The Mad Trucker Of Copicut Road

We continue our Spooky series with a South Coast legend, the Mad Trucker of Copicut Road.

Copicut Road bisects the Freetown/Fall River State Forest, and it runs through both Freetown and Fall River. Town lines are a bit fuzzy on Copicut Road. The pictures I took were tagged by my camera as "Copicut Road, Massachusetts," with no town provided.

Either way, Copicut Road is a mega-isolated dirt road running 7 miles through a forest. It made it into our Most Isolated Roads In Southeastern Massachusetts article, which has subtitles like "Where to bury a body" and "Where to stumble onto a Satanic ritual."

It is one of the anchors of the Bridgewater Triangle, a paranormal theory about the rural/deep suburban parts of Plymouth and Bristol counties.

It also is the home of a local (sub)urban legend, the Mad Trucker of Copicut Road.

The Mad Trucker doesn't have the celebrity status of other paranormal icons like Bigfoot or Nessie. The spread of his legend is local enough that he (the Mad Trucker has never been seen, but I think of the Mad Trucker as being male... this is made more sexist when stirring in the fact that the only ghost trucker I can think offhand is Large Marge) is known by the road instead of the town.

That's a plus in my book. I like the Mad Trucker. I like him more because he seems to have been invented by someone for whom Fall River (most beloved resident = an axe murderer) wasn't scary enough.

I should add here that rural, suburban and urban people are scared by different things. I used to teach in Boston, for ghetto kids. I'd drag them out into the sticks for field trips or class projects now and then. I picked one kid up at his home for such a trip, and I was a bit uneasy in a Heart Of Darkness way as I drove through the ghetto he lived in. One kid watching me knock on this student's door lost a bet when it turned out I wasn't a cop.

Once we were out in the woods by Monponsett Lake in Halifax, the ghetto kids were the uneasy ones. I noticed, and asked about it. "This," I was told by a kid making a sweeping arm gesture at the forest, "is exactly the kind of sh*t where Michael Myers kills all them white girls." Another student added that "black people have more sense than to be hanging around in places like this."

The Mad Trucker's gig is that he catches people driving down his road and he menaces them. People report seeing a big truck come up behind them with the high beams on. He's blaring the air horn. The victim generally fears being overrun by the truck, so they pull over.

When they do, the truck vanishes.

That's the story you hear. Non-survivors may have a more dreadful tale.

We don't know if the Mad Trucker is Mad in a way that means crazy, like the Mad Poet of Bedlam. We don't know if he is Mad as in angry, like the Mad Rapper. We just know that he's Mad.

Of course we set out to capture the Mad Trucker, because we are fearless journalists who let nothing stand in the way of our pursuit of truth.

Of course we went at 2 PM, because we are absolute cowards.

Amazingly, we thought that we had the guy... on film, even. When we moved in for the kill, however... he waved to us and kept going. 

He wasn't Mad at all, and could actually be considered friendly... especially when I was filming him, and even on my best days, I look like I might kill somebody.

This means that the Mad Trucker Of Copicut Road is still out there.

Most Ghetto, SE Massachusetts Edition

Eastern Massachusetts is not without her faults. However, one thing we are not is Ghetto.

Granted, we have Fall River. You can get the Fear nice and easy in Fall River. It's a tough town. Most famous resident? An axe-murderess. Most beloved? Probably the same girl.

Taunton, Brockton and New Beddy are no walk in the park, either... or they're a walk in the park where you get beaten up by a gang of thugs for no reason. After that, there is what skiers call a precipitous drop-off.

Some of the tougher parts of our region aren't THAT tough. I'm not taking about individual citizens. I'm sure there's at least one bad-ass Kennedy (found him!) drawing breath somewhere, and you can get beaten up at the Bia Bistro in Cohasset just as badly as you can get handled at South Side Annie's in New Bedford if you cross the wrong opponent.

Still, if you put on NWA and drive around Brockton, it sort of makes sense as long as your eyes don't go to the your-reflection part of the rear view mirror. Try going down King Caesar Road in Duxbury with Bring The Ruckus playing. Your own silliness might strangle you.

There's nothing wrong with this. "Escaping an urban nightmare" is a top reason for moving out to the countryside. "Good visual environment for my Nasty Nas CD" isn't.

Still, if someone establishes a scale for Ghetto, and if the numbers on that scale can be applied to any town anywhere, you can rank towns with it. Lo and behold, that's just what someone did.

They used a simple formula.

Household income levels
High school graduation rates
Number of convenience stores
Number of drug stores
Number of discount stores
Crime
Twitter mentions of #ghetto

It's a flawed formula, but it should be fun to play with.

Run run run from the Ghetto Bird

Here's their Top 15:

Lawrence
Springfield
Chelsea
New_Bedford
Brockton
Holyoke
Lynn
Lowell
Fall River
Worcester
Everett
Revere
Boston
Fitchburg
Wareham

Wareham

Wareham is sort of the WTF on this list, IMHO. I feel badly knowing that she'll be 4th once I start a whittlin' everything North and West of Bristol and Plymouth County out of the master list.

There are definitely some flawed criteria. Twitter references are worrisome. I was a teacher for a while, and I heard kids describe every town on earth as "ghetto." Kids own Twitter, I suppose, and may lack the seasoning to know True Ghetto and why Marion doesn't qualify.

Brockton

I was very much looking forward to the bottom of this list, as I wanted to see how the silver-spoon towns fared against each other. It'd be fun to imagine a couple of stockbrokers arguing about whether Hingham is more thugged out than Sandwich. Alas, the list plays out before we get to the Blue Bloods.

The convenience store angle seems to be ranked right up there with Poverty and Crime, which would to throw a wrench into things. I think that if a Cumby's opens up near the Tedeschi's in your cow town, it shouldn't suddenly make you more Gangsta than someone from Lowell.

The discount store thing may be a bit unfair, although you don't see a lot of (Holla Holla) Family Dollar stores in Duxbury.

However, only my love of Wareham and the lower ranking of Boston makes me really have any issue with the Top 15.

I may get a bit of static from my readers, and I just ask them to remember that I am merely passing along the information on this list. I'm not smart enough to factor that many variables into an equation, even with My Damned Aunt Sally helping. I am smart enough to take a Top 100 list and chop it down to show just the towns in our region, and that's what we're about to do.

More Brockton

Regional Rank  City   Crime Score Original Rank

1) new_bedford 161.7 4
2) brockton 146 5
3) fall_river 190.3 9
4) boston 155.6 13
5) wareham 115.4     14
6) quincy 169.1 26
7) taunton 143.5 33

Well, maybe they have some points after all. Some people might flip Fall River and New Bedford, Most people might see the flaws in not having Boston as the anchorman. Larger towns suffer a bit in the ratings, as the sheer number of people make for lower rates.

Wareham seems to be ranked too highly, but maybe they just try really hard. I worked Boston in mostly to knock the 'Ham down a spot.

Our coverage area showed well, taking 4 of the top 14 spots.

Now, remember when I said "precipitous drop-off" earlier. Here we are!

Middleboro

8) bridgewater 172.5 39
9) west_yarmouth 124 41
10) attleboro 116 42
11) middleborough_center 154.3 43
12) fairhaven 117.3 46
13) barnstable_town 168.1 48
14)plymouth 149.9 52

I went to college in Bridgewater, and it's more bucolic than ghetto. A great bit of the town is structured around the fact that there is a college in town. The college is not the only entity in town that may be weakening the stock. As someone on a Bridgewater Facebook page said, "The nuthouse down the road lowers our ratings, as does the mental hospital."

Just kidding, I went to BSC. Class of 2000, blogga!

West Yarmouth? How? You could put on a shirt made of $100 bills and walk down the toughest street in town at midnight screaming racial slurs, and probably survive. Try that in Roxbury.

Fairhaven has castles for the high school and the library, much of the town looks like Washington Street in Duxbury, and the school is 300 yards away from (the former) Temptations gentleman's club in New Beige. Fairhaven may be ghetto-by-proximity. 

Plymouth and Barnstable have their rotten parts, but rarely would one fear to stroll through them. They do the service of grouping their poor into certain areas. Bourne is good at that, too. They stash them right by the highway.

Barnstable and Wareham trade the "Brockton-by-the-sea" nickname back and forth whenever someone is murdered. Wareham has sole ownership of the catchy "Sea Lowell."

Kingston

15) weymouth_town 152.8 59
16) middleborough 69.3 60
17) nantucket 115.8 61
18) east_falmouth 149.7 64
19) foxborough 62.9 64
20) south_yarmouth 105.9 66
21) kingston 80.3 69

Foxboro is plummeting down the list now that Aaron Hernandez Inc. has gone to his Reward. They should sign Tyreek Hill.

I wonder if Nantucket is America's most ghetto island? I suppose that Long Island has them beat.

Middleboro has a urbanesque center of town, but much of it is woodsy. It is somewhat as if somebody started building Brockton South, before stopping expansion and saying "Know what? Let's just keep it as a cowtown." Rockland sort of has the same look.

I have no idea what Kingston is doing there, unless the guy who made the list counted Halifax and Plympton's dropouts from Silver Lake as all being from Kingston. Halifax, which is also in Silver Lake, is considerably more ghetto than Kingston.

25) yarmouth 136.5 76
26) mashpee 115.7 77
27) somerset 154.1 78
28) abington 85.9 78
29) hull 166.3 81
30) harwich 71.8 83
31) rockland 112.4 88
32) mansfield_center 49.4 96

We're really reaching here, and I sort of understand why the list gets cut off where it does.

Conspicuous in their absence....

Sandwich
Marshfield
Chatham
Rehoboth
Dennis
Freetown
Halifax
Rochester
Wellfleet
Marion
Truro
Swansea
Plympton
Mattapoisett
Norwell
Eastham
Scituate
Lakeville
Provincetown
Acushnet
Carver
Brewster
Hanover
Dighton
Whitman
Hingham
Cohasset
Duxbury

Duxbury

Content Reblogged from roadsnacks.net

Borden Flats Lighthouse

One of my favorite lighthouses around is in Fall River. This is odd, because I tend to romanticize lighthouses as isolated things on the end of a lonely beach. In that regard, it's odd to see one while I'm eating Popeye's chicken in the car.

Borden Flats Lighthouse sits at the mouth of the Taunton River, where it empties out into Mount Hope Bay. If I were a better photographer, you'd see how cool it looks there, but that's why you can read this for free.

Borden Flats Lighthouse was erected in 1881. It, and the flats it sits on, are named for the famous Borden family of Fall River. The Bordens may have had a daughter turn up in the news at some point for some reason or another, I'm not sure....

I think the Borden family may have been into hotels, because the Lizzie Borden house is now a B&B. The Borden Flats Lighthouse, which looks pretty much like a lighthouse to me, is actually a hotel!

The actual good pictures are lifted from the Borden Flats Lighthouse website.

Fall River, a bustling textile town in the 1800s, got a lot of shipping traffic, as well as steamboat ferry action. Mount Hope Bay is rather shallow, and Borden Flats were ship-wrecking treacherous. It was formerly marked by an unlit beacon. $25K was set aside for construction of the lighthouse.

It went into action on October 1, 1881. It had a kerosene-fed fourth order Fresnel lens, and you know that I have no idea what that means. It got a modern plastic lens in 1977.

It was electrified in 1957, automated in 1963, and the fog bell was replaced by an electronic foghorn in 1983... a mistake in my view, but I also don't live near/have to listen to it.

The 1938 hurricane didn't topple Borden Flats Lighthouse, but it did give it a Pisa-style tilt that you notice once someone points it out to you. They built an additional caisson around it to keep it from having a ruined-castle style look.

In 2000, the lighthouse was auctioned off to Cindy and Craig Korstad, who are in the Buy Lighthouses And Turn Them Into Hotels business. I think they dropped $53K on it, then many K more renovating it.

It stands 50 feet tall, it has a 250 mm white light that flashes every 2.5 seconds, The foghorn goes off every 10 seconds, or- as Elwood Blues said when showing his apartment to Joliet Jake- "so often you won't notice it after a while." It is an active US Coast Guard aid to navigation, and is of the "Spark Plug" variety.

It seems to be tastefully decorated, and it looks delicate enough that I will be on the "Don't touch anything!!" prohibition orders from my photographer when we tour it.

That's right... you can tour it for $20 a pop. You can also stay the night, for rates as low as $299 a night off-season.

Here's what I can learn about it from the website without calling the people like a real reporter does:

- Swimming is "strongly discouraged"  as this is both a shipping channel and not too far down the coast from where the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts happened. The current is around 7 knots, and the lighthouse is surrounded by large, diver-paralyzing rocks.

- It runs off solar panels, so having Chief Brody kill the shark by tricking it into biting the electric wire running to the lighthouse isn't a viable exit strategy.

- Just like when it was built in 1881, the lighthouse has a DVD player and can get local stations on the TV. It lacks WiFi.

- The best access is from Borden Light Marina, the trip takes 5 minutes. I'm not sure if they ferry you over themselves. It would be a heroic swim, especially while carrying luggage.

- BYOB allowed, no smoking inside.

- You call 911 for emergencies, unless you know the Sea Mafia or perhaps even Aquaman. They say that the Justice League only keeps Aquaman around in case trouble arises at the Borden Flats Lighthouse.

- The Coast Guard has 24/7/365 access rights to the lighthouse.

- Sunsets are amazing from the lantern room. I'd imagine that the rest of the day is pretty nice up there, too.

- The lighthouse, like every other one, is haunted. The ghosts seem to be a giggling little girl, a classical music fan, and one of the keepers entering the lower floor while you're on an upper one.

- If you dream of buying a lighthouse, understand that there is Herculean maintenance involved. "You can't buy it and visit it once a year, your investment will wash into the sea." Much of the hotel revenue is poured back into the lighthouse via renovations and maintenance.

- Two guests only, and no pets allowed... even seals.

- There is also a hotel/lighthouse in Bourne.

- The picture below is from US Coast Guard, circa 1900: