The Half Shell Legacy

Since I went missing in mid-June, I tried to get Jeremy Renner to guest blog Half Shell during its forthcoming limited engagement. He said something about “over Matt Damon’s not-dead-but-no-more-sequels body” and so I’m back, for as long as my temporary gig at the helm of the arts pages at Independent Newspapers lasts. The details of my return are more arcane than a Ludlum plot, but all that should matter to Rhodyholics is that Ocean State minutia will once again return to its rightful place at the top of the obscurity heap in the endless abyss of the cybersphere.

As sequels go, “Return of Blog on the Half Shell” will aim to be more “Godfather II” than “Jaws II.” (Or “Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in” vs. “You’re going to need a bigger blogging platform.”) If I keep doing this – coming and going from the same job – readers can expect to encounter “Blog on the Half Shell Strikes Again,” “Revenge of Blog on the Half Shell” and “Blog on the Half Shell Meets Abbott and Costello” in the future. Mondays worked before, so we’ll stick to that schedule in our eternal quest to get Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats to amend the lyrics to their most famous song and spread a little grief to Tuesdays.

Rhody Universe: Three Brighton Memories
Andre the Giant Gets Plastered
Within days of my summertime move to the English Channel, I wandered down to a public bench on Marine Road in Brighton. A familiar face stared back from a sticker. It was Shepard Fairey’s born-in-Providence “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” mug. First appearing on Providence streets in the late 1980s, Andre’s “Posse” and “Obey” stickers remain a global phenomenon wherever alternative cultures congregate. Based on my own travel adventures, Andre may not have overtaken the peace sign yet, but he’s opened up a decent lead on yellow smiley face.

‘Moonrise’ Delight
It was somewhat surreal to watch the mostly-made-in-Rhody “Moonrise Kingdom” among an audience full of appreciative Brits at the Duke of York’s Picturehouse in Preston Circus, Brighton. Wes Anderson’s fantasy valentine to the magic of first love was a critical and popular success in the UK. Its arched style, archetypal narrative and stilted, comic dialogue didn’t thrill everyone, but the consensus among English moviegoers is that the film ranks with Anderson’s most charming and hopeful. A Rhode Island scene from “Moonrise” even made the front page of The Guardian last week to illustrate an article on the summer’s best movies. For a native New Englander, seeing locations in Rhode Island (and Massachusetts and New Hampshire) rendered with the Anderson touch made me wish I’d grown up as a Khaki Scout in South County.

Torch Song
After watching the Olympic torch being jogged through Brighton, my sister and I and the family dog, Harry, enjoyed a picnic brunch on the Pavilion grounds. A drunken man staggered over, reached down to pet Harry, missed, and sprawled to the ground next to our blanket.
“Where’r you from,” he mumbled.
“The States,” I said.
“Which one,” he asked.
“Rhode Island,” I said.
The man stared at me, as if trying to will an act of concentration into his furrowed brow. Eventually, he gave up.
“That means absolutely nothing to me,” he said. Then he threw up.

This week’s question: What was your strangest Rhode Island encounter outside of the Ocean State?

Half Shell, Will Travel

Some of you know this already, but for those who don’t get the paper, I’m leaving the office life to embark on a new adventure, beginning with a two-month excursion to England and surrounds. On Sunday I fly to London. As part of the condition of non-employment, I will be giving up this blog.

So the question is how to end it. Perhaps in a computer crash, where the characters of Half Shell dodge smoke monsters and polar bears before appearing in a flash sideways in some parallel purgatory Rhodyverse. Or maybe it ends in a blogging duel with a one-armed typist. Or I wake up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette and realize it was all a strange dream.

But then last week Olivia Culpo, a 20-year-old cellist from Cranston, became the first Miss Rhode Island to win the Miss USA pageant and will represent the United States of America in competing for the title of Miss Universe. As we know from our “Seinfeld” history, Rhode Island never wins these things, but the poised Miss Culpo, who deftly handled the toughest question of the night – “Would you feel it would be fair that a transgender woman wins the Miss USA title over a natural-born woman?” – gave hope to every Ocean State gal who looks great in a bikini and an evening gown.

It seemed like the right note on which to sign off.

As of today, Half Shell is officially on permanent hiatus. I’m a never-say-never guy, so in my admittedly warped world there is always a chance it could return in some guise. I won’t stop collecting size of Rhode Island references or obsessing over the oddities and quirks of Ocean State culture. So we’ll see what happens down the road.

But for now I’d just like to thank you all for reading. During the typical Monday slog, Half Shell has been the most enjoyable part of the day and I’ve been amazed at how many of you I’ve encountered randomly at places such as Kenyon’s Grist Mill or the Red Fez, who don’t actually get our paper but check in on the blog. Your comments (both on screen and off) are much appreciated.

As I’ve told some of you before, Rhode Island is my anchor, but every now and then I need to haul up and sail. For those who are interested, I will be starting a travel blog in England. Give me a week or so then Google my name (and "travel blog") and it should direct you to the new site. Naturally it will be a different kind of animal, but I will still be on the lookout for Rhode Islandisms wherever I can find them. Because you can take the boy out of Rhode Island, but you can’t take the Rhode Island out of the boy.

Fade to black.

English Signglish

Here at Half Shell we’re always on the lookout for other blogging Rhode Islanders, bringing their own voices to the Rhodyverse. Sometimes we stumble onto them while trolling for blog fodder. Other times they find us. A couple of weeks ago Rhody author Marna Krajeski e-mailed a head’s up about her blog, The Hanging Indent – a highly entertaining compendium of literary “misuses, malapropisms and interesting expressions,” often found on store and street signs locally and nationally.

The site is an amusing treasure trove for lovers of words and the English language. Photographs taken by Krajeski or sent to her from family and friends around the country document odd juxtapositions, poorly considered word choices and glaring typos on public signs. We learn, for example, that Hope Court in Wakefield is a dead end. A sign at McDonald’s reads: “WE ARE CURRENTLY OUT OF BOY TOYS. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.” A chimney sweep in North Kingstown advertises business on a truck, exhibiting a literary flair: “Lord of the Flues.”

Some of Half Shell’s global wanderings have resulted in similar findings. London, with its familiar signposted admonitions to “MIND THE GAP” and warnings about upcoming speed bumps (“HUMPS 50 METRES”), is particularly rich in “Signglish.” Once, as we were traveling on the Tube, among throngs jammed together like ripe sardines in a tin can, one poor passenger was pressed against a door with the words “NO PASSING THROUGH” overhead, only the P was scratched out. Another sign, at a walled London school, read: “THESE WALLS PAINTED WITH ANTI-CLIMB PAINT.” Yet another, at a traffic light in Stoke Newington, warned pedestrians not to cross a busy road before the light had turned with a huge sign over the street that read: “WAIT FOR THE GREEN MAN,” a reference to the glowing stick figure that appears at the intersection for 30 seconds or so, signaling it’s safe to cross.

What is the most oddly worded sign in Rhode Island?

Treasure Hunting

The prospect of discovering buried treasure has long appealed to the Rhode Island imagination. Reports of pirate booty stashed on some of Rhody’s islands have entertained the locals for centuries, causing sporadic searches for stunted oaks and storm-wrecked shores somewhere near the mysterious spot marked X. British pirate Joseph Bradish is believed to have buried chests of silver and gold on Block Island that, as far as anyone knows, have never be claimed. Captain Kidd is thought to have scattered bits of treasure on Patience Island and possibly Hog Island and Jamestown (at Beavertail) as well.

Today’s Rhode Island treasure hunters range from historians armed with metal detectors looking for old musket balls and coins in family farms to beachcombers picking up sea glass, driftwood, shells and stones along the coast to leisurely adventurers hunting for hidden geocaches and letterboxes.

Wakefield glass artist Eben Horton, borrowing from a West Coast friend’s idea, will add to the local treasure lore this Saturday on Block Island. The Block Island Glass Float Project is based on a similar activity in Lincoln City, Ore., which began after an artist started thinking about the blown glass floats that often wound up on the beaches there. The orbs, colored in various shades of blue and green, were used by Japanese fishing crews to float their nets and could be as small as 2 inches or as large as 2 feet. Now that most fishing vessels use buoyant plastic, the blown glass floats are rare, until an Oregon artist decided to make an annual event of placing 2,000 handmade colored glass spheres on a wide swath of public beach.

For the Rhode Island version, 200 glass floats, each about the size of a grapefruit, will be hidden on the Block, all of them dated, numbered and stamped with the shape of the island. The orbs will be divided evenly between the beaches and the greenway trails. They will be hidden above the high tide mark but never in the dunes or up the bluffs, and no floats will be placed between Surf Beach and Scotch Beach, or along the inside of Great Salt Pond. The floats will be located within one foot of either side of two Greenway trails – in the Enchanted Forest and along Clay Head Trail. They are finders keepers, although organizers request that finders keep only one, and leave the rest for others. All of the floats except 12 (in honor of 2012) will be made of clear glass. One is made entirely out of gold leaf. If you find one, you are asked to register it by logging on to www.blockislandinfo.com and clicking on the Glass Float Project link. The running count will allow visitors to continue to explore the sites, if all of the floats aren’t found on Saturday.

What is your favorite “found treasure” in Rhode Island?



[Blogger's note: Apologies for the late post. Forgot last week to mention that I would be off on Memorial Day, cycling Ocean Drive in Newport, where the kites, fishing poles, sails and bug-shaped zip cars were out in full force.]

Officially Ours

We have no state amphibian, insect or fossil, but on May 10 the Rhode Island General Assembly approved legislation designating the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry as the official sailing education vessel of Rhode Island.

Set to sail in July 2013, the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry is a replica of a three-masted 19th century warship that will serve as an innovative ocean-going classroom for Rhode Island students. The square-rigged tall ship will measure 207 feet, and when not fulfilling its education-at-sea duties, will be displayed and available to the public in Newport.

The ship is named after the Rhode Island-born Navy hero of the War of 1812, a conflict of note in these parts, now commemorating its bicentennial. In the state symbol pantheon, it competes somewhat with the replica of the continental sailing vessel Providence, which was adopted as the official Rhode Island flagship and tall ship ambassador in 1992. It also bumps up against the image of the America’s Cup yacht Reliance, which is prominently featured on Narragansett Bay, with the Newport (Pell) Bridge in the background, on the Rhode Island commemorative quarter.

Half Shell is not opposed to making more room in the attic for the clutter of Rhody symbols and emblems, from anchor, flag and great seal to the Crescent Park Loof Carousel (American folk art), Rhode Island Red (bird), coffee milk (drink), striped bass (fish), flower (violet), fruit (Rhode Island greening apple), mineral (Bowenite), rock (Cumberlandite), shell (quahog), tartan and tree (red maple).

(The official symbols list even has its own quirky only-in-Rhode-Islandisms, most notably in the legacy of the state song. “Rhode Island,” with words and music by T. Clark Brown, was adopted as state song in 1946. Fifty years later it was replaced by “Rhode Island’s It For Me,” with lyrics by comedian Charlie Hall, music by Maria Day, arranged by Kathryn Chester. Instead of dismissing Brown’s ditty from the archives forever, legislators made it the official march of Rhode Island.)

The SSV Oliver Hazard Perry fits comfortably into the mix, especially since Rhode Islanders collect boats the way Imelda Marcos hoarded shoes. That’s true even during these austere times, when many residents who own sailboats find them too expensive to maintain and those who own motorboats can’t afford the fuel. This explains why Half Shell owns a pair of kayaks, the precursor to our master plan to restore a small boat in retirement with the ultimate goal of making it the official dinghy of Rhode Island.

What should be the next Rhode Island state symbol?

Do the Locomotion

It is Half Shell’s contention that there are few more attractive rail routes in the country than the brief stretch that passes along the coves from northeastern Connecticut into southwestern Rhode Island at sunset or sunrise, when the track deviates from coast to swamp, a view we’ve enjoyed on the Amtrak line to West Kingston during various excursions from New York, Washington, D.C. and Colonial Williamsburg.

We’ll have a review of Frank Heppner’s “Railroads of Rhode Island: Shaping the Ocean State’s Railways,” an entertaining survey of the state’s rail heritage and culture written for The History Press, in this Thursday’s paper (and online). But for the purposes of today’s blog, we’re going to mine the minutia for the nuggets and oddities that give the book such a Rhode Island flavor.

As Heppner writes about the Ocean State in the preface: “It abounds in contradictions. Rhode Island has produced some of the most distinguished and honorable national politicians of recent times…However, during one recent ten-year period, an ex-governor, the ex-mayor of the largest city, the ex-mayor of the third-largest city and a superior court judge were all serving time in the slammer on various corruption charges.”

Personal anecdotes and comments throughout lend a touch of humor to the history. Writing about the Providence and Springfield Railroad: “Most of the names of the towns along the right of way would not be recognized by anyone outside Rhode Island, but one town name would be instantly recognized by anyone who was a child in the 1920s through the 1940s. The Esmond Mills made baby blankets and, in a stroke of marketing genius, published a little book in 1924 designed to be read aloud to children. Called The Tale of Bunny Esmond, it was about an adorable bunny that was always cold until somebody wrapped him in a Bunny Esmond blanket. By a strange coincidence, Esmond Mills made a baby blanket that had Bunny’s image printed on it. Bunny Esmond was the Elmo of his day. The Esmond blankets were softer than most, and in 1943, the author would have killed with his tiny fists anyone who tried to take his Bunny Esmond blanket away from him.”

Among the things the staff at Half Shell did not know:

“The lowest temperature ever recorded in Rhode Island – negative twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit – was noted at Wood River Junction, located at the current route in southwestern Rhode Island. Wood River Junction is consistently the coldest location in the state.”

“The Great Swamp was also the home of another most unusual railway, perhaps a unique one: the Rhododendron Railroad.” (It was established by Dr. Lorenzo Kinney Sr., a professor of botany at URI, who in the early 20th century became one of the world’s foremost experts on rhododendrons and azaleas, and began a business exporting native and cultivated rhodies to East Coast estates.)

Two straight stretches of track in Rhode Island are two of only three places on the Amtrak line where Acela trains can go as fast as 150 miles per hour.

There was once a village of Sinking Fund, Rhode Island.

The first Union Station building in Providence was “the longest building in the country at the time (some historians dispute this; none of them is from Rhode Island).”

The Providence and Worcester Railroad’s freight train PR-3 serves a single customer in South County – Arnold Lumber of Kingston.

In addition to its record for Rhode Island cold and its sad role as the site of one of Rhode Island’s worst railway disasters, Wood River Junction earned another kind of notoriety when, in 1964, the United Nuclear Co. built a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility “less than half a mile from the location of the wreck at Richmond Switch.” After pouring a solution of uranium compound into a mixer, a worker at the plant saw a blue flash, was knocked over and died of radiation poisoning two days later. “His was the first and only death due to acute exposure to radiation in a commercial nuclear facility in the United States.”

Rhode Island, America’s smallest state, once had two of the shortest railroads in the country. The smallest, a revamped version of the Warwick Railroad, was about a mile long. Perhaps more interesting was the Moshassuck Valley Railroad, “which operated as an independent line for over a century with only 1.8 miles (generously) of track.”

Providence was the only New England city to have cable cars.

One unusual aspect of the Providence and Danielson Railroad: It had a single freight car that carried a particular cargo – occupied caskets. Heppner explains: “Trolley lines were often built near cemeteries (the land was cheap), and in an era before automotive hearses, a specialized trolley car with seating space for the funeral party and cargo space for the departed was often a feature of trolley lines, including the Providence and Danielson Railroad.”

The original paint job of Kingston Station was three shades of brown.

One of the more familiar electric locomotives that passes through Rhode Island is the AEM-7, made by General Motors for Amtrak, a generally reliable train distinguished by its ugliness. Railroad enthusiasts call them “Toasters;” to Amtrak employees, they are known as “Meatballs.”

What is your favorite Rhode Island train story?

Rhody Squid

On Friday at an Irish pub called O’Hara’s in the Newton Highlands part of Massachusetts, my friends and I, all visiting from Rhode Island, began our lunchtime food-and-drink excursion by glancing at the appetizers. At the top of the list was calamari, served “traditional” and “Rhode Island style.” So we asked the waitress: How do you make the Rhode Island style?
“Comes with banana peppers and garlic butter.”
“And the traditional?”
“Comes without those things.”
A day later, I talked with a couple of folks from Connecticut, who said that menus in the Nutmeg State increasingly refer to “Rhode Island-style calamari.” Some diners have even found it on menus in southern California. There are subtle variations, but the gist is hot cherry peppers (served as rings) or banana peppers (or both), cooked in garlic butter or garlic and oil. Often a small condiment serving of marinara sauce accompanies. In general, it’s a spicier and greasier version of the dish and famed New England chef Jasper White pays tribute to those qualities by calling his flavorful version, “Spicy and Greasy Rhode Island Calamari.”
In the past year, Rhode Island has been referred to as “the squid capital of the East Coast,” with more than 7 million pounds caught in local waters. Last fall Bryan Rourke of the ProJo reported it this way: “Squid is to Rhode Island what lobster is to Maine; cod is to Massachusetts.”
But the Rhody cuisine renaissance isn’t limited to calamari. Clear-broth Rhode Island chowder, sometimes called South County chowder hereabouts, is also making its way onto more menus, along with variations of white, from the thick, stick-a-spoon-in-it-and-it-won’t-move versions popular in Boston and Cape Cod to the thinner milky versions, locally called Newport chowder. One food Web site reported that “Rhode Island Red chowder” is gaining fans as well, popping up on regional menus, elbowing its way as a soup du jour as something distinct from Manhattan chowder, far spicier and creamier than its New York-dubbed cousin.
In some Rhode Island restaurants (and, I’ve heard, Long Island ones as well), we’ve had a clam chowder variant that could be called “dirty chowder” or “gray chowder,” being a blending of the clear and milky chowders. Perhaps it should be called “New England skim chowder.” Long Island food shacks have also popularized a mix of the red and white chowders. One of my friends calls that “Long Island chowder,” although I’m not sure anyone over the Throgs Neck Bridge would be able to identify it as such.
The predominance of food shows on TV, easy recipe hunting on the Internet, a growing awareness of regional cuisines and ubiquitous kitchen experimentation has led to the discovery of Rhode Island’s notoriously insular food culture on plates and platters outside the state. Can anyone envision the day when French cafes, along with their croissants and brie, will offer Rhode Island New York System hot wieners? (Wouldn’t be the same without the neon sign in the window.)

What will be the next Rhode Island food to go national?