Private companies, public plates; Beautiful Fall River
5:07 PM Fri, Mar 20, 2009 | Permalink
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This New England |
Rhode Island legislators, eager to get the state more revenue, want to offer drivers expensive license plates touting the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots. Thus a public agency would be promoting two very profitable private companies. But then, the state has had Mr. Potato head plates, which promote Hasbro, the big toy company. State of desperation. XXX New Hampshire officials are talking about closing the toll plaza now in Bedford and setting up one in Nashua -- with the idea of snagging yet more Massachusetts people. Meanwhile, Connecticut officials might well bring back that state's tolls and Rhode island, tiny as it is, might try to put them on its big roads for the first time in history. Of course, they all hope to cannibalize tolls from each other. Maybe they should set up a New England-wide toll-taking system.
The Boston Globe's March 18 edition has a very good story by Erin Allworth about Fall River's seemingly interminable economic woes and its hardy, fatalistic people. Of course their plight is replicated in many old mill towns in New England. But what too many stories about Fall River rarely note is the strange, even spectacular, beauty of the place, with its hills overlooking Mt. Hope Bay, its church steeples and its Victorian piles. It's a place of visual drama, especially from the heights of the hideous Braga Bridge. 
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How about Mass. plates with:
LIVE WELL OR DIE
on them?
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From someone who grew up in Fall River, forget the jokes.
What other city around her has such beautiful underutilized waterfront, and a huge lake that is there to be used.
We joke about it, but drive around some time and find out why it was such a great place to grow up
And the Old Durfee High school building, now a courthouse where I graduated in 1945
Such great memories...
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