After reading last week’s column, the editors insisted that I resume taking my medication. It was the only thing they could do, since I’d been caught red-handed, slaughtering a sacred cow without a license. They could have been sued.
That little run-in with management did me good, though, because after four fingers of medication I was pumped to get to the bottom of the latest hot issue: the proposed tennis bunker on route 3A. What I discovered, much to my surprise, is that the health club was not the first business proposed for that site. In fact, there were a number of uses proposed and rejected before Chris Horne came along with his controversial tennis hut.
First there was the llama ranch. For suburban developers, llama ranching is the wave of the future. Why? Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not easy to bother some people. To really get the neighbors riled up, you have to assault all the senses, and let me tell you, llamas have them all covered. They’re ugly, they smell bad, and, when excited, they titter like seventh grade girls on a field trip. They’ll eat anything, too, so with the right sized herd, you could strip that wooded lot bare as Cole Parkway in no time at all. Llamas also have the unpleasant habit of spitting on strangers. This makes them perfect neighborhood liaisons and frees up the developer for more important tasks, like cutting down trees, polluting the groundwater and hiring slick attorneys and surly sub-contractors.
From a developers point of view, llamas do have a down-side. For one thing, if you abandon a herd of llamas, they won’t hang around to torment the neighbors the way a good industrial bunker will. In all likelihood, they’d just eat their way back to Peru and the native vegetation would eventually grow back. This makes the whole enterprise unsuitable as a monument to the developer’s ego and lack of business sense, which is the point of most big real-estate developments. The other drawback to a project like this is that you can’t convert an old llama ranch into a strip club, as no self-respecting stripper would work in a joint that had the stink of llama about it.
Then there was the agreement the town had with the organizers of the ‘96 Olympics to use the site as one of the swimming venues. Only 24 hours drive from Atlanta, and a mere 1 hours drive from a pile of empty hotel rooms in Boston, this plan had everything going for it. It even included a monorail the organizers would have had to build to meet the mass-transit mandate in the Olympic charter. The plan only fell apart when the Coastal Coalition filed suit, claiming the Atlanta-to-Scituate monorail would destroy the historic character of Hingham Center. Selectman candidate Ilana Marks hailed the decision as a victory for the hard-pressed residents of Third Cliff, who would have been forced to live with the thought of something happening.
Video Express, of Weymouth, then stepped into the breach, proferring an ambitious plan to open a 200,000 square foot adult video outlet, complete with onsite daycare, pinball machines, special ‘Teachers Nights’ and a film-your-own amateur X-rated video sound-stage. This plan dissolved when a phone survey conducted by Tom and Ray of Car Talk fame revealed that noone in Scituate has sex or owns a television. These survey results went unchallenged at a special town meeting where all attention unexpectedly focused on an article requiring the town to erect gates on the north and south ends of route 3A, and the west end of route 123, so that police could deny entry to loaded moving vans. The measure passed, though supporters conceded that it was ‘non-binding’.
By far the most exciting plan was the one advanced by an obscure, local native tribe, the Celts, to build a casino on the site. Local chamber of commerce types fairly drooled at the prospect of carloads of high-rollers from as far away as Pembroke and Kingston weaving up 3A to pour money into the coffers of Scituate gas stations, pay toilets and bail bondsmen. Unfortunately, this plan hit a snag when empty Bud cans, bleached pale by the sun, and scraps of old taco wrapper were found on the site. These indicated to project archaeologists that the site had once been a Celtic meeting ground. After a contentious tribal meeting, complete with singing and passing the hat for Sinn Fein, tribal leaders concluded that earning an honest buck there would dishonor a site where their forefathers, and foreuncles, had once sat around peeling, getting hammered and swapping lies about Italian girls and forty inch stripers.
The failure of all these ‘best laid plans’ has left us where we stand today, faced with the prospect of a huge health bunker full of sweaty yuppies besmirching our pastoral main avenue. While the argument can, and probably will be made that this project negatively affects the historic character of Hingham Center, it’s hard to see how this will deter the jack-booted development thugs. But don’t despair. After all, if you drive as fast as everyone else on 3A, you’ll barely even see it.
Don’t forget to tune in next week when I’ll explain how to define your immediate family such that your inherited mooring never falls back onto the waiting list where grubby newcomers might get hold of it.
John Rodley is a local ‘historic character’.