Middleboro MA: Great place for a casino

My wife and I were driving through Middleboro last weekend doing what we normally do there, getting lost, after I had suffered a bout of: SRCS (Sudden Rotary Confusion Syndrome) and taken 44 instead of 28, when suddenly it hit me - Middleboro: What a great place for a casino.

Now I must begin with an apology, because I have lived in Southeastern Massachusetts my entire life, and never knew there were Indians in Middleboro. My Father grew up there, and has told us every story (with painstaking detail) about his experience, but never mentioned his trips to the reservation, his trouble converting wampum to American coin, or his neighbors circling the DeSotos whenever there was rumor of an uprising.

Now my father’s family, the Gays, and the family of the man his sister would marry, the Dykes (People, I would not lie to you about this) both came over during the 17^th century. (My father refers to his nationality as “Swamp Yankee” reportedly because his ancestors kept pestering the Indians for their Maize recipe until one of them said: “Let’s throw that freaking Yankee in the swamp.”)

The Gays and the Dykes, along with other Puritans escaping England for religious freedom and compassion, gave the local Indians blankets contaminated with small pox, waited for them to die off, and took their land, making their surnames evil to the Indian people, and explaining why you never see a Gay Indian. (Also, because, in that time Indians lived in either wigwams or teepees, which did not have closets, making the term “guess who came out of the closet?” nothing more than white man gibberish and the alternative “Did you hear Laughing Buttercup finally came out of the place where we hang the headdresses to dry to his parents?” too long for everyday conversation, although, in retrospect, it may be more apropos.)

But now the Gays and the Dykes have all moved to Taunton (and boy is Mom pissed about that) and Middleboro has become a Gay free zone. So, if you who oppose the casino and need someone to blame, as always, blame the Gays and the Dykes.

But since I don’t live in Middleboro, and have a tough time working up sympathy for my neighbor never mind someone a town over, I see no reason that a casino shouldn’t be built in Middleboro (except for the Indian’s sense of entitlement that it is their land – yeah – I bet there’s a Roman guy walking around France calling it Gaul and claiming everything belongs to the Italians.)

First of all, it would be close enough to Taunton to get all the elderly off the streets during the daytime. I have spent a half-life sitting at the corner of Danforth and Tremont behind a 70-year-old woman with a perpetually blinking light waiting for traffic on the city’s busiest street to cease. It would be nice to be able to go to the store five minutes away and not have it be a 40-minute trip.

Also I would go there to study how an elderly woman who can’t find her change purse to pay for a book of stamps can simultaneously play twelve slot machines while smoking the same cigarette for an hour and sipping a vodka and tonic. They can’t figure out a Medicare plan but they could wake from a six-month coma and automatically know which cards to keep in video poker.

Plus this may be my last chance to see the big time entertainment, Rich Little, Wayne and Madam, Leo Sayer, that were big before Curt Schilling was born perform.

Of course there will be downsides. No one in Southeastern Massachusetts will ever see Plymouth again. The Middleboro rotary should back up far enough that cars will reach both oceans, plus the Mexican and Canadian boarders. The Herring Run will be renamed the Herring, Deer, Rabbit, and Anyone Who Wants to Get the Hell out of Middleboro Run, and chances will increase greatly that Middleboro will get a WNBA team.

But it could be worse.

Could be a Wal-Mart.