Our last few days on the East Coast before beginning our final RV trip across the country, we spent a lot of time in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. And on these days we enjoyed a blend of history, trivia, friends… and theatre.

One day we took a walk with friends Jeff and Carol through Balfour Park in Attleboro, alongside the Ten Mile River, and marveled at the many fish that were frolicking on the surface. We’re not sure what variety they were, as we’re not “aFISHionados”, (trout and catfish, among others, are plentiful in this river) but they were so frisky we wondered if perhaps they were mating. As it turned out, yes they were; whatever breed they were, breed they did. As Jeff put it, we had witnessed “fish porn”.

Fish Frenzy

The old building next to the river downtown provided one of our interesting bits of trivia. It was formerly home to the L G Balfour Company, which coincidentally was named after the same family as the park.

The Balfour Company, a leading manufacturer of rings, and the heavyweight champ in the manufacture of graduation rings, was founded in Attleboro in 1913 and for many years operated out of the building until it relocated to Texas. Before the government put so many pesky environmental regulations in place, the ring company would just toss its rejects into the water; and quite a stash of them built up at the bottom of the river over the years. Unfortunately, fish, which never seem to graduate, had no need for the rings, which made the water toxic and caused some problems. Though there’s still a high level of metal in the water, it’s been cleaned up quite a bit, and the fish can happily carry on their mating without dying or mutating in the process.

The next couple of days we spent visiting our son Zephyr in Providence. Well, actually we were visiting his pet bearded dragon Cheeto, but we said hi to our son too while we were in his house.

Zephyr, as we’ve mentioned, was a homeschooled kid (actually roadschooled, as we were always traveling.) And we knew quite a few other homeschool and/ or RV families. We were able to catch up with one of them, the Weed family, in nearby Foxboro, as they were staying at the Normandy Farms Camping Resort. (“Camping resort” sounds like a bit of an oxymoron to us, but there are quite a few of them out there.) They have three kids, whom we recall seeing as knee-high guys when we were touring the NASA Johnson Space Center near Houston. They’re not knee-high anymore. Since these youngsters have an interest in music, Dennis persuaded them to take his extra ukulele, as we’ve been trying desperately to lighten our load even more than it’s already lightened.

Hidden Cranberry Trail at Patriot Place

Foxboro is also the home of Patriot Place, a shopping and entertainment complex that is best known as the site of Gillette Stadium, which in addition to hosting Taylor Swift et al, is the home of NFL’s New England Patriots. When Zephyr first began working at his current job for 5 Wits, it was at a property here right next to the stadium. He always hated game days, because, among other things, the traffic would be horrendous. Indeed, we’ve driven through the neighborhood on a game day, and we’ve seen that, about a mile away, some people were renting out parking space for 40 bucks a pop. If you go into the Trader Joe’s in Patriot Place, you’ll see a nostalgic display about the Patriots, including a couple of seats from their old stadium.

What many people don’t realize is that there is a nice little wooded nature walk tucked away next to Patriot Place that skirts an old cranberry bog. Cranberries are a big crop in Massachusetts, and this 7-acre bog, which produces berries for Ocean Spray, has been in operation since 1929.

It’s best to visit in the fall, during harvesting season, but at any time it’s interesting to read the plaques along the path about the history of local cranberry farming. This nature trail is located, appropriately, just behind Bass Pro shop. A total loop of about half a mile, it takes you on a wooden walkway elevated over the waters of the bog, and then through a pleasant little wooded area.

While we were at Patriot Place, we had lunch with a couple of old “haunted house” buddies, William and Carol – whom we’d already visited, along with her amazing centenarian dad.

Another good haunt friend is Katia; and we visited her and had fun playing with her little girl in the yard. Just kids at heart. That night, we caught a theatrical production at Bridgewater State University of a cute little comedy revue called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in 90 Minutes. Which was, more or less, what the title promised, acted on a tiny little stage in an intimate space such as roaming players in The Bard’s time would have been quite familiar with.

A couple of more friends we caught up with were Chris, who is part of Zephyr’s “shadowcasting” community, and yet another haunt friend, Jim, who has been a deejay for many years and has a recording studio in his basement adorned with cool mementos.

Something Rotten – the Musical

Then we caught another theatrical production (for which Katia joined us), one that also involved Shakespeare – not as an author, but as one of its characters. It was the Broadway musical Something Rotten, a really hilarious and enjoyable piece that we’ve been wanting to see in person for some time. We’ve watched a video of it many times, and are in love with the songs and the humor.

Arriving at the Walpole Lamplighters theatre before anyone else (we’ve learned to do that when driving an RV and pulling a trailer, because otherwise parking might be impossible), we parked in the lot across the street and (something else we learned many years ago), put a sign in the window stating that we were indeed there to see the show, lest someone call the police on us.

But a little later, a lady from the theatre came out and knocked on our door anyway; and she told us that while she was glad we had come, she would appreciate it if we’d move over to the back of the lot to take up as little room as possible, because they would need every inch of space. And we’re happy to report that she was right – we’re always glad to see a packed house, which makes the performance more fun for cast and audience alike.

Something Rotten is the story of two Elizabethan Age brothers, Nick and Nigel, who are a playwriting team, and are desperately seeking a novel concept for a new hit that will outdo their rival, one Will Shakespeare (who is portrayed as a narcissistic plagiarist with a rock star persona). And the concept they ultimately come up with is… the musical. Hilarity ensues, as does grand spectacle. You gotta love a show that features tap-dancing eggs and a snappy, cheerful ditty about the Black Death. Not to mention a rollicking song and dance number about musicals themselves, that crams in clever references to just about every hit musical ever staged.

With its wealth of catchy, hummable tunes, its wry lyrics and dialogue, and its brilliant production numbers, Something Rotten has become one of our very favorite musicals ever. We were quite excited to finally see it in the flesh – and we were not disappointed. This little community theatre production was not Broadway, of course, but it definitely held its own.

After the performance, we of course had to wait for the other vehicles to clear out before we could go anywhere; and it being already so late, we ultimately decided, especially since it was raining, to just stay put. After all, we’d paid our rent for the night.

The next morning before taking off, we did some exploring of the adjacent Bird Park, which was not named for the birds there (though indeed there were some), but for one William Francis Bird, when the park was established back in 1925. It’s a whopping 89 acres of nature and recreation.

During our many years of living in a vehicle, we had many such spontaneous experiences. We could often spend the night wherever we happened to be, and we’d often discover enticing new places to explore right at our doorstep. And then we could move on before we started having problems with our neighbors. Such memories are pure gold; we were certainly never affluent – in fact, we were on occasion down almost to our proverbial bottom dollar – but we always felt as rich as Waltons.

5/13-21/2023