out at Chatham, so therefore...

A great white shark goes 10-20 feet long and can bite a human being in half. If he's not looking that closely or if he's really hungry, we look kind of like seals in the right (wrong) light.

The last fatal shark attack in the general area was off Mattapoisett in 1936, but sharks are more prevalent now than at any point locals can remember.

To be fair to the sharks, humans are out on their turf. You can't blame one for wanting to try some People Food now and then.

Suicide Alley

A nasty stretch of Route 6 turns to 2 lanes- one East, one West. You're on a divided highway, but then cars start coming at you from the other lane. It's disconcerting. Suicide Alley runs 13 miles, from exit 9A in Dennis all the way to Orleans.

I don't think any other stretch of road has a worse reputation on Cape Cod, and no other ones have such an ominous nickname.

If someone from Cape Cod says "There was this terrible head-on accident..." someone else from Cape Cod will usually finish with "Suicide Alley?"

If other states have a Suicide Alley, they are not respected by Google. I saw no other Alley mentioned.

 Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant

It's actually a fairly nice part of the state... coastal, beachfront, in the pines. It's not melting down or anything, and any leaks presently are low-key. They have a lot of spent nuclear waste sitting around (in overloaded storage facilities), and they can't find anyone to take it off their hands.

However... the worst case scenario actually makes this the top risk in the general area. Imagine a massive accident there? With almost all winds imaginable, the radioactivity released could blanket Cape Cod.

At that point, Cape Cod becomes Cape Chernobyl. Farming would be viable in Sandwich in about 20,000 years.

Granted, Pilgrim's time is almost up, but it is still a big radioactive elephant in the room for this discussion.

The Wedge, Hyannis

The low-income area around the Cape Cod mall is notorious for violence.

"The Wedge" aka "The Triangle" aka "Captains Quarters" is a hot spot in Hyannis.

If you wish to buy drugs from someone in a sh*tty house who might be involved in a shooting later, you can do worse than the Hyannis Triangle.

You have a nice mix of poor people, homeless people, hard-drinking people, a lively drug trade and the Cape's only Gangsta scene... albeit one about 3 miles from the Kennedy Compound.

The Wedge is known locally as "Brockton-by-the-sea."

PAVE PAWS, Bourne

PAVE PAWS is a United States Air Force Space Command radar system operated by Space Wing squadrons for missile warning and space surveillance.... and I pasted that right from Wikipedia, so go to them if you disagree.

People tend to bug out when there's a high powered radar installation nearby, as they fear the government pounding high-powered radar into their heads 24/7/365.

A mountain of studies have been conducted on PAVE PAWS. General studies have dismissed the threat of an elevated cancer risk (when they found elevated cancer rates near the Pilgrim Plant when I was a kid, they blamed it on smokers), although there does seem to be an elevated rate of Ewing's Sarcoma among those who live near the P Double.

Ewing's Sarcoma is a form of bone cancer that generally attacks the hips, ribs, arms and legs. It is most commonly found in male teenagers.

I should add that nothing is proven here, and it is nice to have an early-warning missile detection system in place.

Bourne/Sagamore Bridges, Rotaries

This is actually what I personally fear more than anything else on the Cape. I fear heights, and this is as high as it gets.

Off the top of my head (from a previous article), I know it's a 40 meter drop off the Bourne Bridge. You'd make the fall in 1.6 seconds, and smash into the water (or onto the bike path, although at that height there really isn't that much difference) at about 35 mph.

Even if you don't do a goodbye-cruel-world leap off the bridge (this section of either Route 6 or Route 28 is the real Suicide Alley), you can skid on ice, get hit by a drunk, maybe catch some air... the possibilities are limitless.

The bridges were built in 1935 (ironically, both of these suicide launching platforms were Great Depression projects) or so, and they could probably use an overhaul or ten.

Make it over the Bourne Bridge... you hit a rotary. Rotaries are a dying form of Road Intersection that basically dares the driver to force their way into a traffic circle that looks like a mini-Daytona at times. The reason that the Rotary is dying as an art form is that a rotary is fretty pucking dangerous.

Mitt Romney gets unusual praise from this column for ridding Earth of that Sagamore Bridge rotary.

Pollock Rip Channel, off Chatham

The reason they built the Cape Cod Canal was that it shortened the distance one had to sail from New York to Boston. It allowed sailors to not have to sail around Cape Cod.

The reason that people use Pollock Rip Channel is that it saves a sailor from having to sail around Nantucket.

The reason God made Pollock Rip Channel is that God- for reasons known only to him- wanted the Cape Cod Canal built.

Long known as a ship graveyard, Pollock Rip is an area of shifting sand that is always hungry and only eats boats. As recently as 1950, 8 fishermen died within sight of the lightship pictured here during a gale.

 Strong tidal currents flowing in and out of Nantucket Sound meet weather from the open ocean to generate conditions that range from merely disorienting to completely treacherous.

Shangri-La/Onset, Wareham

If Hyannis can truly support the dubious claim that she is "Brockton-by-the-sea," then Onset is "a baby New Bedford." I personally stretch this area out to include the run of crack motels on the Cranberry Highway.

Shootings, stabbings, drug-dealing, armed robberies gone wrong, beat-downs, stick-ups... Wareham has all of the benefits of small-town life.

Throw in a ton of Section 8 folks, a genuinely rotten economy, and BOOM goes the dynamite.

Wareham recently tried Operation Safe Streets, a massive episode of enhanced policing. While results have been mixed, at least they're trying.

Horseshoe Shoals

A ship-smasher of a spot that also was a good reason to build the Cape Cod Canal, Horseshoe Shoals is an area of shallow ocean that helps give Nantucket Sound her nasty reputation.

Horseshoe Shoals is too low to sail safely at low and medium tides (half the day, landlubbers). Horseshoe Shoals doesn't look like it's that far from land, but looks is deceiving, man. You don't want to have to swim to Chatham, even during the Great White Shark off-season.

This was also the proposed setting for the doomed Cape Wind project. A forest of turbines would have only added to the difficulty of sailing through that region.

Massachusetts Military Reservation, Bourne

You'd think that, after the thousands of men with machine guns leave, a place wouldn't be dangerous anymore. But the MMR turned out to be the gift that keeps giving.

You don't explode stuff and shoot depleted uranium rounds without screwing up the groundwater, it seems. Explosive constituents leeched through the soil and into the groundwater.

They removed 25,000 tons of soil in hopes of stopping the contamination, but you can have the first (and middle, and last) vegetables grown from that region, thank you.

The general area also holds the distinction of Most Dead Bodies, as they host a military cemetery. I'm working from a shoddy memory, but I think that there may be 40,000 people buried there.

The Irish Riviera

This is sort of a hodge-podge category. Once we truly get over the bridges and out of Barnstable County, the answers quickly become "Taunton," "New Bedford" and "Fall River." We'll try to keep it at least around Cape Cod Bay, and use a sweeping Irish Riviera categorization.

This will be more of an amalgamation of hard-drinking South Shore residents, a growing Great White Shark presence (the last local shark attack on a human wasn't off Cape Cod, it was off of Manomet, in Plymouth), a gaggle of elderly drivers and the teen-slaying, winding, poorly-lit roads.  

Certain parts of the South Shore (we're looking at you, Marshfield!) were very bad places to be Loyalist during the Revolution.

Duxbury, not Boston, holds the title of Last Drive-By Shooting Featuring A Prominent Rapper.

The Bridgewater Triangle

We've visited this area for the column a few times. It is also a case where, once we've gone this far inland, we should include places like "Brockton." However, the Bridgewater Triangle is in a class by itself.

For those of you who don't know, the Bridgewater Triangle (a term coined by paramormal poppa Loren Coleman) is a sort of Rankin Cluster of odd and sometimes paranormal happenings. This eerie sandwich is mashed into a lightly-populated section interior southeastern Massachusetts. They represent hard, though.

To my knowledge, they have both of the state's "known" Bigfoot sightings. You know... stuff like that.

The Triangle, which we think should be expanded to Cape Cod anyhow, sneaks onto this list (it is originally from a 2012 Cape Cod TODAY article) over former mainstays Pufferbellies, the Port 'o' Call, and the Woods Hole/Naushon Island current.

Last Dance For The Mashpee Ballet?

Supporters of the arts on Cape Cod were dealt a low blow recently, as the Mashpee Center For The Performing Arts is going on the market.

Also known as "Zachary's Pub," it has been one of the few business establishments on Cape Cod to feature Dance as an art form. It is also the only place on Cape Cod where the dancers don't wear clothes.

The Mashpee Ballet is up for sale, for a mere $4.3 million. That gets you not only the MCFTPA, but 6.17 acres with 13 buildings that sport 50 single/multi family housing units.

Zachary's should attract national buyer attention, as they have a hard-to-get "floor show permit" that allows them to let their customers appreciate the Leonardonian mechanics of an idealized human body in motion. Those don't just grow on trees, and people who own strip clubs (plural) are constantly looking for such opportunities.

However, the buyer is under no obligation to provide the girls of Cape Cod and the Greater New Bedford area with an opportunity to show off their pole-dancing prowess. The sale of the Mashpee Ballet to a non-believer of a purchaser could be the end of an era on Cape Cod.

We can't let that happen, people!

Due to some frivolous spending (Cranberry County Magazine has long sought to be the only publication in eastern Massachusetts to have a nuclear weapon, and defense industry experts estimate that we are 3-5 years away from producing a fission device), I don't have the $4.3 million handy right now in liquid assets. Happens to the best of us, right?

Given the ribald nature of the business, it may not be feasible to get $1.14 out of every man, woman and child in Massachusetts to buy the MCFTPA and keep it as a municipal resource, sort of like how the Green Bay Packers are operated.

Strip clubs aren't as bad as they used to be. "You could kill a bitch in a strip club in the 80s," as Joey Diaz once noted. You'll be a much-respected and dare I say much-loved figure on Cape Cod if you intervene here.

One thing I can do to help the cause is make a quick list of:

UNDER THE RADAR REASONS TO OWN THE MASHPEE BALLET

1) All dynasties fall. If there's ever going to be a Kennedy offspring reduced to stripping, she's probably going to come knocking on the Ballet's door.

2) Create a new Thanksgiving tradition by having an authentic Wampanoag stripper and a white (hopefully of English descent) stripper from Plymouth share the stage, sort of a less messy version of the WWE's annual Gravy Bowl Match.

3) A budding reality show producer could immediately see the benefits of buying the Mashpee Ballet and the adjoining housing units. Expand the Ballet somewhat, fill each of the housing units with strippers, and Voila!

Mashpee Ballet!

Motherf***ers be watching reality shows about tow truck drivers, pawn shops clerks, midget couples, tuna fishermen and God knows what else. Who wouldn't watch a show about a dystopian commune village, populated entirely by strippers? Nobody I know, that's who!

4) It's tough for a girl on Cape Cod to find high-paying night-shift work.

5) How many professions truly honor beauty? Supermodel jobs are few and far between, and I think that you have to have been born with an exotic first name. Strippers may have cool names, but they are more of the nom de guerre variety.

6) "Legs and Eggs" as a breakfast option vanishes from Cape Cod the day the Ballet dies. This will be replaced with the much less desirable "Wrists and Cysts" feature at the local orthopedic surgeon's place.

7) Many strip club patrons are respectable men who just want to see a different set of yabbos after 30 years of marriage, but who lack the testicular fortitude (or, perhaps in many cases, the charisma) to accomplish this feat without a place like the Mashpee Ballet.

8) In the same vein, many patrons are the Cape's bottom-feeders, and they will be left with a choice of "never see a nude woman again" or "take one by force." I'd just drive to a New Bedford gentleman's club, myself... but some people don't like commuting. This is more an exception than a rule, but many 108 pound strippers prevent more sexual assaults than the biggest, meanest cop.

9) If I won the lottery, I'd go to great lengths to establish a Hefneresque lifestyle. I wouldn't mind a white trash version of that, where instead of the Playboy Mansion, I'd have my family of lap-dancin' ladies spread out over 6 acres of ramshackle sharecropper-style housing in Mashpee. I can't be the only one on Cape Cod who thinks this way.

10) Its going to be strange when I go Marylou's or Burger King and get waited on by someone named "Synn."

from Becomestripper.com

Overturned Boat Spurs Bourne Search

An overturned boat found floating in Buttermilk Bay set off a search effort.

They had the Bourne Fire Depratment, the Bourne Police Department, and what I think was the Coast Guard looking for it.

There's a good south wind blowing, and it came up out of nowhere.on a summery day. There's a good chance that someone's boat blew off of a pier over by Cohasset Narrows. There are also a few people who leave skiffs on the beach in Hideaway Village, and the tide may have swamped one.

I watched them fly/drive/boat around the whole bay, and saw them get nothing. I'll update if we hear anything else.

Sorry about the camera work... had to use my phone, and it wasn't pretty.

Monster Turtle In Plymouth Pond?

Great Herring Pond, Plymouth MA

I was doing some research for an article that involved me needing to know some basic facts about Great Herring Pond in Plymouth/Bourne. I went to the Wikipedia page for GHP, and lo and behold!!

"There has been multiple sightings of massive turtles on Great Herring Pond. They have been seen to be in size of 4–5 feet long, with heads the size of footballs. They have been seen floating down stream from Little Herring Pond, under Carters Bridge."

Granted, "There has been multiple sightings" is some poor English, but I mangle smart-people talk in here all the time, so who am I to judge? If it's on Wikipedia, it has to be true, right?

If you need a laugh, know that I'm using the "if it's on Wikipedia..." argument to convince Jessica to spend some of her rare off duty time (she's working like 15 of the next 14 days) stomping through a Wallencamp swamp after a fictional giant turtle. I'll take her to Mezza Luna after, she'll be OK.

The important part is that Cranberry County Magazine owes it to our readers to chase monsters, especially when they are in our backyard.

Again, this is most likely what Colonel Potter used to call "bull hockey." Anyone can edit Wikipedia. Some kid may have slipped in a bit of fantasy about his neighborhood. We should be able to see what's what easily enough.

You see waves... I see "Monster Turtle Wake"

There are only a few species of turtles in Massachusetts. You can check them all out right here. The biggest of the bunch is the Common Snapping Turtle. They range across the US from the Atlantic to the Rockies, a range that includes all of Massachusetts.

The Common Snapping Turtle is the heaviest turtle in Massachusetts by a country mile. Unfortunately a record-breaking snapping turtle would be a shade less than 2 feet long (that's carapace or upper shell length, the lower shell/plastron is smaller... a snapping turtle can't hide in his shell like most other turtles when threatened, hence the Baby's Momma-like disposition), and northern specimens tend to be smaller than southern ones. 75 pounds would approach the weight record. "Two feet long max" is about a yard less Turtle than we need to support a search for a 4-5 foot turtle.

A turtle more in that range is the Alligator Snapping Turtle. They are a more southern turtle, and don't get north (naturally) much further than Tennessee. Could one survive here? Could a breeding, sustainable population exist in Massachusetts? How long until the National Marine Life Center herpetologist calls me back?

Alligator Snapping Turtles can grow to 30 inches long, and there is talk of one caught in Kansas who weighed 403 pounds. 30 inches is about where you call in the QB sneak in a goal line offense.

While a path to the sea does exist (you can herring your way downstream to the Cape Cod Canal from Great Herring Pond, and turtles can walk on land), the presence of giant sea turtles in a freshwater Plymouth pond seems unlikely. Still waiting for that NMLC call....

The kind of turtle we're looking for would have plenty of food to sustain it. This isn't Nessie that we're looking for. Great Herring Pond has, and I quote the Commonwealth of Massachusetts herself:

Fish Populations:
The pond was last completely surveyed in the summer of 1984 and nine fish species were present: yellow perch, white perch, white sucker, brown bullhead, banded killifish, smallmouth bass, chain pickerel, golden shiner and American eel. A May 2001 fish survey found abundant smallmouth bass and three additional species: largemouth bass, pumpkinseed and tesselated darter. Also, an occasional walleye is also reported. Alewife and blueback herring are abundant in the pond from late spring through fall.

That's enough for our Behemoth. The herring alone sustained the entire village of Wallencamp ("Wallencamp" is an avoid-a-lawsuit name an author hung on the Pondville section of the village of Cedarville in the town of Pymouth) for a while, and they eat more than one turtle can... even a big one.

He'd have plenty of room to hide. Great Herring Pond and the swampy area around it use up 400 acres or so, about the same area occupied by the Mission Hill neighborhood in Boston. The pond is 20 feet deep, and the turtle can stay submerged for two hours without breathing.

Great Herring Pond is just off of the southeastern edge of the Myles Standish State Forest. It is part of a vast swampy area that makes up the whole of interior Southern Plymouth. He (or even a brood of them) could very easily range from the Freetown/Lakeville area to Cape Cod up to Duxbury and over to Bridgewater. It'd just take him a while to walk through it all, because he's, like, a turtle.

The authors are not unaware that this monster turtle would be very much like a Bridgewater Triangle story, and his presence in Plymouth would further validate our theory that the Bridgewater Triangle should expand out to Cape Cod. The turtle could even be the guardian spirit for the cursed Sacrifice Rock Woods.

He'd also have plenty of time to grow. Studies suggest a possible 100 year life span for a Snapper, and they grow constantly from when they are born until the day that they die. This monster may have been born during World War I.

A four-foot snapping turtle, whether it was Common or Alligator, would be a terrible thing to have snapping at you. It could bite through your Achilles Tendon. It could easily kill any unattended baby that it got the drop on. It could kick in your back door, slap your best dog in the face, and make your wife cook it a T-Bone steak. It could tear out your heart and show it to you.

Bah Gawd, you know Cranberry County Magazine has to look for that!

1619 AD Cedarville

The part of Plymouth known as the Lakes region is a series of isolated villages where everyone knows everyone, and outsiders are suspicious just for being there. It's the sort of village where tales of a giant man-eating turtle shouldn't leak onto Wikipedia from. If you ain't from here, you don't come here, son.

Locals are reluctant to speak of the giant turtle, not wanting the circus media environment that would surround the announcement of the presence of a turtle large enough to merit hiring Quint. I'm local enough that I did manage to unearth some amazing stories, as the Monster Turtle is the subject of an intense if isolated urban legend.

"I never let my kids near that cursed pond," said one Cedarville housewife. "I didn't wreck my figure and nag my husband into an early grave just to feed my kid to some lake monster."

"I saw it once. It was the size of one of those sissy electric cars," said one man who asked to not be identified. He asked for privacy because he feared retribution from the turtle. "It was pulling a deer into the pond by the throat."

"You don't see a lot of transients in this area, which is unusual for a seasonal cottage neighborhood," said a source within the Plymouth Police Department. "We do get a lot of calls about roaring, splashing sounds and people screaming 'Help! I'm being devoured by a rhino-sized turtle!' now and then, but you know how those kids eat LSD these days."

"Cape Cod is a vastly overdevloped  tourist region right up until Cedarville, where it suddenly becomes isolated. Isolated forest is one thing, but this is isolated lakefront property on the largest body of freshwater east of Lakeville. It makes one wonder what chased the people away," said a local realtor. She even implied that the Cape Cod Canal was actually dug by the Cape's elite as a sort of anti-turtle salt water moat.

"People assume that the Wampanoags were cleared out of what is now known as Plymouth by plague," said historian Stephen Bowden. "One idea that has never been explored is the possibility that they were instead consumed by a bloodthirsty, Anklyosaurus-looking snapping turtle."

"There's probably a good reason for that," he added, rather buzzkillishly.

Bowden did add that the Algonquin name for the pond was "Dubbadoo," which roughly translates to "the place where the Monitor Lizard-sized turtle lives."

Approaching Carter's Bridge, site of the Turtle Sightings

All of these experts only get in the way of a good Monster Turtle Story. What we need to do is Field Research.

We put on the battle gear, loaded the car and weaved up Bournedale Road/Herring Pond Road, heading into the belly of the beast. We had consumed a large lunch, and partook in some fortifying liquid refreshments.

Of course we were armed!

"Remember, you have to shoot him in the head. His shell can withstand depleted uranium rounds, " I told Jessica needlessly.

"He doesn't scare me a bit. I'll make soup out of him," she replied.

I gave her a serious look. "That's what Doctor Neverwas said before the turtle ate her."

"Doctor Neverwas?"

"OK, I just made her up. Let's park here." I pulled the Volkswagen off onto the shoulder, crushing a dozen saplings.

Missing shoe of a turtle victim?

The people at the car rental place thought it was odd that I wanted a green Volkswagen Beetle, but it is the most turtle-looking car I could think of, and it is important to Go Native in these sorts of situations. I was insistent, and they eventually found me one somewhere.

My man Cranberry Jones and assistant editor Stacey Monponsett pulled up shortly after with the U-Haul. We were planning to not only find this turtle, but to capture him. I'm not sure how much money you can make with a 400 pound killer turtle, but I know that you can make money with such a beast.

"Starve it, sell tickets, feed it steroids, and have a dwarf fight it with a sledgehammer," said Jones, which is why I'm writing this column instead of him. "OK, the dwarf has to be drunk."

"Build a miniature city, teach him to walk upright through it, and make a monster movie," said Stacey, who is too young to have seen Gamera movies.

I was envisioning a scenario where we get it on The Late Late Show, and one of us (whoever has the best Turtle voice, probably Stacey) just hides behind the couch and speaks for him. It would help soften his image some if he got some jokes off, especially if Gamera got all anti-social and bit that chubby little English guy.

Fortunately, it never came to that. We struck out like A-Rod in a playoff game. The four of us have maybe zero (0) hours of turtle-hunting experience, and a turtle hunt is right where a flaw like that becomes apparent.

However, our ineptitude as turtle hunters should not obscure the fact that there is something very strange going on in Great Herring Pond.

Jess has a better camera....

Suburban Exploration: Plymouth/Bourne

Gooses (hehe), and Bay Bay Gooses, hanging around the Bournedale herring run.

I don't know how many geese make up a gander, so I use the less-definable "Gooses," which I picked up from a 4 year old.

I was going to chase this turkey up the driveway for a better shot, but "Cranberry County Magazine" isn't an impressive enough publication to avoid being shot by a vigilant homeowner.

Once we got up to the waterfront in Plymouth, our subjects were more willing to stay still. These guys just bobbed a bit.

The benefits of Roof Sailing are that you never get wet, you never get seasick and the sail is more for show than anything else.

Personal Use Lighthouse, off Route 3A

Just in case you thought we were in Duxbury Harbor, straight frontin' on you.... Duxbury was founded in 1637.

I'm so g*ddamned 'Merica, I shot the flag and Plymouth Rock like bang-bang.

Long Beach (in background) seems very small and lightly-populated for something that Snoop Dogg sings about so much. 

Lunch at Mamma Mia, ravioli! I ate so much, it hurt.

The cops got a little strange when I anchored my car to the street with this... OK, maybe I was the strange one.

...or not

The Massachusetts Maritime Academy uses Great Herring Pond for skipper training. They do a lot of slalom sailing on a pond before they let you get your hands on one of the Big Boys.