Rebranding The Sachems

Middleboro is in the midst of an internal debate. Some people in town seek to remove the Sachem name, which they think of as racist, from the sports teams at the high school. Other people disagree.

I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm no great thinker, so you'd do better just thinking on it yourself. I'm also a Duxbury kid writing from Bourne, and this is a Middleboro Matter.

What I can do is fast forward to a theoretical victory by the PC police. Pretend that the Sachem name is doomed. What name should go in her place?

Naming a sports team is fun but important work. If you do it wrong, your kids are wearing a stupid name on their chests for a century's worth of football, field hockey and wrestling.

Bourne, where I live, has the Canalmen. That name is so whack, it hurts. You can count on me addressing that in the future, but Middleboro is now.

I have the Death Star Indica going, and it is time to name us a sports team. If you have better ideas, hit us up in the comments.


CRANBERRIES

Ocean Spray has a plant in town, and you can't swing a dead cat around without almost hitting a bog. No one is offended by cranberries. The jerseys would have an excellent and trendy color. This might work.

It does move the needle on the Whackometer, however. It would also make for a terrible mascot. It's tough to rock an oversized cranberry costume. You'd look like a Fruit Of The Loom commercial reject.

It would be cool to dye the football field a cranberry color, sort of like Boise State does with blue.

My gut tells me Carver would be better suited for this name.

Next!


SHAMROCKS

Middleboro doesn't have the half-the-town-is-Irish demographics that you see on the Irish Riviera, but they still have a robust 21% Irish ancestry share, and that's good enough to name a team

No one would be offended by a shamrock, although the inevitable Leprechaun mascot might do the trick. I suppose that the uniforms would look like the Celtics.

Shamrocks are also lucky, and any team could use a bit of luck.


COYOTE

Animal names are common enough, but the local fauna evolves periodically. We have animals here now that weren't around back when we were naming our local high school teams.

Cool schools spot these trends and ride the wave. Monomoy named their teams the Sharks, for instance.

I'm not sure if Coyote is both singular and plural. I like no S on the end. It puts us in a rare group with the New England Revolution, the Utah Jazz and the Minnesota Wild.

Middleboro would be very vulnerable to teams with a Roadrunner mascot as well as catastrophic failure of ACME products.


ZOMBIES

Fan interaction is the love child of school spirit and spectator sports. Naming the team after Zombies would make every game Halloween.

It would definitely intimidate other teams if they drive out to some weird forest for a game, and the whole crowd is dressed as/acting like Zombies.

Crowd participation is key. Everyone at the game should dress and act like a Zombie. The P.A. announcer should do nothing but moan. The cheerleaders could abandon typical routines in favor of just shambling about and occasionally biting people.

Paranormal/cryptozoological names aren't that unusual. I assume that Salem teams are the Witches. Duxbury has the Dragons. There's also the, uhmmmm... OK, paranormal team names are a bit unusual.

It'd probably be easier costume-wise to go with Ghosts, but it would be a bad scene if an urban team drove out to the country and found a crowd of people in white sheets. Football games shouldn't have Shirley Jackson endings.


MIST

People who write headlines sometimes get carried away with Alliteration, but I do like me some Middleboro Mist.

The uniforms would rule. All grey, with grey numbers. I'd paint the field grey as well.

Old people would like this, because the team would look like photographs from the old days, before they invented color.

Games played when it was foggy would rule. Middleboro kids would be all but invisible. It'd be hard to cover someone who vanishes if she gets a step on you. It's also hard to pass to someone you can't see, but the Mist QB would have the advantage of knowing the play. I assume he'd also get used to playing in fog eventually.

If it isn't foggy on game night, the illusion can be created with a few cleverly placed fog machines.


MEAN

I'm into alliteration again, sincerely sorry.

Why not play off the Middle part of Middleboro? I needed a note from a shrink to pass Probability and Statistics, but I did retain some dim insight that mean = average, which I assume is close enough to Middle to name a golf team.

Mean is a noun in this case, but the homonym adjective has a bully vibe to it that goes well with sports.


BLIZZARD

Weather is tough to get offended by, even if it weather that can kill someone.

Blizzard sounds cool, it's local enough, it is evocative of toughness and no one else is using it.

There's also a Dairy Queen in town, so maybe kids will get free ice cream on game night.



PITBULLS

There are 10000 teams named Bulldogs... why not go for a dog name with more oomph?

Choosing the right animal is important. Batman is scary, fear is a great motivator, and that's why Bruce Wayne doesn't fight crime in a chicken suit.

This could backfire if a pit bull mauls a local child. On the other hand, they could play music by that Pitbull dude during games.


SOMETHING MORE OFFENSIVE

It would be funny if the PC crowd wins, mostly because "Sachem" is the name you come up with if you say, "Let's honor our Native American history with a tasteful name."

Humor tends to work full circle, and it would prompt a chuckle if they ended up with a more offensive name.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Middleboro Strippers!"

Boston Fried Chicken: Brockton Grand Opening

Boston Fried Chicken & Burritos had their grand opening in Brockton recently.

No expense was spared. BFC is expanding from their successful effort in Dorchester. They are a Halal restaurant, which means that they adhere to some Islamic/kosher thing about how the chickens are slaughtered. It's in the Koran, so Allah himself has passed down this recipe, presumably through Mohammed. If you have Kareem Abdul-Jabbar over, you can take him to BFC with good conscience.

I'm not sure if Colonel Sanders prepares his chicken according to the teachings of Islam, even accidentally. The Colonel most likely resents BFC biting his style. The Boston Fried Chicken name is basically like opening a hamburger joint and calling it "McDaniel's." I would have capitalized on the Koran stuff and named it "Chicken Jihad" or something.

We stumbled on BFC while in the City Of Champions taking pictures for some other insipid article. We had actually just eaten breakfast in Bridgewater, it was 9 AM and none of us were hungry. However, one of the first things they teach you in journalism school is to never pass up chicken prepared in accordance to Islamic culinary law. I went in with the kid, Mom stayed in the car.

While we were familiarizing ourselves with the menu, there was some street person in there trying to get some chicken fronted. "I'll go home and get the money after," he said. The manager declined that proposition.

BFC seems to be an urban phenomenon, as the need for Islamic culinary law in places like Cohasset and Chatham isn't enough to lure in the franchise.

They aren't upfront about the Halal angle, so BFC basically looks like a B- Kentucky Fried Chicken... with burritos. Both KFC and Taco Bell were losers in the fast food game until they joined forces. Now, the KFC/Taco Bell conglomerate has a larger market share than BK or Wendy's.

BFC answers lightweight liberal complaints about feeding oil fried chicken to kids in a nation with Obesity issues by offering fruit. You have to make a conscious decision to fatten yourself. Either that, or the fruit is decorative.

Our chicken was juicy and tasty, although it looks here like Dino Flintstone having a Triceratops from the rear.

Colonel Sanders is just down the road, watching carefully.

The Chase Wild Animal Farm Mystery

Bill Chase is on the right.... we lifted this pic from the Circus No Spin Zone website

Halifax is a quiet little town off of Route 106 in the rural center of Plymouth County in Massachusetts. While it doesn't qualify as "the middle of nowhere" since the commuter rail hit it, Halifax is still a place where nothing happens. I don't mind saying this, because I'm a former resident of Halifax, and I know that locals like it when nothing happens there.

Halifax is largely residential today, but there was a time when it was a resort spot. The railroad lines that ran into town brought people from the teeming cities of the No Widespread Air Conditioning era. They were thrilled to spend a summer in a cabin, enjoying the many benefits of Silver Lake and (pre-algal blooms) Monponsett Lakes. Cars and highways brought day trippers.

Businesses in town were built to suit the needs of these cash-carrying tourists. Since the land was cheap, a businessman could afford to think Big. A man named Bill Chase got into the import/export business, and his stock in trade was wild animal hunting/exhibiting/selling. Most of us don't know anyone who could get us an elephant... but if you knew Bill Chase, you knew someone who could get you an elephant. You also missed your chance, as he died in the 1980s.

He had some gig, which I'm betting is quasi-illegal now, where he would capture animals in Africa, store them at his western Africa depot, and then ship them to zoos and reservations and whoever else orders things like Leopards. He also was in on some animal storage thing in Florida, which is most likely where his Wild Animal Farm animals spent their winters.

What wild animal farm, you ask? Why, I'm talking about the Chase Wild Animal Farm that used to be in Halifax, Massachusetts. In 1955, Chase moved his Chase Wild Animals Farm (which, due to his unfortunate last name, implies that you get to hunt the wild animals) from Egypt/Scituate Massachusetts to Halifax, Massachusetts.

The farm (part of the Chase Enterprises, Inc. empire) had permits allowing them to keep the animals in their "natural habitat," which is sort of funny because no part of Africa, let alone the parts with the cheetahs and hyenas running around, has Halifax's climate. They had a veritable Wild Kingdom happening off of Route 106, about where the Country Club is today.

Residents of the park included elephants, cheetahs, anteaters, leopards, zebra, llamas, various exotic birds and God knows what else. Admission was 50 cents for adults, and 25 cents "for moppets."

They used the Zebra as the mascot for the farm, and cardboard zebras were placed on highways to make sure that tourists didn't sleep on the Dark Continent happening in Halifax. They had free advertising from an animal-themed Boston TV show, sponsored by a Chase-friendly dog food manufacturer. They had a promotional deal with a local soda company. They opened themselves up to churches, schools and youth groups, making sure every kid left with a free (advertising) bumper sticker.

You could work a pretty good 1950s vacation in these parts. When you weren't splashing around in one of the Monponsett Lakes, you could go see a leopard at Chase's, then go to Edaville Railroad some other day, take the kids to Duxbury to see an ocean the next day, check out the Pilgrim stuff in Plymouth on another day, then finish off the week (and your paycheck) at Lincoln Park in Dartmouth.

This was pre-Internet, and not far from an era where kids rolled a hoop down the street for fun. It is very far removed from my own style of vacationing, which generally involves places where I can't be extradited from, coca and a bevy of gringo-friendly prostitutes. We're getting away from the point, however... and if the kids weren't happy seeing a leopard and going to Lincoln Park, you could always send them off to Vietnam or- if what I saw on Happy Days was customary- have the Fonz slap some sense into them.

I moved to Hally in 2000, and dudes were hitting 200 yard drives off the tee where CWAF was by the time I showed up. CWAF was unprominent (we make up our own words sometimes, and patent the really catchy ones) enough that I can't find out when it closed on the Internet. I could probably find out if I went to the town's historical society person, but I'm not going to Halifax from Cape Cod until I'm sure that I have a pretty good chance at getting a hippo skull (more on that later). I also have to convince Jessica to go, and the last time she and I went exploring in an old park, we were nearly arrested for breaking into Edaville Railroad. That is a story for another day, however...

I do know that Chase was still looking for Rhesus Monkeys in 1957, so the park lasted at least that long. They ran a nine month season, closing after their big Yule Festival promotion that had Santa with real actual reindeer. I'm sure that elephants and toucans love Massachusetts in late December.

A guy on Facebook said it ran through the 1960s, and it was his post (taken from a forum on cougars in Massachusetts) that got my imagination working. Several locals have told me a similar version of the story. I didn't canvas the town or anything, but no one I chatted with about the farm who actually had lived there when it was operating hadn't been told some version of this story.

If I may cut and paste some....

"I grew up in Halifax, in the fifties and sixties. There was a wild animal farm there called the "Chase Wild Animal Farm" It's now the Halifax Country Club Golf Course. It was one of those walk-thru zoos in the forest,where the animals were barely restrained, and was finally shut down. 

The owner, a man name of Bob Belinda, released all the animals into the swamp, including big cats, birds, everything, before he was run out. Even elephants, alligators, monkeys, lions were in the swamps for years, and some undoubtedly cross-bred with local animals. 

After that time, we saw weird-looking birds like vultures, there were even yellow canaries that would attack other birds in swarms, and huge cats lived in the area after that. My father shot one huge cat by our barn, that was larger than a bobcat. We used to hear wild screams from the swamp in the summer, and Gawd knows what types of inbreeding went on. 

We had horses, goats and sheep that had to be watched closely becuse of the wild dog packs, and some of those that we killed resembled Hyenas. 

This can all be verified at the Halifax Town Hall. This is the area about a mile behind the King Supermarket on Plymouth street. You can start your own "Monsterquest," for real."

Nowwwww, we have something we can work with.

You and I both know that is nonsense. Let us count the ways.

A guy who sells wild animals has very little to gain from releasing them into the swamps of Massachusetts. Even if he chose to do so (see: Zanesville, Ohio), it would have made headlines very quickly. An elephant rampaging through Plympton would be one thing, but it would get ugly with the quickness if the liberated leopard started picking off Kingston schoolchildren.

Please understand that Logic only gets in the way of a good urban legend, even out in the sticks.

If they did escape unnoticed somehow, some animals would have a better chance of surviving than others. The tropical birds would be hurtin' for certain. The cheetah once roamed North America, but I'm not sure if Massachusetts was part of that range. Asiatic Cheetahs are capable of growing a winter coat. Amur leopards range into Siberia. Hannibal once took 38 elephants over the Alps to invade Rome, possibly passing within sight of the Matterhorn, and got a few of them across.

Still, every animal in the park would face long odds in a Massachusetts winter.

picture from Christine Murray Pearl

I have no idea how these species would interbreed with native fauna. The only thing I can see an elephant being able to shag around here would be a Jeep. A domestic cat would explode if a leopard entered her. Our local seagull population would be cooler if they interbred with escaped Macaws, but something like that would have been noticed as soon as they started opening McDonald's around here.

Perhaps an alligator could be responsible for the hybrid car-sized turtle said to haunt Great Herring Pond in Plymouth, but the killer mutant canaries story sounds eerily like the plot of that Sylvester/Tweety episode where Tweety gets into the steroids and swells up like 10000%, to the extent that he is then able to hunt Sylvester.

However, some "proof" does exist if you insist on pursuing the mass-release story. Where I'm headed with this is the Bridgewater Triangle theory.

The Bridgewater Triangle is a term used to describe an area of heightened spooky/paranormal activity. It runs from Rehoboth to Abington back to Freetown, although you could make great arguments for including some of the surrounding areas.

You name it, someone has seen it in the Triangle. UFOs? Check. Bigfoot? Twice spotted, once eating a pumpkin. Thunderbirds? Yup. Anaconda-sized snakes? You know they have it.

A man who knows the basic Bridgewater Triangle legends can turn his imagination towards matching Triangle monsters to things that might have been released (or escaped- they say that Chase favored a barely restrained style of animal husbandry) from the Chase Wild Animal Farm in Halifax. This is especially true if it happens during a slow news week.

The Beast of Truro? Perhaps this is what became of the Halifax leopard. I do wonder if Chase would bother to report a cheetah escape, or- if it killed someone- he'd just be like "Oh well, it must have belonged to someone else around here who frequently purchases leopards." The Pamet Puma, described by witnesses as a Big Cat style big cat, made no appearances after 1982.

That alligator corpse in Westport recently? Could it be a sewer-living offspring of a Chase gator? No. We've discussed alligators up north before, it never ends well for the Gator.  The Silver Lake Frogman could have been someone getting a fast glimpse at an alligator, but it could not have been, too.

Daniel Webster's Sea Monster, spotted off Duxbury? OK, too early. The same goes for the Cape Ann sea serpent, and we should mention here that Chase did not have any plesiosaurs or however they spell that.

Pukwudgies? Too early, the Wampanoags had lore of them. The Dover Demon? That could easily be escaped Rhesus monkeys, who would most likely have had the best chance of escaping Chase's farm.

Bigfoot sightings in Bridgewater? Could it have been someone mistaking a llama? Even if your answer is no, you simply have to grade that possibility far above "a Yeti wandered into a Massachusetts college town." Chase procuring and losing a bear without Google knowing 60 years later is also a possibility.

Giant snakes menacing workers in Hockomock Swamp? I bet there was a very short list of "people who might import an Anaconda into the greater Halifax area," and Chase was probably on the top of it. While the Hockomock snake story goes back to the Great Depression, Chase was in business in Scituate at the time, and your guess would be as good as mine as to "where in Massachusetts to get rid of an unwanted Reticulated Python."

Those monster stories are best left to the Monster Hunters. There's one grotesque part of the Chase legend that fascinates me, and that may finally move me into a trip back to my old Halifax stomping grounds.

An ugly story followed Chase around, both in Halifax and in his prior Scituate digs. When his animals died, he was rumored to have buried them on-site. According to local legend, the remains of a giraffe are buried in Scituate. Halifax, where I intend to prowl around some, is said to be the final resting place of a hippo.

It makes sense in a pre-EPA way. Let's say that your elephant moves on to the Final Answer. It's not like you're going to ship him back to Africa for burial. I doubt that any animal cemetery in the region could accommodate one. Much like when you have to kill someone, you go find an isolated spot out in a forbidding swamp and dig a hole wide enough and deep enough. While an elephant funeral would most likely be a great media event, it would raise ugly questions with the local officials... who might be understandably leery of the guy who keeps free-ranging cheetahs in town.

You can see where my man might want to do his dirt by his lonesome, on the D Low.

It is for God to judge him, and- seeing as he died in the 1980s- that probably has already happened. All I care about is where to dig for that Hippo skull.

Most of the time, we write about foliage and snowstorms and local matters, but this column does piss someone off now and then, and they sometimes are able to deduce my identity and thus my home address. This leads to animated discussions and sometimes even the presence of Johnny Law.

Now, I'm not a small man, and I like a good slobberknocker as much as the next guy does... but, if I can avoid conflict because my stalker foes are intimidated by the giant and ghastly Hippo skull that I have nailed to the front gable of my cottage, that counts as a win.