Cape Cod Baseball League Super Special!

There are three kinds of baseball games. You have the pro game, with the millionaires and the urban settings. You have Little League style, pretty much anywhere with grass. You also have high-level amateur ball.

Little League is good if one of your kids is in the game or if Walter Matthau is the coach. Major League ball is good if you don't mind spending $300 to watch a game with your kids. Otherwise, you can keep that ish.

I prefer driving 3 minutes across a small town (update to 175 minutes if the game is on a summer Friday night, as I live in Bourne) and still watching high-level ball. I have this option on the table because Cape Cod hosts the world famous Cape Cod Baseball League.

You can catch a game on Cape Cod pretty much every night, from Wareham to Orleans. The games are played in a series of charming parks scattered around a coastal resort region.

Admission is free, the hot dogs are cheap and the kids have a great time. The league is supported via donations, vendor sales and fundraising. The players live with locals, and usually take jobs in the community. Jeff Bagwell may have painted your house, and Albert Belle may have mowed your lawn.

You may even see a future great player. Jeff Bagwell, "The Big Hurt" Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, crazy ol' Albert Belle, Chuck Knoblauch, Craig Biggio, Aaron friggin' Boone, Jacoby Ellsbury, Scott Erickson, John Farrell, Carlton Fisk, Nomar Garciaparra, Jeff Kent, Tim Lincecum, Evan Longoria, Tino Martinez, Mike Lowell, Thurman Munson,  Pie Traynor (the first Cape League guy to make it to the MLB Hall Of Fame), Jeff Reardon, Mo Vaughn and both Mel and Todd Stottlemyer have played in the Cape Cod Baseball League. Freddie Prinze-Gellar also played here, in Summer Catch.

You get to see the players before they get rich/arrogant and start schlepping Cameron Diaz. Most and maybe all players on the teams are college kids who stay at homes in the community of whatever team they play for. Carlton Fisk, who hit the iconic 1975 home run in the World Series, slummed it on someone's couch in Orleans for a summer in 1966.

I'd host one of the kids, but they're going to have to pass a drug test at some point. Nomar Garciaparra, who earned $100 million dollars in his career and married Mia Hamm, would have failed a drug test and would be washing dishes at the Trowbridge Tavern if he stayed with me instead of whoever he lived with as a relative unknown in 1993.

Divisional Breakdown, which I cut-n-pasted from Wikipedia.

Division Team Town/ Village Home Field Most Recent Championship

West

Bourne Braves  Bourne    Doran Park (at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School) 2009
Cotuit Kettleers Cotuit Lowell Park 2013
Falmouth Commodores Falmouth    Guv Fuller Field 1980
Hyannis Harbor Hawks Hyannis   McKeon Park (PJP II High School) 1991
Wareham Gatemen Wareham   Clem Spillane Field (Wareham High School) 2012

East

Brewster Whitecaps Brewster Stony Brook Field  2000
Chatham Anglers Chatham Veteran's Field   1998
Harwich Mariners  Harwich Whitehouse Field (Monomoy High School) 2011
Orleans Firebirds  Orleans Eldredge Park (Nauset Middle School) 2005
Yarmouth–Dennis Red Sox Yarmouth  Red Wilson Field (D-Y High School) 2015

Some Cape League Trivia and Associated Tangents

- The Cape Cod Baseball League was founded in 1885. 2016 is season #131.

- For many years, military personnel made up much of the talent on any given team.

- In 1963, the NCAA got involved, and it was all college players from then on.

-  Former teams include "Orleans Pants Factory," "Cottage Club," "Barnstable Townies," "Sagamore Clouters," "Sandwich Athletics," "North Truro Blue Sox," "Bourne Canalmen," and "Provincetown Longpointers."

- The 2016 season runs from June 10th through August 3rd. The final game of the playoffs is tentatively scheduled for August 13th.

- The Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox are rolling on back-to-back Cape League championships.

- Falmouth has 7 championships. Bourne has 1. Orleans has 12. Sagamore, God rest their soul, won 5. Y-D has won 9, 2 as simply Yarmouth. Chatham has won 5. Wareham has won 7. Hyannis has won 3. Harwich has won 4. Brewster has won 1. Cotuit has won the most titles, bagging 16.

- Only two teams (the Boune Braves and the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox) still share names with major league teams. Everyone else made up their own name. Bourne and Y-D have to pay money to MLB for use of the team names.

- The Braves and the Red Sox are the two names associated with Boston's current or former big league teams.

- If Bourne and Y-D have to rename their teams, I favor "Bourne Buzzards" and "Y-D Because" as replacement names.

- Names abandoned after MLB started charging: Hyannis Mets, Chatham A's, and Orleans Cardinals.

- "Y-D" = "Yarmouth-Dennis." This is the opposite of what they do with the regional high school they share, which is known as "Dennis-Yarmouth" and/or "D-Y." This column is unaware if some sort of balancing arrangement was met.

- The Harwich Mariners were using "Mariners" before the Seattle Mariners were, so they don't have to pay. I don't know why Seattle isn't sending a fat check to Harwich, but so it goes...

- One of the better areas of side-entertainment at Cape League games is watching the pretty girls from each town try to score a potential-millionaire boyfriend. My other favorite things to people-watch there are the old people who have been to every game for 30 years and nag at the umpire with his first name, i.e. "Come on, Jimmy, you screw us every year!"

- This column personally favors a 16 team league with a August Apoplexy tournament to determine a champion. Doing so would bring about the need for 6 more teams.

- Those 6 teams would be gained by inviting the Plymouth Pilgrims, the Brockton Rox, the New Bedford Bay Sox, the Martha's Vineyard Sharks, the Newport Gulls and the North Shore (Lynn) Navigators from other local collegiate leagues. They'd be visiting teams only... the Cape League tournament doesn't leave Cape Cod, landlubber.

- The Cape League should use nothing but Barnstable Bat Company bats, IMHO.

Here's this weekend's schedule:

Friday, June 10th

ORL @ BRE
5:00 PM

WAR @ YD
5:00 PM

HYA @ BOU
6:00 PM

COT @ HAR
6:30 PM

FAL @ CHA
7:00 PM


Saturday June 11th

BRE @ COT
5:00 PM

FAL @ YD
5:00 PM

HYA @ HAR
5:30 PM

CHA @ BOU
6:00 PM

WAR @ ORL
7:00 PM


Sunday, June 12th

YD @ BRE
5:00 PM

HAR @ FAL
5:30 PM

COT @ WAR
5:30 PM

BOU @ HYA
6:00 PM

ORL @ CHA
7:00 PM

The entire summer's Cape League schedule can be found right here.

Naming Post-Secession Mainland Cape Cod

When the traffic gets bad enough and pols start talking about making residents pay tolls to cross a theoretical third bridge, people who live in the mainland areas of Bourne and Sandwich start getting angry. When that anger boils up enough, you even hear talk of secession.

"We lost any financial benefits from Cape traffic in 1985. Start our own town, demand financial concessions from Cape Cod for the traffic, and dump both bridges into the Canal if the Cape says no" is the general tone of secession talk.

I'm not going to support the "dump the bridges" talk, as it is terrorism and might kill someone. I'm also not here to push Secession. It's a fun conversation piece, and it might get me some site visits, but I'm simply not the man with the answers you'd need if you wanted to get the movement going. I'm not sure how it would be done, nor am I sure if it is even a good idea.

I'll leave those questions for a future article, most likely one written in August when I just took 90 minutes to get through the Belmont Circle rotary. Instead, I will take on something that I am completely capable of doing... naming the post-secession town.

We're going to work from a fictional scenario where Buzzards Bay, Bournedale, Sagamore Beach and Scusset Beach have all broken away from Bourne, Sandwich and perhaps even whatever parts of Wareham and Plymouth (why not go for everything east of Red Brook and all of the Great Herring Pond area?) we could get our hands on.

The resultant bow-tie shaped town would need many things, but the main thing it would need is a name. We've kicked around a few, and we'll share some of them with you now. There's no ranking, even if the staff have their own personal favorites.

- Gridlock

"Gridlock" would be a form of protest. It would speak of the new town's plight, while concurrently scaring away tourists who would otherwise clutter up our roads. It would be easy to remember, it would gain us amazing name-recognition value, and might invite investment.

"Gridock" was chosen from among several staff suggestions for traffic-related town names, edging out equally awesome but less serious contenders such as "Jam City, Massachusetts, " "Road Rage, Massachusetts," "Slow Lane, Massachusetts" and "Bumper-to-Bumper, Massachusetts."

"Bumper-to-Bumper" would have a sort of Stratford-upon-Avon sound to it, and would pair us with "Manchester-by-the-Sea" as the only town names in the state with hyphens in them. We'd also join them as the only town names with Prepositions in them.


- Ripton

"Ripton" was the name of a fictional Berkshires town that an awesome western Massachusetts pol (Editor's note: it was a UMass-Amherst professor) invented. He was able to apply for grants, and even got Ripton included in the state budget. He did Ripton's work so well, he was able to obtain state funds for the fictional community. He gave the money back, as he was less interested in Fraud and more interested in pointing out that the state government lacks Western Massachusetts awareness.

Anyhow, my financial adviser- who I will admit up front is in jail at the moment- tells me that he's "pretty sure" that state funds were collected and set aside for Ripton, and that if a Ripton should suddenly appear, they would be owed both the original sum of money and any interest accrued since Ripton's 1980s inclusion in the state budget.


- Capeside

Not a lot of TV shows were set on Cape Cod and the Islands (I can only think of one other one, Wings), but one of the best was Dawson's Creek. I don't think that I saw enough DC to tell you what it was actually about, but it launched the careers of Katie Holmes, James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams and that other kid.

If you were a child of the 1990s and didn't arc a few to Katie Holmes... nice restraint, brother.

The "Capeside" town scenes in Dawson's Creek were actually filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, and any Massachusetts scenery used in the show was filmed in Oak Bluffs. However, why not steal the name? As you can see from the entries above and below this one in the article, it's not like we have any better ideas.

"Capeside" edges out several other fictional town names that we wished to steal from TV, movies or literature, including "Amity," "Crabapple Cove," "Dunwich, "Wallencamp," "Peyton Place," "Gotham City," "Atlantis," "Jerusalem's Lot," "Dudleyville" and "Quahog."

- Wutham

Pronounced what-ham, it would be a goof on neighboring Wareham. We'd spell it "Whatham," but we wish to avoid GPS errors with Waltham.

We'd need Marion to change their name to Whoham in order to complete the trinity.


- Sagamore

"Sagamore" is probably the logical choice, although it would be complicated in that the actual village of Sagamore is on the Cape side of the Canal.

We might have to name the town "Scusset Beach," which would force us to  negotiate something with what would most likely be a very hostile Sandwich town government.

The "Scusset Beach" thing would be unfair to the Buzzards Bay part of the new town, while a "Buzzards Bay" naming would be unfair to Sagamore Beach.


Shark City

Assuming that we are unable to cut a concession for traffic from Cape Cod, and assuming that we lack the testicular fortitude to destroy the Canal bridges.... well, not all fights are physical.

If we can't take the physical means of going to Cape Cod away, why not attack them through tourism?

There would be no way of driving a car to Cape Cod without going past the NOW ENTERING SHARK CITY signs which we would dot the highway with. I'd even post the population on town signs, and cross it out every time someone died... you know, like they do in bad towns from cowboy movies.

Sure, most of those deaths would be Old Age, Cancer and so forth....  but you won't be thinking that when you drive past the Shark City sign.

Double Bay

One thing that this fictional town would have on every other town in the state would be the fact that we would be the only town to touch two (Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay) bays.

If you count Buttermilk Bay, we could even be Triple Bay.

This one is here mostly because it would make a great Casino name. If we stole enough of Wareham's eastern and Plymouth's southern forests, we could build a mega-casino right off the highway.

Shoot, I'd leave the bridges up at that point. Who wants to go to Taunton or friggin' Everett when you can instead gamble all night in Double Bay, and then dip over to Cape Cod for some daylight beach time?

Bowtie

"Bowtie" would be a play on the shape of the new town. Yes, it sucks.

Keeping the theme, but changing the shape.... this (and the Casino) would be a big motivator for the Wareham and Pymouth land grabs. If we seize the Ponds sections of Wareham and Plymouth, we'd be shaped like a mini-Connecticut.

Squanto

"Squanto" beats out "Samoset," "Metacomet," and "Massasoit" for Algonquin tribute purposes.

Squanto has the best Q Rating, and would be the best tourist-drawing name.

I don't know how we could do it, but maybe Johnny Depp or the Farrelly Brothers could be convinced to re-invent Squanto as an action hero. Maybe he goes all Seagal on invading Mi'kmaq, or perhaps he even kills a Sasquatch that was menacing Priscilla Alden. Squanto's story is an amazing one, but it needs more kung-fu and dinosaurs if he's getting his own town

Have Any Better Ideas? Let us know in the Comments...

Archives: An Interview With A Springfield Tornado Witness

Today is the 5th anniversary of the Springfield Tornado. We did an interview with an eyewitness, a Hanover middle school girl.  

Hanover Middle School Student Has Near Miss With Springfield Tornado

One of the benefits that you the reader enjoy when reading this column is that the authors who compose it have a lot of friends who end up in the news.

Remember that family who got shot at by the Route 3 sniper, the one where the window blew out next to the 5 year old kid? The mother went to high school with Stacey. Remember the Wareham double murder? Yours truly may or may not have put that kid's head off a car door a month prior. Abdullah knew the witnesses, too.

The pattern continues today. The Colonel is actually very good friends with the parents of Ceara McLaughlin (one of whom is my nutrition counselor), who was all over the news yesterday. Ceara was in a school bus, and on her way home from a trip to Six Flags amusement park in Agawam. Sounds fun so far, right?

Her bus ride home may have been the worst bus ride ever, or at least the worst bus ride since the one in Dirty Harry or that Speed movie. Before she cleared Springfield, her bus was forced to stop as the Springfield tornado roared across the highway in front of it.

Thanks to brave Ceara and her friends from the Hanover Middle School Chorus, we have some details and photographs of the action.

We immediately dispatched Ted to speak with Ceara and get the first hand info. Ceara is 14, and has that bounce-backedness that all kids have when faced with something that would scare me so badly that I'd start making Apocalypse Now speeches... "You must make a friend of horror, or it will become a formidable enemy..."

Ceara actually seems pretty upbeat about it. In a situation where I would be throwing children aside to escape faster, she kept her wits, got a pretty good description of the whole event, and even snapped some pictures.

Without any further ado, I present to you my good friend Ceara McLaughlin.

Ted- Give me a brief description of what happened....

Ceara- We were riding home from Six Flags and there was a little traffic, I'm not sure which road we were on, but we were on some highway near Agawam.

   We started to see rotating clouds and most people thought it wouldn't become anything, but then it started to make a funnel cloud. It came closer and we saw that there were dirt, shingles, and small boards spinning around, and then it crossed the highway right in front of us.

   It went to the other side of the highway, over a few buildings (picking up more shingles off of roofs of buildings), and then it went over a house on a hill and we saw it ripping up little parts of the roof. Then it disappeared!

   We figured out later that the little one we saw actually didn't disappear over the hill - it went on to become much bigger, and that was most likely the one that ripped through Springfield.

- Did you (or anyone you know) get any pictures of the tornado? (If yes, email it to me)
- A lot of my friends took pictures so I'll attach them, not sure if they're that clear :P (Editor's Note: They're superb.)

- How much did the tornado miss you by?-  It probably missed us by around 50 feet. I was in the back, but the people in the front said it came really close to them, they were almost in it.

- What does a tornado look like that close up?
- Well, it looks weaker than it is. You think it isn't that strong, but then it rips up a tree. It's really, really fast and just whips around wherever it wants to go.

   I was kind of afraid it would double back and go right into us or something, or that it would get close enough that some of the stuff it was carrying would fly into the windows and break them. It was really dark too, especially the clouds around it.

- What did the trip's chaperones tell you to do when the tornado came at you?
- They were kind of amused, but then when it got closer they were telling everyone to stay calm and that we would all be fine. After it went to the other side of the highway and across the hill, they were actually joking around that there was a cow floating around in it.

- Did the bus driver have to jam on the brakes or anything radical?
- Basically, everyone around us was slowing down when they saw it, then they stopped, and a few people even backed up. But no, nothing too dramatic.

- Did anything funny fly by, like a cow or a pickup truck?- Hahahahahaha nope!

- If there was a girl named Dorothy on the bus, would you have ordered her off?- Absolutely xD

- Who was the coolest head on the bus? If this were a movie, it'd be the football player, but I'm wondering if it might have been the Eagle Scout instead, or one of the smoker types.
- I'm not really sure, I was mostly paying attention to my friends around me, I could barely see who was in the front of the bus.

- Was the screaming louder on the bus than on the roller coaster at Six Flags?
- Not on our bus, we were actually relatively calm, just. A few people were yelling or crying, but not quite screaming. There were a few people on other buses who were really freaking out.

- How scared were you?- Well, I saw that it probably wouldn't pick up a person or a car- judging by the fact that it was only carrying some shingles, boards, and other debris- so I wasn't that freaked out. But I was pretty scared that it would come near us and blow us around, or something would fly into the windows. The lightning and other weather we saw afterwards was really scary, though!

- What does a Tornado vs. House look/sound like?
- When it hit an actual house, it was too far away to hear, but it looks pretty odd. The house loses every time!  xD

- Not related to the storm, but what was the coolest ride at Six Flags?
- I went on this older roller coaster called the "Thunderbolt" a ton of times, and that one was really fun!

 Photos courtesy of the Hanover Middle School Chorus

Rainy Memorial Day Traffic Notes And Gas Prices For Cape Cod

It is said that, much like how the Eskimo has 200 words for snow, residents of Bourne have hundreds of different classifications for traffic. They distinguish between weekend and weekday traffic, summer and winter traffic, rain/snow/sun traffic and holiday traffic.

Today is one of those subsets... Rainy Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is when summer starts on Cape Cod. Summer people opening their cottages, winter cottage rentals departing, hotels getting summer volume, places with SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER signs un-shuttering, old people smart enough to come off-season arriving... all of the little omens that the locals know of are in effect.

Traffic heading on-Cape was heavy on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Many of those people have to be on the mainland by Tuesday, and most of them will be making the Drang nach Westen at some point today.

Again, traffic is always going to be bad on Memorial Day Monday. I know it sucks right now, and I haven't opened Google Traffic since I got home from lunch. However, as the list of services offered by the Mustang Ranch in North Las Vegas tells you, there are different kinds of sucking. Allow me to explain.

A nice, sunny Memorial Day means that everyone bails out in the evening, after a day at the beach, a nice dinner and some time spent packing. This has a tendency to put them on the road at the same time. This is where you get those 15 mile traffic jams that Cape Cod is famous for.

A rainy Memorial Day breaks the people up a bit, leading to a heavy-but-lesser flow of the day-long variety. I was writing this article at 8 AM, and there was substantial traffic heading off-Cape even then. Those were the people who saw a rainy Memorial Day coming and opted to bail ahead of the traffic, the Cape Cod version of a guy sneaking out of a Pats game when we're up 42-10 after 50 minutes. Beat the traffic, before it beats you.

Other people, especially those who rented the place they were staying at all weekend, are determined to make a day of it. Cape Cod has shops, museums, galleries, restaurants and all sorts of stuff with a roof over it to pass the time. This tendency to stick it out is not restricted to those who have or don't have children.

Cape Cod will get day-trippers, even with this rotten weather. Some and perhaps many grandfathers who were alive when Hurricane Donna came ashore don't consider this to be real rain, and will insist on hosting a barbecue in it. This effect is limited. We've been keeping an eye on traffic heading both on and off-Cape for most of the day, and there has been no problem at all getting on to Cape Cod.

Even with the people bailing out early, there should be some heavy traffic tonight. The smart people leave early Tuesday morning, but you'll see plenty of the Other Type as you crawl up Route 6 tonight.

We've already had some traffic difficulty, as heavy rains flooded the Cranberry Highway up by the old 99. The road, which was having traffic diverted through the Stop & Shop plaza, is now open.

Note that there comes a time, usually in the Church hours of the morning, where you are under a lesser risk of encountering an impaired driver. Not too long after that, the risk goes up, and it gets to roll-them-dice levels on days where disappointed tourists have been drinking all day.

If you must go, don't forget to fuel up! You don't want to run out of gas in a ten mile bumper-y-bumper traffic jam while a tropical storm is pouring water up from Carolina at you. Here are the best (reported) prices for each Cape Cod town.

Eastham: $2.39 a gallon, Tedeschi's, Vandale Circle

Orleans, $2.34/gallon, Cumberland Farms, Route 6A

Chatham, $2.31, Cumberland Farms, Main Street and Roundabout Gas, Main Street

Brewster, $2.36, Cumberland Farms, Main Street

Harwich, $2.32, Harwich Gas And Propane

Dennis, $2.23, Mobil, East-West Dennis Road

Yarmouth, $2.29, Speedway, Main Street and Cape Cod Farms, Main Street

Barnstable, $2.29, Sunoco, Falmouth Road and Gulf, Falmouth Road

Hyannis, $2.26, Airport Gas, Mary Dunn Road

Mashpee, $2.26, Stop & Shop, Falmouth Road

Sandwich, $2.34, Shell, Route 6A

Bourne (Capeside), $2.35, Mobil, Clay Pond Road

Bourne (Mainland), $2.26, Bay Village Full Serve, Main Street

Wareham, $2.23, Speedway, Main Street and Joe's Gas, Main Street

Plymouth, $1.89, Mobil, South Street


3 PM UPDATE: Traffic on Route 6 heading off-Cape is stretched back to Exit 6, while traffic on 28 is jammed back to the Otis Rotary.

Holiday Weekend Weather, And Early-Season Tropical Storm Information

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Volunteers Needed To Plant Flags At Veterans Cemetery

Hey folks!

We thought we'd pass on a request from Operation Flags For Vets.

OFFV is an effort to plant 66,000 flags on the graves of military veterans in Massachusetts National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne. They need volunteers.

"OPERATION FLAGS FOR VETS
May 28, 2016

Operation Flags for Vets will again be placing flags on the graves at the Massachusetts National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne, Massachusetts for Memorial Day. We are looking for volunteers to help with this worthy and solemn endeavor. People of all ages are welcomed to help in the placement of the 57,000 flags on the final resting place of our beloved veterans. 


Operation Flags for Vets is a program of the SFC Jared C. Monti Charitable Foundation established in memory of Medal of Honor recipient SFC Jared C. Monti; KIA Afghanistan 6-21-06. Donations to our foundation may be mailed to Paul Monti 408 Center Street Raynham, MA 02767."

We'll be there in some form. It's good for the kid to get a little patriotism, and a bit of work in the sun is good for me. With 66,000 flags to plant, they're going to need some diggers.

Archives: 2007 Nor'easter Hits Duxbury Beach

We're transferring our photo archive from one spot to another, and we're unearthing a few pictures that we'l be sharing out over the upcoming weeks.

One theme you will see a few times is "Duxbury Beach, Nor'easter."

We have a pile of pics on this topic, so brace yourselves over the next few weeks.

Hurricane season is actually the calm time on Duxbury Beach, so these storm photos will hopefully keep the storm-lovers happy during the off-season.

My memory is notoriously spotty, but I'm pretty sure that these pictures are from a 2007 nor'easter.

My sister Sheila is on the camera, and these pictures are from Ocean Road North on Duxbury Beach

These pictures ran on Cape Cod TODAY, who used to go off-Cape now and then if a writer maybe had a sister trapped in a beach house during a coastal storm.

It is technically Cape Cod Bay, I suppose. It also is part of why the Irish Riviera is included in this article.

If you'd like a scale of reference, take note of the fence in the lower left hand corner.

Keeping a lawn is a tough business on Duxbury Beach. Every winter, the storms take big chunks of it away, and what's left has been power-soaked in Atlantic salt water.

When I lived there, I had a lawn, a garden and a high-maintenance cobblestone patio to the right of that fence. Re-did it every year. I'm one of the very few people walking around in 2016 with a permanently deformed finger relating to a "cobblestone accident."

We're looking north in this picture, down northern Duxbury Beach towards Green Harbor.

It's almost impossible to see the town line, but it's about where the really large (100-150 yards) break in the seawall is if you're ever taking a walk down there. The break exists because the residents there decided that they were highly-enough elevated, and passed on paying the fee being charged to put up the concrete seawall in the 1950s.

Green Harbor gets a bit more of a curve to their seawall. This results in some spectacular surf-to-seawall crash spraying, as the wave hits the wall and rolls down it. You get some sweet house-high spray.

Duxbury has more of a straight-line frontage to storm winds, and they get the more foundation-shaking direct hits.

It looks worse than it is. The seawall takes most of the shots, and the spray- however impressive it may look- isn't as bad as it gets when the actual waves start coming over the wall. It's why the pay so much to repair the seawalls.

A photographer shooting pictures from this vantage point in the Blizzard of '78 or the Halloween Gale of 1991 would have been killed.

This storm did some damage, though. It tore down decks, flooded the street, smashed through fences, ruined yards and scared witless everyone who had moved into the neighborhood since the last really bad storm.

A lot of people in that neighborhood buy a cottage, renovate it, and then realize a bit too late that the area is Poseidon's punching bag. There's a lot of turnover for a neighborhood that is Heaven-on-Earth for the other 364 days of the year.

Again, this is like a C+ storm. It did damage, but it wasn't ripping houses down.

Beach people have a high bar vis a vis How Scared They Get During Ocean Storms. While this is a bit heavy for it, kids in the neighborhood do risk-taking games with slightly smaller storms.

What they call a "Death Run" involves dropping onto the beach between waves ad running as far down the beach as you can before you have to desperately claw your way back up and over the seawall.

"Death Runs" may have died out with my generation. I go to a lot of beaches during storms, and I never see anyone doing them.

... on purpose, anyhow.

The area behind the house we were shooting from is a meadow. Locals call it "Bradford's," after a family that ran a beach parking lot there. It's the Low Ground of the neighborhood.

You can see the remnants of the last of WWII-era cottages below. That house in the background is no longer standing. Someone was going to build condos there before this storm. I believe that the effort has since been abandoned.

Bradford's, like the rest of the neighborhood, sits between Cape Cod Bay and a rather large marsh. The marsh fills up during really high tides, and it spills over into the neighborhood.

The whole Gurnet Road area of Duxbury Beach becomes an island during storms, and the nearest dry land is over about where Duxbury High School is used to be. At the moment this photo was taken, Duxbury Beach was an island, about a half mile offshore.

It's basically why Duxbury Beach won this contest.

Duxbury Beach, MA