Dirty Competition in Lanesville

This evening, in the amber gloaming of a September day, as the Simpson's writers put it, I looked over the Gary "Zeke" Seppala Softball field to see someone stirring the garbage in the can near home base. I had walked past the can earlier on this 85º day, noting the contents: many pounds of large fish heads, swimming in their own blood and wrapped in plastic. "Good Lord." I thought to myself "I wonder what the DPW will think of that when they next come to empty it." It's a difficult disposal problem, because you can't put offal in the town dump, you can't really do anything with it except bury it under your corn seedlings in the spring. It was definitely too late for that.

The local softball league is a fiercely followed institution. This year the Wainos beat the Mudhens in a surprise upset. After having ceremonially dunked the team in Plum Cove, the teams retire to the parking lot and grill hot dogs, smoke and drink Bud. The conversation gets louder and louder, and eventually dissipates with the sound of screaming tires around midnight. We would complain to the police, but since the police constitute an equal force on the teams with firemen and DPW workers, there's really not much point. We've come to enjoy it. Sometimes a slugger will hit something onto the front lawn, to great applause.

So what were the fish heads doing on the ball field? Another great Lanesville tradition is the annual bluefish tournament. Lane's cove, the hub of Lanesville, is a tiny fishing port. It is shielded from the north easterly winds by a mighty granite wall made of uneven blocks probably weighing half a ton to a ton. The No-name storm of October 31st 1991 removed a couple of feet of those blocks from the top of the wall, but they've been replaced. The big celebration at Lane's Cove is July 4th, when a huge bonfire used to be built and an eccentric and seemingly disorganized parade. There are plastic buckets and cola cans for percussion, the odd trumpet and car or boat horn, a man dressed as Amy Winehouse, a giant papier mache lobster with moving claws and long feelers that have to be lowered to pass under the utility lines. The parade usually ends at the bonfire, twenty vertical feet of waste wood, palates, a piano perhaps, topped off with a small shed or outhouse, and decorated with a nasty sign excoriating NOAA and especially Jane Lubchenco, who believes that fisherman are piratical, anarchistic criminals who should be driven out of business. The bonfire is no longer built, because last year's event attracted a lot of outsiders who started fights (probably by standing around not looking like locals) There were incautiously lit fireworks and a couple of quarter sticks of dynamite, a remnant of the quarrying days, thrown with sparking fuses, at the last moment into the cove waters.

The locals are mostly lobstermen and tuna fishers (mostly both) for whom the bluefish runs are a recreational opportunity. "The number of entrants have been increasing each year and this year it was 540. It was an exceptionally beautiful day--no clouds until late afternoon, light to no breeze, flat calm seas, and moderate temperatures." This was fair weather sailing for the fishermen, who fish in appalling conditions in most seasons and impossible conditions in the winter. "The winner of the tournament brought in a fish that was 10 lbs, 6 oz. Not really a big Bluefish--15 pounders were common in the last few years. One entrant commented that though the fish weren't large they had stopped counting because they caught so many."* So someone from the tournament had dressed the fish and dumped their remains in the sandlot can. This may cause a tiny friction between those who dumped and those who will have to clean up, but there is such closeness in this village, it probably won't last.

Lanesville has been an isolated community, developing it's own ways of getting along, and preserving their traditions with jealous pride. There has always been an admixture of summer people, who are important to the local economy, but they leave after Labor Day, when metaphorical tumbleweeds drift down Washington Street. There are those who consider the village to be an unusually weird place. Kory Cucuru, from the urban center of Gloucester, calls Lanesville "Gloucester's Area 51" in his book "St Peter's Fiasco", a knowing parody of "The Perfect Storm". It is full of writers, architects, potters, dancers, artists of all kinds. It has had this adjunct population since the middle of the 19thC, when the railroad opened up the Cape. It has a very large number of AA meetings for such a small town. It is reputed to be a center of witchcraft. Many folks practice Oriental religions, martial arts and yoga. The woods of Dogtown, the little known (until recently) center of the Cape have always seemed mysterious, though they are little more than a hangout for teenagers to light fires and get drunk or high. Hunters, tree-huggers, housing developers - all kinds of interests are fighting to change Lanesville's ancient and shabby innocence. I hope it preserves itself and its eccentricity. I wouldn't want it any other way.

*Report from "On the Cove" blog, http://lanescove.blogspot.com/2005/09/lanesville-bluefish-tournament.html