Let Us to the Castle

If you drop the “r” s at the end of your words, can’t purchase Sam Adams on a Sunday night, and are wicked crazy about baseball, it’s a blatant indication, aside from a license plate, that you’re from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The cradle of our country, the so-called seat of the American war of independence from Britain. A good place filled with mostly good people like most others. But then there is this strange breed known as a Masshole.

Every Masshole is in a hurry. And anyone who hurries is a Masshole. Time is money, because time is another 30 miles up I-95, or another green light before the snow and night simultaneously fall on 495 South, or another bagel from Dunkin’ Donuts before your half hour lunch break ends. There is something about the population density which is infective, like too many monkeys in a cage. Every side of the highways are lined with suburbs, towns, and cities. The winters can be brutal, the summers are humid, and like geese, the elderly flock themselves south and back again with the change of the seasons, with fewer returning than left.

Massachusetts is America’s coronary heart attack. Most of the 7 million or so humans live in the eastern suburbs of Boston. Outside the loop of highways and interstates surrounding the city, the population and modern urban sprawl drops off and the culture becomes significantly more rural, more blue collared, and more sports crazy-- less likely to riot and attempt to raze everything to the ground in a drunken haze, but rather likely to crash their Ford drunkenly into a lamp post on a narrow and poorly lit road lined with maple trees. Boston is a relatively old city in American terms, and holds some of the greatest places to both stand and fall. Aside from it’s bigger cousin New York, Boston is the cultural center of Eastern America. Despite this, Massachusetts is more than just Boston.

In the city of Leominster (pronounced Lem-in-stah) the pink plastic flamingo was invented, and is where you can smell nearby Fitchburg or “The Dirty Burg“, which is filled with decaying buildings, beautiful broken glass fields and welfare paid drug dealers. It is close enough to the northern border to be considered New Hampshire’s Woonsocket, and the residents have been known to find small cellophane bags of cocaine on their front lawns while letting their dogs out on Sunday morning.

In Plymouth, there’s a big rock reminder of the founding uptight, fun-hating Pilgrims, or white devil depending on your perspective, which fathered the state out of wedlock from slaughtered aboriginal natives in their attempt to escape the ‘tyranny’ of the British. Though it’s probably not the actual, authentic rock which the settlers landed near, it doesn’t really matter, and no one really cares. After all, the whimsical Separatist Pilgrims weren’t the first Europeans to land here, not even the first English settlers to do so, but once again it doesn’t matter because no one cares.

The town of Salem milks dollars from its past overreaction and religious fanaticism (see Pilgrims) which led to the killing of young girls and old men via creative methods such as crushing by rock. Old cemeteries and witchcraft museums are a cheap thrill if you’re Pagan or Wiccan with nothing better to do on summer afternoons. Or if it is Halloween, it is fun for the whole family. Either way, the locals would love your money.

Concord is home to Walden Pond. The 102 foot deep body of water is where the philosophical American transcendentalist Henry Thoreau lived beside for a couple of years in the mid 1800’s and wrote Life in the Woods. Despite being a popular swimming hole for locals in the summer, it was almost drained in the 1960’s to complete the clear cutting which had already began. The goal was to make the area a parking lot for the local shopping center. A portion of it had already been demolished by then to support an amusement park called Lake Walden, complete with water slides, public baths, and a dance hall. After finally burning down, supporters and school children fought to save the land, and the Massachusetts State Supreme Court agreed to bar any further development, no doubt making Thoreau smile just a little.

Massive, bloodthirsty corporations set up their regional offices on the outskirts in Framingham, where there are more furniture and tire stores than there are living rooms and cars. Framingham is an example of hungry immigrants encroaching on the complacent locals, much like the English did three hundred years earlier on the coast. Nearby Natick features the largest shopping mall in New England, recently re-dubbed the ‘Natick Collection’, formerly the Natick Mall where it was surprising easy to shop lift video games from the first and third floor electronic stores. The security guards and black camera orbs guarding the Nordstroms and Nieman Marcuses are now a shining example of the perseverance of capitalism, and the Collection boasts more than 7,000 parking spots.

Springfield is the Boston of the western half of the state which means it is generally ignored by everyone east of it, and is the most violent city in the country but also home to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Otherwise, there would be no reason to visit the home of roaming, ultra-violent Asian and Negro gangs.

Nearby is Amherst, home of the New England Mystic Emily Dickinson, and named after biological warfare pioneer Jeffrey Amherst. Filled with a lot of colleges, this area is a haven for liberals, educated socialites, lesbians, and farmers. There is a bylaw stating that no more than 6 unrelated adults may live together in a house preventing communes and those seeking to team up against life from doing so. The Amherst area is a shinning of example of where budget cuts and leftist political talk without action will get you. Good luck with parking.

Worcester is good as a marker on satellite weather maps on the evening news, and really nothing else except homes for broken down blue collared workers slowly drinking themselves to death at monster truck events. The scruffy population roams the streets late at night, smashing bottles and searching for cheap ‘Gansett beer.

Milford is a suburb growing too fast for its own good, filled with South American immigrants who work day labor, and a clashing self righteous white population with nothing better to do than to complain about the South Americans living next door to them, unless someone needs a new roof.

Lowell had historic significance in regards to the country’s once infant economy, but now is significant for its needle drugs, gangs, and dirty river. A treacherous bridge crossing the river and its jagged rocks below is a popular suicide hot spot for the local population, and a good destination for those seeking various drugs. Birthplace of Jack Kerouac, who took a lot of drugs and drove around, then wrote books about it.

Almost everyone in the state of Massachusetts are on the roads between 7 and 8 am and 5 to 6 pm. The immigrants will be packed like sardines in red Toyotas keeping right to avoid conflict with any authorities, the hard working manual laborers with Red Sox and Patriots and, if they’re winning, Bruins swag will drive their pick-ups and SUVs at or around the speed limit while keeping as far left as possible, and will glare at you like you pissed on their mother’s coffin if you pass them. The rich corporate swine and well-to-do management types weave and dodge their low riding cars in between the two because time is money.

Classic symptoms of living within the sprawl includes shortness of breath, anxiety, nausea, and vomiting.

But once you learn to see past the initial choking pain, the numbness in the arms, and the blind confusion and learn to accept what is happening, you can achieve serenity. And even beauty. This atmosphere breeds the Masshole, and it breeds very homogenized people who believe they are entitled to something for some reason, but it also breeds freaks like myself who live two or three lives at the same time. Everyone I knew was actually two or three other people. Or they had a child. Unlike the east coast majority, they were not so much concerned with perfecting their current life, but rather carving one out for themselves from the dross. These good people put on their public faces in order to survive the rigid culture, but once the sun went down they were able to grab a cold beer from a friend's fridge---and they were able to comfortably smile in their own skin.

Regards, Esortnom