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March 11, 2007

Project 351: A Surprising Amount of Nudity in Central Mass

That headline oughtta drive some traffic...

Anyway, the temperature is over 40 and I'm not in Austin, unlike some people, so it's time to hit the road and check a few more towns off Project 351.

First stop was Steele Farm in Boxborough, which looked pretty cool out of season. Unfortunately, it was my first encounter with mud of the day. But it got worse at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard (the town, not the World's Greatest University®). I didn't go to the museum itself (I'm not entirely convinced it was open), but I did get a nice shot of the valley. Then I almost wasn't able to get my car out of the mud; I eventually had to swing around because I was too entrenched to back up. Now some might say the best strategy in a case like this is to stay in the mud for a few years and then declare victory anyway, but not me. (Here's the aftermath.)

Now, it's a good thing I do a little research before I head out on these jaunts. Otherwise, how would I know that Lancaster is the final resting place of "Sliding Billy" Hamilton, 19th-Century stolen base king and baseball Hall of Famer? Well, he is buried there, next to the Bolton/Lancaster line (and its rusty-ass sign). Also in Bolton is the impressive Public Library. Also in Lancaster is a fuzzy cow and a Charles Bulfinch-designed Unitarian church.

Next stop was downtown Clinton, which had an interesting leitmotif in its statuary. Whether at the fountain on the town common or on the steps of the Historical Society, there are a number of statues of thoughtful, bare-breasted maidens. I guess it's appropriate for a town named after our sexiest President.

When I was growing up, Clinton was the site of the biggest and closest municipal pool, so we'd truck some of the neighborhood kids up there a couple times a summer (Alas, no bare-breasted maidens hanging around there, one of the few and cosmetic differences between Clinton, Mass., and St-Tropez). And on the way there and back, we'd go past the giant dam keeping the Wachusett Reservoir out of everyone's houses. I vaguely remember an ongoing competition to see who could make the "dam" joke that came the closest to an Actual Bad Word without going over the line, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.

My last two stops weren't particularly memorable; there's the Bullard House in Berlin (now, as I'm sitting here typing this, I should have looked for a Berlin Wall) (and it's pronounced BURR-lin here, thank you) and the downtown rotary in Hudson, though it's interesting that Hudson chooses to remember its veterans and their sacrifices with a statue of a man wearing only a strategically-draped towel. And you thought soldiers in this war weren't getting enough armor.

61 down, 290 to go!

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Comments

Posted by: cherylann | March 12, 2007 12:07 PM

Posted by: Irene | March 21, 2007 04:06 PM

Posted by: michael | March 21, 2007 04:35 PM