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Who Invented The Gobbler?

We search for the genius who invented the Thanksgiving sandwich

Sure, there is trouble with ISIS, a Presidential campaign in full swing and our recession-recovery economy could use some tinkering, but hopefully that stuff will take care of itself.

I, instead, will focus on who invented the Gobbler.

The Gobbler, as you most likely know, is a regional name for a Turkey/Cranberry/Stuffing sandwich. Depending on where you're getting one, it may have a variety of ingredients. It may also have a variety of names, such as the Mayflower Sandwich, the Thanksgiving Sandwich, the Day After Thanksgiving Sandwich, the John Alden, the Myles Standish, the Squanto, the Samoset, the Massasoit, the Turkey Bomb, the TCS, the Black Friday Special, the Pilgrim Sandwich, the November Surprise, the Governor Bradford, and God knows what others.

It is one of America's most popular sandwiches, and on the day after Thanksgiving, it is THE most popular sandwich. While the Fluffernutter is the Boston's signature sandwich, the Gobbler is probably the signature sandwich of Plymouth County. I'd actually use Bourne as the cutoff point from which the lobster roll asserts her sandwich authority over the lands across the Canal.

With the advent of modern appliances, the immediate post-Edison version of the Gobbler was probably invented on the East Coast by whoever got hungry first before the plates were washed. Just like the Earl of Sandwich centuries before, this god-among-us figured out that thick bread makes for a pretty good plate. Before someone invented the fridge, leftover turkey most likely went into a slow-simmering soup.

We "know" that the Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich in the 18th Century so he could eat while he gambled, and never-you-mind better historical claims by Europeans and their trencher/open-faced sandwiches, the ancient Jews and their matze Passover culinary explorations, or the Aztecs and their corn tortillas (often filled with turkey to make history's first turkey sandwich, but the Aztecs were nowhere near the cranberries needed for the Gobbler). None of their stories involve needing a hand free to gamble, so I'm going with Earl. If you are patient, we'll tie the Gobbler back to him.

Turkeys, native to America, were introduced to Europe in the 1500s through Turkish markets via the Spanish. Turkeys get their English name from where the English got turkeys, in Turkey. Stuffed turkey was popular in Europe by the 1600s, and bread was most likely on those same tables. Those are 3 of the 4 main ingredients in the Gobbler, but the cranberry sauce was a century away.

In spite of the fact that turkey-at-Plimoth was common knowledge, it didn't become the Thanksgiving anchorman in America until about 1800. If you need an English visual, remember that the Cratchit family from A Christmas Carol (1843) was going to eat a goose before Scrooge intervened with a holiday turkey and some Obamacare. Turkey was a popular holiday meal in America long before Abe Lincoln nationalized the holiday, and long before even that in Europe.

I struck out on finding the actual inventor of the Gobbler, and had difficulty even finding speculation on the matter. There were no claims made on it. Since my research yielded nothing, I am forced to rely on my own creativity and logic.

The Pilgrims look like a good bet, as they had turkey, stuffing (stuffing dates back to the Romans, at least), and- most importantly- access to cranberries. Not only access, but they also were essentially getting the first (white people) crack at them. They were slow to catch on, as the nation/world's first large cranberry cultivation system was established by American Revolution vet Captain Henry Hall in Dennis in 1816, but we were shipping them to Europe by 1820.

The Pilgrims were neither wealthy nor frivolous, and sugar is needed in large amounts to make cranberry sauce as we know it. The Ps might have used lightly sugared cranberries, as straight cranberry is too tart to eat enjoyably- even for someone who considered some nice salted mutton to be good eatin'. Such a thing as sugared berries would have almost certainly been a dessert.

All the necessary ingredients for the Gobbler were in place in some form at the first Thanksgiving. William Bradford's account put turkey, cranberries, and cornbread on the table. Stuffed turkey was a traditional holiday meal in the Europe they had just left. That almost assuredly puts stuffing (of a cornbread variety) on that table as well.

There were creative minds from a variety of cultures sitting at that table, and remember that some of those minds were quite remarkable. In that context, you'd almost be amazed if someone there didn't invent the Gobbler. It'd be like watching Tesla get transported to 2014 and fail to figure out how to turn on the TV.

While that doesn't solve the mystery, it gives us a basis for more speculation. Since we've narrowed it down to the table the Gobbler most likely was first enjoyed at, we have to- for the sake of everybody who got up on the 4th Friday in November and went straight for the hair of the dog- make an effort to name the genius in 1621 who put two and two together and somehow made something tastier than four.

I'll start by looking at the Wampanoags.

They shouldn't be the less obvious choice. They could make their own forms of bread, they had turkey running around, and probably had about 5,000-30,000 years of experience with cranberries before the Europeans arrived.

You can go to Plimoth Plantation tomorrow and see the Wampanoag historical role-players cooking cranberry cornbread (Nasaump) that looks a lot like squishy-style bird stuffing. They even made a cranberry boiled bread, a cranberry syrup called Sassamanesh, and had numerous turkey recipes. They were working with all of the ingredients for centuries.

Any argument against the Wampanoags inventing some form of the Gobbler pretty much hinges on nobody in 5-30000 years putting some meat, cranberries (cranberries were used when making pemmican, making the Wampanoag Gobbler even that much more likely), and some form of stuffing between two pieces of bread.

The reader will note that we mentioned ancient Native Americans using tortillas. Ideas move through different tribes just like they do with different Europeans, and the idea of wrapping food in bread could have quite possibly diffused from Tortilla Land to the Cranberry-Turkey Land. Once that happens, you just need one Algonquian genius.

You can run the Wampanoag-exclusive Gobbler theory right up to the first Thanksgiving. The Wampanoags introduced cranberries to starving English settlers, and they are almost certainly among the berries (although most likely in food prepared by the Wampanoags) described by Bradford in his account of the first Thanksgiving. 

I'd even pick a Wampanoag (not used to knives and forks and so forth) to be more likely to create a Gobbler when presented with turkey, cranberries, stuffing and bread than some scared and rigid European who was used to European table manners.

I'd even throw in the chance that some Pilgrim woman fashioned some sort of bread-cup and filled it with the Gobbler ingredients for a departing Wampanoag, inventing the Gobbler while concurrently serving America's first take-out meal.

The other option at that table to invent the Gobbler relies more on mysticism and legend... which you'd think would favor the Wampanoags, but they actually have too good of a grasp on Common Sense in this discussion to latch onto the abstract stuff. It favors Bourne.

I can make this simple. Even the most ardent supporter of the Wampanoag Gobbler theory would have to admit that the Great Spirit usually gives you a sign. While Plimoth had the more famous Wampanoag interaction and is the most likely Genesis Spot for a white man's Gobbler, the majority of trade between colonists and natives and the New Netherlands in the time following the feast went down at the Aptucxet Trading Post, in Bourne. There was a great deal of cultural and culinary diffusion going on in Bourne until around or before the Great Colonial Hurricane blew America's First Store flat in 1635.

If Plimoth was the Gobbler's Bethlehem, Bourne may have indeed been the Gobbler's Nazareth. From there, much like Jesus, it took over half the world. The ethnicity of the first Gobbler's creator matters less to me than the chance that someone from Bourne may have invented (or at least first ingested) one of America's greatest sandwiches.

The only problem here is that Bourne wasn't Bourne until 1884, when it broke away from the town it used to belong to, the town named for a British aristocrat, the town that wins the Pilgrims and Bourne the right to call the Gobbler their own, the town that grants my theory the approval of the Great Spirit, and the town that ends this discussion.

The name of that town?

"Sandwich. "

Gerard's Farm, in Marshfield

I (and now, you) may be the one person aware of this, but Bongi's Turkey Roost and Gerard's Turkey Farm are part of a notable equation.

Neither store owner (each with decades in the local business) could name a third competitor closer than West Bridgewater, and the next towns I heard mentioned were Framingham and Leominster... and they might not actually be the literal sandwich factories that Gerard's and Bongi's are.

However, in spite of the fact that there appears to be almost zero demand for such businesses even 20 miles away and outward, a very small area in a very small pair of towns is able to support two turkey sandwich specialty shops.

Bongi's and Gerard's have been in direct competition for almost 70 years, and both businesses are coasting along nicely. You can tell they are doing well, because the respective owners speak well of each other. Try this with, say, Local Oil Guy A and B or Local Car Dealership A and B, especially if they are 1) within 10 miles of each other, 2) selling the exact same product to the same households, and 3) the only businesses of that sort in the region.

Nope, it seems that demand is just fine for two turkey sandwich stores in this area. In fact, based on the bustling Tuesday lunch business I saw both establishments conducting, Plymouth County could probably support a few more businesses of this sort. Swamp Yankees love their Gobblers.

I did manage to discover some Class Distinction among the stores. Bongi's, in ritzy Duxbury, gets the Pilgrim crowd. Gerard's, along the road to the sea in Marsh Vegas, draws in the Irish Riviera crowd. Both stores have very parochial customer bases, as lovers of one tend to never go to the other.

These facts, plus the physical location of the businesses smack dab in the middle of towns founded by people who ate at the first Thanksgiving, pretty much cements the location of the Gobbler Heartland in a Duxbury/Marshfield semi-circle that, to dot the Is and cross the Ts, should also include neighboring towns Scituate, Kingston and Pembroke, and the cranberry producing towns of Carver, Whitman, Hanson, Halifax, the Bridgewaters, Plympton, Carver, and Wareham,. Plymouth and Bourne/Sandwich's inclusion in the mix goes without saying.

As I said earlier, the mainland/Bourne side of the Cape Cod Canal is where the Gobbler is supplanted by the Lobster Roll as the signature sandwich of the region. North of the Gobbler Zone, it becomes the Fluffernutter. That runs through Worcester. Beyond that, you're on your own.

Duxbury and Marsh Vegas can support two turkey sandwich stores. Nearby towns all over the South Shore, South Coast and Cape Cod have some form of the Gobbler on their sandwich shop menus. It then quickly levels off to a range of "better delis have a Gobbler Sandwich with some clever Pilgrim name as a lunch special now and then" to "fails to put stuffing or cranberry in it" as you get away from the cranberry-producing regions

You'd be amazed how quickly you would encounter areas where this sandwich is only eaten a day or two after Thanksgiving once you leave Massachusetts. 

Just for laughs, I checked out some delicatessen menus in other states. Wisconsin, which has a "choice of potatoes" section on the Rochester Deli menu, had a turkey panini with cranberry "relish," but not stuffing. Fat Guys Deli in Idaho (home of the Triple Chin Sandwich) had no Gobbler among their eclectic 30 sandwich menu. Jimmy John's in Alabama had nothing approaching a Gobbler. The Carnegie Deli has one, but it may actually be a dinner plate as opposed to a sandwich. $20.99, I believe. Canter's Deli is LA has nothing.

I was raised in Ground Zero on this one, and generally assemble the necessary ingredients about once a month or so, depending on how close to Gerard's or Bongi's I get.

Bongi's, in Duxbury!

Thanksgiving Football Schedule And Predictions For SE Massachusetts

Thanksgiving means turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, family gatherings, giving thanks for what you have... and rooting for the kids in your town to stomp all over the kids from the next town over.

Lots of money will change hands this Thursday, as Town Primacy will be established all over Massachusetts. I have rarely seen two gymnasts or cross-country runners from rival schools bragging about a meet or a match twenty years later, but you see it all the time with high school football.

I have bet money with a priest on a field goal attempt once, if you wonder how deep this column lives it, baby.

Drinking whiskey from a flask, Bloody Marys and Cider are acceptable morning alcoholic drinks, but you have to be low-key.

Remember to check multiple sources for times and locations, as my schedule sometimes forgets to list times or thinks that Barnstable is playing Falmouth Academy (who I am not sure has a team). You don't want to start your Thanksgiving holiday by going to the wrong town at the wrong time because MaxPreps made an error that a stoner journalist failed to notice when writing this article on the 3 AM Werewolf Shift.

On to the squabbles...


Plymouth North vs Plymouth South, 10 AM

As we will say at length in an upcoming article, the Thanksgiving game between North and South should be stylized, televised, and shown live on ESPN on Thanksgiving morning. Same with the parade, but maybe ABC for that. I taught at North, so...

North, 34-17



Oliver Ames at Sharon 10 AM

If Oliver spelled his last name differently, this could be perceived as an "Oliver aims at Sharon" threat. Stick around folks, I got a trillion of 'em. Sharon beat O&A 28-12 in October, at O&A's own field.

Sharon, 31-14


Mansfield at Foxboro, 10 AM

I refuse to use the "ough" for Foxboro, Middleboro, Northboro and so forth. Foxy Bro is an 8-3 host, while Mansfield is 5-5. However,Mansfield always has a tough team, and they'll squeak one out here.

Mansfield, 14-13


Carver at Middleboro, 10 AM

Carver can finish above .500 for the first time in many moons if they beat Middy, and Middy stood a good chance of resting her starters for the playoffs... but then Middy got eliminated, so they will instead empty the whole clip into Coach Reeve's kids.

Middleboro, 24-13


Apponequet at Old Rochester, 10 AM

I'll take the road 'dog, just because I need practice spelling "Apponequet."

Apponequet, 23-21


Dartmouth at Fairhaven, 10 AM

Fairhaven will lose this game, but they have the cooler-looking high school building.

Dartmouth, 30-10


East Boston vs South Boston/Snowden/Upper Quincy/Excel/Green Academy, 9:30 AM

South Boston/Snowden International/Upper Quincy/Excel/Green Academy's cheerleaders take 45 minutes or longer to go through their "Gimme an S..." cheer. They are just now finishing that cheer from their previous game.

Eastie 44-14


Hingham at Scituate, 10 AM

The winner will be above .500, the loser will be below it. Scituate has lost their last three games to the tune of 107-29

Hingham, 24-17


Wareham at Bourne, 10 AM

198-27 score in Wareham's last 6 losses.

Bourne, 9-6


Rockland at East Bridgewater, 10 AM

EB, which sounds like something you'd take Cialis to deal with, can walk into the Super Bowl undefeated... but to get to the Super Bowl healthy, they may sit the starters. Betting these games can be difficult. If they play the starters for a half, they should win big. If the JV plays the whole game, Rockland may win by double digits.

EB, 24-23


Barnstable at Falmouth, 10 AM

Falmouth won 6-0 in 1895. Barnstable leads the series by 1, 60-59-8. May as well set up some high stakes for 2016.

Falmouth, 33-31


Bristol-Plymouth at Blue Hills, 10 AM

B-P's mascot/nickname? Craftsmen

Blue Hills, 30-17


Silver Lake at Pembroke, 10 AM

Pembroke is fighting off a winless season.

Silver Lake, 20-17


Cardinal Spellman at Archbishop Williams, 10 AM

If they ever got a few high schools devoted to Satanism, that would make for an excellent Thnaksgiving game.... "Cardinal Spellman vs Lucifer Tech." Until then, we get Priest Fights.

Cardinal Spellman, 27-24


North Quincy at Quincy, 10 AM

I lived in Quincy as a kid, but I'm not sure if I was in North Quincy territory or just regular Quincy territory. I seem to think that I lived in West Quincy, which is not an option on the menu. My loyalty runs out at Furnace Brook Elementary School, which is now named for the guy who was the principal when I was there. I'd ask my brother which school I'd be at if I stayed in Quincy, but if I suddenly chose a side this late in life, the resultant bias might mar my otherwise laser-sharp sports betting prowess.

Quincy, 14-13


Mashpee at Sandwich, 10 AM

I actually have an article online somewhere that chrnicles my research into the origin of the Thanksgiving Sandwich.

Mashpee, 40-27


Weymouth at Walpole, 10 AM

I wonder if Walpole could beat an all star team assembled from the nearby prison?

Walpole, 21-14


Taunton at Coyle-Cassidy, 10 AM

If Taunton is to get a win this season, they couldn't ask for a better foe than 2-9 C-C.

Taunton, 13-12


South Shore Vo-Tech at Southeastern Regional Voke Tech, 10 AM

Southeastern is in South Easton, which is pronounced the same by Massachusetts people.

SSVT, 24-14


Bishop Connolly at Saint John Paul II, 10 AM

Saint John Paul II is hobbled by their tendency to score in Roman Numerals.

Bishop Connolly, 28-XIV


Norwell at Hanover, 10 AM

Norwell looks like a good bet to need some Hanover cures.

Hanover, 31-13


Monomoy at Sacred Heart, 10 AM

Stacey is a Sacred Heart grad, so we'd better choose them.

Sacred Heart, 12-9


Upper Cape Tech at Cape Cod Tech, 10 AM

Upper Cape is sort of the cream of the local Voke-Tech crop.

UCT, 21-10


Diman vs Greater New Bedford, 10 AM

GNB can go above .500 for the season if they win.

GNB, 21-20


Braintree at Milton, 10 AM

Braintree can go over .500 if they beat 10-1 Milton.

Milton, 44-17


New Bedford at Durfee, 10 AM

Fall River needs to change the name of that school if they want me to bet on them.

New Beffuh, 20-10


Cohasset at Hull, 10 AM

If they didn't have such a cute seaside stadium, I'd want Hull to redesign their stadium to look like H-E-Double Hockey Sticks. I'd want the effect Clint Eastwood was going for with Lago in High Plains Drifter.

Cohasset, 28-7


Nauset at Dennis-Yarmouth, 10 AM

Nauset has to fight Dennis and Yarmouth, so it's already skewered from the get-go.

D-Y, 21-13


Whitman-Hanson at Abington, 10 AM

Abby alwys has a tough program, and W-H has been slipping recently.

Abington, 30-20


Bishop Feehan st Bishop Stang, 10 AM

Someone is going to beat the Bishop.

Stang, 21-19


West Bridgewater at Holbrook/Avon, ?

It'd be funny if the Avon half of the team was always trying to sell cosmetics to the Holbrook half of the team. I'm not sure what time the game is, I think 10 AM.

The WB, 17-14


Brockton at Bridgewater-Raynham, 10 AM

7-3 vs 6-4... I'll go with 10-6, which was the score when they played 3 weeks ago.

Brockton, 10-6


Somerset-Berkley at Case, 10 AM

Case is in Swansea, in Case someone bets you that you don't know where Case is.

S-B, 20-18


BC High at Catholic Memorial, 7 PM

Watch kids vomit forth their turkey dinners... under the lights!

BC High, 20-17


Duxbury at Marshfield, 10 AM

10-1 vs 8-2, two local powerhouses sharing a lengthy border... this is probably the game of the day. They both smoked their common opponent. Duxbury just got sent home from the playoffs by Milton, while Vegas was overwhelmed by Reading in the playoffs. It is the Super Bowl for both teams. Marshfield is 6-0 at home, has played an out-of-state game, and is heavily favored. Guess where I graduated from, and which team I have blood playing for?

Duxbury, 33-29

If The Right People Were Running Plymouth....

Plymouth has a lot going for it. They have miles of coastline. They are dripping with history. They have an active downtown area. They have hotels and tourist-type places.

Plymouth also owns Thanksgiving. Her rule there is undisputed. There is no number one contender to that title. Plymouth owns it outright.

They take advantage of it. Pilgrims and Wampanoags are used to advertise businesses, decorate homes, and to generally set the mood of the community.

Just this past weekend, I went to a wonderful Thanksgiving parade that brought in locals by the thousands. All of those people spent money in the local economy, and Plymouth was the happening spot for a day.

There's nothing wrong with that.

I'd like Plymouth to happen a little harder.

Nothing burns the frontal lobes of a writer with nada in the pipeline than an underutilized resource.

You might think that my feelings on this are greedy and perhaps even crazy. They are definitely not in tune with the spirit of the season.

Thanksgiving is about being happy with what you have, not about thinking "How can I make money?" and so forth. There admittedly are some errors in my argument when viewed from that viewpoint.

However, a rising tide lifts all boats that don't have a big hole punched in the bottom. You can always be thankful, but you can always also be More thankful.

Here are a few ideas I have that might get this town on a payin' basis. We have a lot of nuclear reactor money to make up.

Thanksgiving Football

Is there anything that compelling beaming out of ESPN on, say, a holiday Thursday? Why not make the Plymouth North/Plymouth South Thanksgiving football game be a national event?

A big part of Thanksgiving lore in America involves going to the holiday high school football game, either the one where you went to high school at or the one in the town your kids go to school in. I'm about five years from having to make a very painful Duxbury-to-Bourne switch when my kid finally gets School Spirit.

ESPN should show a game. Sure, if they get one from Texas where they have 300 pounders all along the offensive line and the cornerbacks run a 4.4, and that would get you a higher level game. However, a lot of the charm is lost if it looks too much like a pro game, especially if they play it at one of those Texas schools with the 50,000 seat stadiums and the History textbooks that end with Jimmy Carter in the White House.

I would instead radically re-design the football stadium for one of the schools, or perhaps even build a stadium on a neutral site. I'd put it near the sea, preferably near wherever the Pilgrims actually set foot ashore.

There are a lot of woodlands around the nuclear reactor (if you ever want to see a satellite view of suburban sprawl coming to a skidding halt on either side of something, do a Google Map of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant), maybe they could build it in there.



Thanksgiving Stadium (my idea, I'll name it) would have less than 50,000 seats, but would possess several interesting visual facets:

- A giant replica Mayflower III on the seaside wall of the stadium, craftily positioned so that it would look like it was floating with the right camera angles. When either team scored, it could wobble back and forth as if in surf, while Rock The Boat (Don't Tip The Boat Over) plays on the loudspeakers.

- A complete recreation of a Pilgrim and a Wampanoag village in either end zone.

- A much better version of Plymouth Rock. I would use the largest boulder that can be moved by modern machinery,and make it be the non-sea-side wall of the stadium. I'd use a Disney-style fake rock if moving a small mountain became problematic.

- This Plymouth Rock would be hollowed out enough that the "1620" can be lit with fire or plasma rays. If we could somehow project the 1620 onto the moon, I'd be a-ight with that.

- A completely functional and life-sized lighthouse, which admittedly may be redundant with the 1620 neon sign.

- A seven hundred foot Turkey Of Vengeance robot who bursts forth from the sea to seek dinner-related vengeance on the crowd. We'd stop him before he killed too many people, of course.

Once we have the stadium in place, we'd need to get the schools up to speed.

We don't need to have the kids playing pro-level football, but it can't look like a Pop Warner game. Top coaches should be brought in, players from other schools should be lured in and the phys-ed classes K-12 should be hyper-intensified. I would not be put off by Soviet Union/Red Army comparisons.

We'd have to re-mascot the schools, as well. North could be the Pilgrims, South would be the... OK, this gets touchy.

"Wampanoags" is sort of a mouthful. "Indians" seems almost like a slur. "Sachems" lacks brand name recognition, and I think Middleboro or someone may already be the Sachems. "Warriors" is a bit bloody-minded. "Squantos" has a ring to it, although there was only one Squanto and we'd be heading into Lone Rangers territory. "Natives" sounds like what the Tea Party would name a team if they had one.

I suppose we could go Team Standish vs Team Alden, for the Massasoit Trophy. To be fair, Team Metacom vs Team Wamsutta for the Mayflower Trophy also works.

We'd also have to get the cheerleaders to step up their game. I'm thinking this, and this.

In turn for pretty much handing them their holiday viewing (and  30 for 30 special, or whatever they call those) for every Thanksgiving, ESPN will see that Plymouth gets a little financial compensation.

Compensation would be in order. I'm not sure that "free publicity" means much to a town that is in the early chapters of every American History textbook, Likewise, nationally televised stadium advertising would be limited, as very few people in Chicago are going to be ordering delivery from The Pizza Factory on Home Depot Road in America's Hometown.

No, Plymouth will be requiring little green pieces of paper with Founding Father Faces.

America would adopt the game as their own. It might not sell out East where many are going to their own HS games, but it would be prime morning viewing for anyone a time zone or three over.

Thanksgiving Parade

Speaking of compulsory national Thanksgiving viewing, we could make some improvements to the Thanksgiving parade and get it up on the tube.

Macy's has a Thanksgiving parade. Philadelphia and Detroit also have prominent Thanksgiving parades. New York was an Algonquian trading post with 5000 Lenape natives when the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621. Why should they have the Thanksgiving parade?

F*** them.

The Thanksgiving parade held in Plymouth should be televised nationally. The Macy's parade gets 88 million eyes a year. It is a national tradition that the much smaller Plymouth has little chance of vanquishing.

Plymouth could work some odd angle for their parade, to distinguish it from the giant Macy's parade that we have no chance of defeating straight up.

The Macy's parade starts at 9 AM, and ends about when the North/South football team would be starting. We'd be fools to run opposite of that.

Why not try the night before, or even Thanksgiving night?

7 PM, either night. I like the Thursday night idea better, as we'd be trying to wedge in between the 4 PM NFL game and the 8:30 PM game. We'd have all of the vacationers in town already, as opposed to a Wednesday night event.

We'd have to weed out the weaklings among the parade attractions. We'd have to hunt up corporate sponsorship, which could be used to super-power the floats.

We'd have to consider altering the parade route. I like Benny's as much as the next person doesn't, but it's not the place for a Jump Off. I'm thinking of using 3A, maybe make the parade run from Plimoth Plantation to Plymouth Rock. That may also prove problematic. but we can sweat the details later.

The important part is the ending, which is also why Thursday night is crucial to the parade.

Plymouth is already the home of Thanksgiving. Why not also take the running-unopposed title for Black Friday?

That's right... go from humbly thanking the Gods for what you have to the Gimme Gimme Gimme of the Christmas shopping season. It's the most important day of the consumer year, and no one owns it.

Plymouth could take possession of Black Friday simply by already having the eyes of the nation on them already via the football game and the parade. End that parade at Plymouth Rock, and light a mammoth Christmas tree there.

A simple, symbolic act, lighting that tree. It will match the neither Rockefeller Center tree, nor even the Boston tree. However, what it lacks in prestige, it makes up for in timing. Tied to the Thanksgiving parade, at a slack hour between football games.... Boom.

Why let Barry steal our thunder?

Granted, I'm aiming high, with stadiums and new holidays and all. Plymouth should aim high. If we don't, someone might come along and take Thanksgiving from us. New York already has the nationally televised parade that by all rights should belong to Plymouth.

We can take it back, if we Think Big.

Whether that makes enough money to pay for the effort remains to be seen. I'm more of an idea guy than a bean counter. The bean counters would have the hard job.

However, if Plymouth has a chance to profit heavily off of a holiday that they already own, and if they have a chance to claim a second holiday, would they not be wise to look into the best case scenario?

Checking Out The Plymouth Thanksgiving Parade

Happy Thanksgiving From America's Hometown!!

We did the Pilgrimmy thing today, and headed up to America's Hometown to check out the Thanksgiving Parade.

We'll discuss this in a future article, but the Plymouth parade on Thanksgiving should be the premier Thanksgiving event in the country. I feel very strongly about this, like 10000 words strongly.

The football game should also be ESPN huge, but I'm near what my teachers used to call "getting off-topic."

Here's our vantage point. We posted up at the Mobil station, right where Route 44 meets Route 3A.

Once the parade started, I climbed up onto the Dunkin' sign by the road so I could take blurry pictures from a great height. The cop near me was in too good a mood to shoo me off of it, or perhaps he hoped I'd fall.

We parked at the Lobster Hut, which was a mistake that we'll end the story with.

In case you think that we're trying to pull a fast one on you by going to the Plymouth, Minnesota parade.... here's a line stretching 50 deep out the door for a gas station Dunkin' Donuts.

You don't get more Massachusetts than that, blogga....

Stop trying to think of a one-upper, nothing beats mad headz at a Dunkin'. Maybe if this shot was taken during a blizzard...

Turkey was going to be a prominent theme in this parade, as Thankfulness is an abstract concept or something, and is hard to put on a float.

Every year, they park this float under the Myles Standish monument in Duxbury, and every year, they find an empty plate the next morning.

Myles is like 200 feet tall, you see...

OK, next picture....

Thatched roofs rool.

If this magazine ever makes me my many millions, I want to buy a house on a hill in my old neighborhood, and pay the property taxes of everyone in the valley below if they all get thatched roofs. I think the Great Gatsby offered his neighbors that deal.

If the Pilgrims had invented a mobile house and developed some means of making it move, King Phillip's War would have been over in a week... unless the Wampanoags just walked 50 feet into the woods, of course.

It's not a parade until the vintage cars come out.

If the right people were running this parade, these two guys would have went first, and raced. Benny's to the Mayflower. I can't tell you how much I want next year's parade to start like that, folks.

I don't know the top speed of a Model T, but I'm sure that the elderly and infants could cross the street fast enough if the dice came up on them.

If not, Deathrace 1620!

I apologize for the blurry pic, but as I was shooting it, I froze up and went "Is that a f***ing basketball in the horn o' plenty?"

Somebody should have stepped in there, and maybe used a turnip or some celery or something. That looks like a cork... shaped like a basketball.

There are a few blurry shots in here, I plan to joke around any further explanations. I'm a genuinely rotten photographer who sometimes gets pressed into action because I'm tall enough to shoot over crowds.

They should have borrowed the pirate ship from Bourne's July 4th parade, they had cannons on that ish. There was some gunfire at this parade... of a celebratory nature, of course.

While they most likely had a few among their numbers who had the English shooting at them, not many Wampanoags had seen guns in action by 1621. A good Musketry display would be like a fireworks show for them. I bet the Pilgrims let off some Happy Fire, partly to entertain, partly to intimidate.

I'm not picking on the Wampanoags as being rubes. Not many naturally occurring noises are louder than right-next-to-your-ear gunfire.

I read a story about Pickett's Charge, an event that went down almost 242 years after Plymouth's feast, which said that the bombardment that preceded the charge was the loudest sound ever heard by anyone on the battlefield who hadn't been directly next to a lightning strike or who wasn't nearby when Krakatoa erupted.

These dudes were letting off shots, as well. Much like the militia at the New England Patriots games, I'm imagining that they don't use live ammunition.

I may be oversensitive and a bit of a party pooper, but should there be gunfire at post-Paris or even post-Columbine public gatherings? You can only see the militia if they are right in front of you... otherwise, you just get a sudden burst of out-of-context gunfire.

You just need one person to panic, and a few hundred will follow. The next thing you know, it's like that Who concert that Andy and Johnny Fever gor Mr. Carlson (I forget the guy's name) to go to. General Admission. Mass Hysteria. Bad News.

You just need a France float, to put the word "terrorist attack at a public event" into your mind before the militia empties the clip, Thank God nobody made one of those, huh?

Aw, merde!

Floats That Should Have Been In The Parade But Weren't:

- The Smallpox Float, with an English fisherman coughing on a healthy-no-more Wampanoag.

- The float for the Dissident Wampanoag faction, with a big broken treaty on it or something.

- The North Plymouth float, with a dozen Brazilian dishwashers and landscapers in the bed of a F-350.

- A float that shows Samoset and Squanto learning their English by watching Monty Python movies.

- The float from Entergy, with the oddly-glowing nuclear reactor.

- The Thomas Granger buggery float.

- The float for what you know had to be 5% or so of both the Pilgrim and Wampanoag population who are down with GLBT .

We did have the Overcoat/Top Hat guy parade contingent.

I wasn't looking when the guy with the sign that explained who they were went by.

They could be up to something nefarious, as at least one member in the crowd was caught on my camera throwing the Heil Hitler salute.

Blurry picture, but I wanted you to understand that my Game even works with colonial women. You can't blame the girls, I ooze a machismo that women of any era find becoming. It even makes the camera blurry now and then.

1620s women living in a primeval forest know how to ham it up for the photographer, you'll notice.

My charm even bewitches women of the modern era. Notice that all of the WCVB Eye Opener morning news team girls are waving to get my attention. Shoot, even Randy Price is waving.

After I shot the pic, Randy threw me what I hope was Cindy Fitzgibbons' hotel room key. It's all good (this column is very pro-gay for one penned by a crude, no-filter humorist with a steady girlfriend), as long as whoever answers the hotel door knows that 1) I'm pitching, and 2) I like french toast for breakfast..

S'up?

I'm not sure how WCVB gets exclusive parade rights.

You'd figure that every local channel would be there. What other Thanksgiving parade matters? It'd be a better parade if some float competition existed between WCVB, WBZ and so forth. We'd have some excellent floats.

I bet FOX would have an anti-immigrant float, but that would be fun on a sunny day in Suburbia, USA.

Either way, it wasn't happening.

I thought that this was one of those little M&M guys from the commercials, but it actually is a very rounded-off Plymouth Rock mascot.

They should probably take the real Plymouth Rock out of the portico and put it on a flatbed truck for the next parade. Have the Homecoming Queen from both Plymouth North and Plymouth South ride with it. You could throw a few John Aldens onto the float to make it more Pilgrimatic.

It needs some sort of gig, it just sits there otherwise.

Hey.... who invited these guys?

Oh yeah, the Pilgrims were English, kinda. Their militia didn't wear the redcoats, however. Those colors were reserved for Regular Army. Our militia dressed like Davy Crockett or someone.

No, I don't think (I may be wrong) that King Phillip's War was fought by people in those Quaker Oats-looking Pilgrim hats.

I just want it on the Internet somewhere that the big Loyalist town around here in the American Revolution was Marshfield.

Pikes were a prominent weapon in that era, although muskets soon made them obsolete.

They say that Stonewall Jackson ordered pikes, and that he would have used them on Little Round Top... a battle which was saved by a desperate bayonet charge that worked like gangbusters against a foe who had a 7 step musket-loading process, but which would have failed against someone with bigger spikes.

No one had to be impaled at Plymouth today, at least when I was around.

I like the lighthouse float, especially that Gurnet Point-ish lighthouse up front.

That's not light from the lighthouse. I just had  bit of trouble with reflections from car windshields at the rival gas station across the street. Sometimes, stuff like that works to your advantage.

I couldn't really shoot around the gas station. My perch, while effective vertically, had a sort of peripheral issue with a streetlight pole on one side of me and the gas station prices sign on the other.

You gotz to have a Mayflower in your Thanksgiving parade, or your Thanksgiving parade is wiggedy wiggedy wiggedy whack.

Bonus points if you have a cool ocean under the Mayflower.

The Mayflower was supposed to be in a Virginia holiday parade, but it was blown off course.

This float obviously spent all of her creative energy on the thatched roof house.

The back of it looks like a Liberace set. You almost expect to see a Pilgrim version of Merv Griffin watching from a nearby desk.

"Ready serve, entertain like Merv..."

I didn't stay for the whole parade. I started needing a drink after this float went by.

I started needing a drink more after leaving. I managed to trap myself. I thought that I was a smart guy, parking at The Lobster Pot. I was actually the dumb guy.

Seeing as the parade went from Benny's to somewhere around the Court, the police blocked off 3A on either side of it. Anyone who parked between 3A and the ocean was lit outta shuck until the parade was over. I got as close to Kingston as I could get, and was on 3A heading north about 2 minutes after the last float went by.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

The Pilgrim Curse: Expanding The Bridgewater Triangle

Are We Living In America's Epicenter Of Evil?

The first Thanksgiving was a positive experience. People from different cultures got together for a celebration. No one killed each other, and English/Wampanoag relations never looked better.

One group of diners were the locals, the people who had roamed Plimoth for thousands of years.The others were the newcomers, who chose to share their first good harvest with the people who helped them survive their first winter. Gods were thanked, bread was broken, and a good time was had by all.

Massasoit Ousamequin was the Man at that dinner. Someone else hosted, but only Massasoit's will kept the first Thanksgiving from being the Plimoth Massacre and maybe Roanoke II. Massasoit not only spared the vulnerable Pilgrims, but he helped them survive their first Starving Time.

Stuff then, as tends to be the case over the years with relations between two groups of people, happened.

55 years after this first Thanksgiving, Massasoit's son returned to Plimoth. He didn't come in peace... he came in pieces. His head went up on a stake for 20 years, and the Plimoth children may have even played soccer with it now and then.

In between these two visits to Plimoth by Wampanoag sachems, a whole bunch of mess went down. That, in itself, is a story for the ages. But the drama went on long after the end of King Phillip's War.

I'm not the man to tell you that Jesus God is better than Wampanoag God. I can't tell you if the Gods favored one side more than the other. All I can tell you is that, ever since the deal went down, the whole region has been a little bit strange. I'm not the only one who thinks so.

It's a long story, with a lot of proof to be given. The short version is that the land we walk on today might be cursed. We'll get back to the curse in a minute, but let's go through some of the results of this curse first.

This story owes a huge debt to a man named Loren Coleman. Mr. Coleman is a folklorist, a television personality, an author and the owner of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

He is also the guy who invented the Bridgewater Triangle. This theory claims that there is heightened paranormal activity in a wedge-shaped area running roughly between Abington, Rehoboth and Freetown.

It's a take-off on the Bermuda Triangle story, but very different in character.

This area has been host to UFO sightings, Bigfoot encounters, reports of giant snakes, travelers mystified by orbs of light, children brought to tears by spotting birds that could carry them off, parents on the watch for evil clowns and scores of other spooky situations.

This terrifying Triangle lays in a dismal, sparsely populated region of Eastern Massachusetts. It is almost entirely rural in nature, based in the Hockomock ("where the spirits dwell") Swamp.

Even in a state with very high population density, people are few and far between in the Bridgewater Triangle.  If you aren't from the Bridgewater Triangle, you don't go into the Bridgewater Triangle.

This is even more true after the sun sets...

Not to differ with the guy who invented the theory and did all of my research for me already, but I think that Loren Coleman made a crucial mistake when he decided on the parameters of his Triangle. Sportswriters shouldn't disagree with guys who own cryptozoological museums on cryptozoological matters unless they feel that they have unbeatable proof, and, well, here I am.

Loren's error came when he drew the borders. He didn't think Big.

New England itself is a strange place. It's as old as anything in the country, and much older than most of it. We had ghost stories that were over 200 years old before anyone even thought about founding Seattle. Dogtown, Massachusetts was founded, lived in, abandoned and haunted before we got around to adding Texas or Michigan to the flag stars.

We have several sorts of spooky. We have the sea monsters and shipwrecks covered, we have the haunted woods thing down, and you don't want to go near our mountains.

Coleman's version of the Triangle covers several towns. It should cover several states.

I say this simply because the stuff outside of the Triangle is worse than the stuff in the Triangle. Once you even start looking over the respective Players, you realize that the current Bridgewater Triangle is actually a safe area that you'd want to seek refuge in once you started tallying up the Spookiness that exists just outside of her borders.

The Bridgwater Triangle's main weakness is that it isn't really known for anything distinct. The biggest name you see on her roster is Bigfoot, who belongs spiritually to a whole other coast. The Triangle isn't really even the scary epicenter of Massachusetts, a title that goes- in a rout- to Salem.

Perhaps the Triangle rules on a per capita basis, as it runs through the sparsely populated backwaters of Plymouth and Bristol Counties. However, even someone bringing straight disrespeck couldn't argue that the Triangle wouldn't hold her own as a part of a larger spooky region.

Let's redefine that region so that the scary parts are actually included in the scary part.

Taking the Triangle to the Southwest immediately solves the Celebrity problem, and I mean taking it ten miles Southwest. That brings us into Fall River, and we all know who the First Lady of Fall River is.

Even if you want to disqualify Lizzie Borden for being non-paranormal, her house still stands today, and people say it's haunted. She's also just the top dog in a crowded pound.

Fall River, and her sister city New Bedford, have the worst crime rates in Massachusetts. New Bedford and her hinterlands had a never-captured serial killer, as well as the tavern that the Jodie Foster movie was about. America's first Giant Monster story began in New Bedford. Fall River, not to be outdone, had a Satanic cult to keep up the evil after Lizzie Borden died.

Fall River would make a nice corner of an expanded Triangle, and you could make a fierce argument to keep the Triangle in Massachusetts, but that would leave out Rhode Island.

Rhodey represents hard. She's a little state, but she has two very spooky incidents in her past.

One of these is ultra-paranormal. In 1892 (yes, 1892), the farm regions of southern Rhode Island succumbed to vampire fever. The Brown family suffered a series of consumption (tuberculosis) deaths, with one of the victims reporting having been visited by her deceased sister Mercy during the night.

Mercy and her sisters were dug up, and- lo and behold- Mercy Brown didn't look that bad. Her nails and teeth seemed to have grown, and was that blood in her mouth? The locals didn't quite process that bodies can be preserved in cold, that nails and teeth will appear to grow as skin decays, and so forth.

Mercy got the full vampire treatment. Her heart was removed, torched on a rock that is still there today (Exeter, RI), and the ashes were fed to her ailing brother, who soon after died of consumption.

Remember, this was about 200 years after the Salem Witch Trials, about 10 years before the Wright Brothers got a plane in the air and less than 20 years before Ronald Reagan was born.

If vampires don't spill enough blood for your liking, Rhodey was also the host for several crucial sections of King Phillip's War, the bloodiest per person war in US history.

The Great Swamp Fight went down in South Kingstown, R.I. in December of 1675. The colonial militia were led to a five acre fort where the Narragansett tribe was based. Attacking across a frozen swamp, they caught the Narragansett tribe slipping, and they burned the fort to the ground.

Women, children and elderly were slaughtered, and the warriors- the only ones to escape the carnage- were forced to fall in with Metacom. Everyone else perished or was sold into slavery, and the battleground is said to be haunted.

AKA "the Great Swamp Massacre," it pretty much finished off the Narragansett as a force in New England. The tribe never gave up their identity, and gained federal recognition in 1983. If they get a casino, they may yet enjoy the last laugh.

Of course, the thesis of the article is that they got the last laugh via a curse, but we'll get to that. We first have a Triangle to redesign.

Rhode Island deserves the corner office, because, if a curse was uttered, it was most likely uttered in Rhode Island.

It may even have been uttered by Metacom, the eponymous King Phillip of the colonial war fame. He met his maker in a Mount Hope marsh known as Misery Swamp. He was drawn and quartered, and his head was displayed on a pike outside Plimoth for 20 years.

Things like state lines mean little to nearly-wiped-out Wampanoags, who would view them as just another lie the Other Man was telling. They also mean little to the Gods, who might be the ones who truly dole out the curses. There is no record of Metacom uttering a curse, but they also didn't have Twitter back then.

While giving Rhodey the corner office, I'd stretch the Triangle out past them into the sea.

The pointy part of our Triangle (I spent most of my last Geometry class staring at legs, and retained little technical vocabulary) would then hook East, towards Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

Block Island Sound, Nantucket Sound and Cape Cod have a nautical history, and a nautical history generally includes lots of spooky stuff like ghost ships, buried treasure, false-light mooncussers, town-smashing storms, Nessie-looking sea monsters, bloodthirsty pirates and all-hands-lost shipwrecks.

Cape Cod sort of rules the roost, however. The white man's history here starts with what may have been a grave robbing, and it went downhill afterwards.

While paying respect to the Whydah shipwreck, the numerous British raids, the ship graveyard just offshore, Suicide Alley, the scores of ghosts/haunted houses, Captain Ahab, two leap-to-your-death bridges (ironically, the suicide launching pads that are the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges were both Great Depression projects), the hurricanes/nor'easters/blizzards and the Great White Shark population... the creepiest thing about Cape Cod would involve their most charismatic residents.

Cape Cod's most famous family is only here during the summer, and almost-but-not-all of their spooky stuff happened in places like Dallas and Los Angeles. However, their presence in Hyannis Port, much like the presence of Lizzie Borden in Fall River or Mercy Brown in Rhode Island, pretty much forces Cape Cod into any reasonable discussion of Massachusetts' stranger regions.

The Kennedy family are awash in murder, bootlegging, conspiracy theories and crashing various vehicles into various bodies of water. The family is widely believed to be cursed.

Check the list:

- JFK's murder is still America's greatest conspiracy theory

- RFK's murder is when you first started thinking "Curse."

- Old Man Kennedy was a sort of bootlegger, with ties to the mob.

- An older Kennedy (Joe II, maybe?) was killed in WWII.

- A wild Kennedy daughter was lobotomized and dumped in an institution.

- Ted drove his Presidential hopes off a Martha's Vineyard bridge.

- JFK Jr. and his perfect wife crashed a plane off of Martha's Vineyard.

The only curses that could rival the Kennedy Curse (which may be just a wealthy neighborhood part of the Pilgrim Curse) are the Tecumseh curse, the Von Erich curse, the Billy Goat curse, the Scottish Play curse and the former Curse Of The Bambino.

Cape Cod can also match the Triangle in Stones. The Triangle boasts Dighton Rock, Anawan Rock, and even the Devil's Footprint. They say that Plymouth also has a rock of some reputation.

The town of Bourne has two. One, pictured above, is Sacrifice Rock, aka Chamber Rock. This is where, according to legend, God used lightning to intervene in a pagan sacrifice, splitting the rock in the process.

The other famous rock in Bourne is the Bourne Stone, which has some unidentifiable scribbling on it. It may be Viking, it may be Wampanoag, it may have been a colonial goofing around and it may even be from a guy named Hanno The Navigator. At least one historian thinks that it says "A Proclamation. Of Annexation. Do Not Deface. By This, Hanno Takes Possession."

If that is what it really says, it means that an African (Hanno was from Carthage, and is also the guy who gave gorillas their English name... no mean feat for a guy who predates England) discovered America about 2000 years before Columbus found it, and about 500 years before Jesus drew breath. This interpretation is wildly contested, however.

It is funny to note that a stone which would basically tear the first few chapters out of any American History textbook is barely mentioned when discussing all of the other oddities in the area. It's also funny that the Bourne Stone isn't the most famous Rock in the area, or even the most famous carved-upon rock.

Bourne also has a haunted hotel, the Quality Inn (former Best Western), just off the Bourne Bridge.

At this point, we'd turn another corner on our Triangle and head NW... probably just in time, too.

Where you make the turn is up to some debate. It basically boils down to how much Ship Graveyard you want in the Triangle. I suppose that you could set it out where the Titanic sank if you wanted to, although a run of beach from Wellfleet to Truro alone has seen over a thousand shipwrecks. That should be enough for most folks.

A lot of our folklore is nautical, and this corner of the Triangle would be chock full of benthic beasties. As you round Cape Cod and head north through the sea, you'll encounter reports of sea serpents in Duxbury and Gloucester. The witness in the Duxbury case was no less than Daniel Webster. Hull also has a strong sea serpent history. Henry Hudson claimed to have seen a mermaid in our Triangle's area in 1609. Nantucket had a Globster. Truro had a Beast.

With Massachusetts being more of a nor'easter state than a hurricane state, the South Shore is where you get the more frequent storm damage. Generally, every winter has at least one bad storm, and you get a homewrecker every 20 years or so.... or every other year or so, if that global warming stuff is true.

As we come back onto the mainland after leaving Cape Cod, we get into Plymouth. Plymouth has a major role in this story, and we'll bring them back into the mix at the end.

The South Shore has no shortage of creepy history. A lot of the interior is in the Coleman version of the Triangle, and it would serve you better to let others discuss it. I always favored Kristen Good's work.

Offhand, I'd mention hauntings at the Phillips Mansion in Marshfield, the Sun Tavern in Duxbury, Cemetery Hill in Plymouth, Gurnet Light, the Jerusalem Road child statue in Cohasset, Hanover Town Hotel, Bear Cove Park in Hingham, the Marsh People of Wareham, Fort Warren and the Lady In Black from Hull, vanishing women (sometimes blue) strolling the shores of Onset, Duxbury and Sagamore Beaches, a second Sacrifice Rock in Plymouth near the Pine Hills, the USS Salem in Quincy, the First Cliff ghost ship off Scituate, and the Man In Black of Weymouth.

I would make sure that the revised Triangle avoids Boston, while perhaps cutting the edge close enough to include the Boston Harbor islands. Boston is sort of her own Triangle. I also purposefully avoid Providence.

It is important to touch land twice more. For starters, if your paranormal Triangle doesn't include Salem, your paranormal Triangle is whick-whick-whack. Moving it inland to Danvers gives us a better abandoned hospital than the one (in Hanson) in the picture above.

Salem has witches, witch trials, voodoo, hangings, mass hysteria, insanity, curses, and the Devil himself at times. No respectable Triangle could skip Gallows Hill.

To be honest, and I am guilty of it myself... any Massachusetts paranormal triangle that isn't named after and centered on Salem is sort of like putting Fredo in charge of the Corleone family.

Gloucester would also be an important player in the mix. Not only do they have a history of having their sons swallowed up by the sea, but they also have the strongest claim on a sea monster in New England (and perhaps American) history.

A run from Mattapoisett around Cape Cod and up to Boston would also give you all of Massachusetts' fatal (and, minus Nahant, non-fatal) shark attacks.

Salem, Danvers, Dogtown, Arkham and Gloucester could quite easily secede and form their own Triangle, but we'll keep them in this one as the Anchorman.

I apologize for the awful Triangle. Longtime readers may draw a connection between my inability to draw straight lines and the reason why Jessica takes all of the good pictures.

I run the Triangle up to Portland for a few reasons. For starters, a nice wide turn around Cape Cod covers most of the ship graveyard. Some of the worse ones were way offshore. You probably don't want to stretch it to the Lusitania wreck, but the wreck of the Portland (of Portland Gale fame) off of Gloucester might be a good spot for a border.

Running it up to Portland sort of Xs out New Hampshire, but that's the way the granite crumbles. They sort of lost their spot when the Old Man In The Mountains fell. New Hampshire does have some creepy stuff, but it my be under the thumb of the nearby Bennington Triangle. If I brought NH into it, I'd go with wherever the Hill family got "abducted."

We also sort of cut off western/central Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and New York. This is costly, as it costs us Sleepy Hollow, the Amityville Horror, the house from A Haunting In Connecticut, a lot of King Phillip's War battleground, and the Dover Demon... who "most likely" wandered over from the nearby Bridgewater Triangle anyhow.

Maine is important for celebrity-type reasons. New England, and especially coastal New England, has a sea-lion's share of he horror market down. Movies, books, TV shows... to tie it to a running thesis in this article, we over-represent.

I have no intention of doing a Google search for this, because I'm pretty sure that I can come off the top of my head with a pretty good triangle list.

- Moby Dick starts in New Bedford and moves to Nantucket. Every guy with authority on the Pequod was from the expanded Triangle, and I think Ishmael was, too.

- I need to read me some more Lovecraft, but I'm pretty sure that his mythos has a coastal region around Salem.

- Hawthorne had a few spooky stories set in Salem, another reason Salem sort of carries the title belt here.

- I think the guy on The X Files was from Nantucket or Martha.

- The inclusion of Maine is, uhm, mainly done to include two very important people. One would be Stephen King, who is in enough people's nightmares to force the issue. His stomping ground is Maine. I think he may live in Lewiston, but he likes his privacy, and Portland is easier to use. I do think that Salem's Lot was set in the Falmouth/Cumberland area, so Portland is close enough.

Besides....

If I feel the need to alter some better researcher's Triangle, you sort of have to tip your hat to the man.

Why not end this expanded Triangle to the business of the Triangle Man himself, Loren Coleman? Draw that final corner of this Triangle right through the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

This gives us a Triangle with points in Portland, the waters off Rhode Island and the open ocean off Cape Cod. It has elements of Coleman's inland, rural Triangle, while also adding elements from the more well-known Bermuda Triangle.

It is a large section of country, maybe a bit less than 10% of the New England land mass, with X amount of open ocean.

No other area really matches it. New York, as we mentioned, has a Sleepy Hollow/Amityville Horror mix, and NYC is always frightening. The Jersey Devil lives nearby, as does the Montauk Monster. Maryland holds her own with the Blair Witch and Edgar Allen Poe, but she sort of wears out when New England starts stacking more chips on the table.

Godzilla, King Kong, Rodan, the Cloverfield monster and every asteroid movie ever has attacked NYC. Hollywood shames Stephen King and Lovecraft. Cascadia has Bigfoot, and Vermont has Champ.

Still, my Triangle beats 'em, It might be on a per capita basis, like King Phillip's War, but it wins.

Speaking of which....

It's not fair to put the blame for casting the curse on the Wampanoags.

They were living in relative harmony before the Other Man arrived. I'm pretty sure that the Vikings killed a bunch of natives, and some of the first Euros to check out New England may have kidnapped some locals (this is how Squanto and Samoset learned their English). These explorers also coughed a bunch of European germs onto the locals, who- due to geographic isolation- had no natural resistance. This is why the perfectly useful port of Plimoth was empty when the English arrived.

The Wampanoags fared worse from the exchange than the English did, which makes it unlikely that they were the ones casting the Curse. The Wampanoag plague, which did the most damage to either side, went down probably 20 years before Metacom was even born. That sort of eliminates him from Curser status.

The plague also eliminates the Pilgrims- who arrived after a series of illnesses wiped out 90% of the local population- from contention, but "The Pilgrim Curse" just sounds cool, to be quite frank.

If you take the Vikings out of the equation, you can pretty much trace the source of the Curse- cast by either a tribal dissident opposed to the very first meeting of European and Native American, or by the Gods themselves- to some encounter between explorers/fishermen and the Wampanoags. Gosnold, Smith, Champlain and Hudson all worked the area, and they were followed by the more ballsy of the European fishermen.

Just for laughs, let's set the date to 1605, which is when Squanto, or Tisquantum, was kidnapped by Captain Weymouth. Weymouth, I might add, was an early and miserably failed colonial town that was briefly abandoned.

"Tisquantum" is a Wampanoag word for "divine rage." It was most likely not his real name. When he introduced himself to the English as Tisquantum, he was essentially a kidnapping victim saying "Englishmen, I am the wrath of God."

The English stabbed his people in the back anyhow. Perhaps Squanto, who had been exposed to European culture numerous (he sailed across the Atlantic six times with very superstitious sailors) times and may have had knowledge of curses, tried one out. Perhaps curses can work retroactively. Perhaps the gods saw it coming, and launched a pre-emptive strike on both sides.

The region has been strange ever since. Not many regions are stranger.

Fear the sunset in Cranberry County....