Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Episode 3 – Avoiding Car Sickness

By Robert Yarnall

Read the rest of the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot series:
Episode 1 – Getting Ready To Fish
Episode 2 – Watchaug Bites
Episode 3 – Avoiding Car Sickness
Episode 4 – Bait & Switch (Not!)
Episode 5 – Still Baiting, Still Switching…
Episode 6 – Mother Gooser & Friends
Episode 7 – Under the Radar with L-T
Episode 8 – Steering Committee Syndrome Unleashed, The Prelude
Episode 9 – Steering Committee Syndrome Unleashed, The Kiss
Episode 10 – Snagged on the Epilog Epic-Log

The convenient truth about hauling a bass boat out of Watchaug Pond is that it’s basically clean when winched onto the trailer. No salty brine to topcoat the gunwales or yuck up the seats. Just drag the fish stalker up the ramp and beat a path to Route 1.

The AAA-endorsed triptik says to simply follow Prosser Trail toward the sea, but every once in a while some genius trades in his GPS for an IPA and winds up rampaging through the Sachem Passage neighborhood, where he  unwittingly brushes up against the second largest fluke ever caught in Charlestown, officially recorded as Assessor’s Map 17, Lot 186.

Village folklorists know this place as Whalerock.

Whalerock is located on a geological moraine. Geology is the professional avocation of my favorite tin man foil, Michael Chambers. It is an extensive topic where he rightfully claims expertise.

But other than geology-related discussions, it is my experience that Mike has mostly rocks in his head. And I’m confident that he will cite his rockin’ expertise in evaluating my mental state as well. Fair enough. Advantage Mike.

Seriously, if you would like to learn more about moraines in general, and the Charlestown moraine specifically, charge up your cell phone and give Professor Chambers a call. It’s fascinating stuff. Call early, it could take a while. He’s not really a professor, but he does a good imitation. (End of no-deadline digression.)

In the immediate realm of the 21^st Century, Whalerock is descended from Ninigret Hamlet, a proposed condominium community consisting of over 200 units, designed & engineered by DiPrete Associates in conjunction with prolific Charlestown developer Larry LeBlanc.  

Larry copped the land from National Grid, who obtained it from the old Narragansett Electric Company, not affiliated with the original owners of the property, who just happened upon it a bit over 7,000 years ago. Those original owners would be, of course, the ancestors of our present day Narragansett neighbors.

They came long before Whalerock

I’ll forever be impressed by the stoic dignity of Tribal members as they stood tall and proud against the back wall of the filled-to-capacity Charlestown Elementary School cafeteria during a 2010 public hearing on the wind turbine project, which abuts the housing development for the Tribal Elders.

I could understand and admire how the Narragansetts mustered the considerable amount of group self-discipline necessary to refrain from laughing out loud when one of the speakers preached about the vaunted Scenic Highway status of Route 1 as it meanders across pristine Charlestown.

What I couldn’t figure out was how they managed to avoid throwing up.

If you haven’t read the archaeological report filed with the original Whalerock, née Ninigret Hamlet, proposal, you can grab it off the town website. If your net surfing skills are lagging or even lacking, just ask any neighborhood middle school kid to help you out. That’s if you can find any middle school kids around your particular neighborhood.

Here on the east side of Sachem Passage, breeding ground of the Illwind NIMBY activist group that beat back the Twin Tower Tax Credit proposal hatched by an unlikely combination of characters, families with kids are an endangered species.

More accurately, make that extinct. Darwhinnied into oblivion.

CCA approved watercraft

Once in a while during summers of the past half-dozen years, if we’re lucky, someone’s grandkids bubble up & down East Quail Run on their way back & forth to Watchaug Pond. Some of them carry fishing poles. Cool kids. Retro.

For a few fleeting moments on those rare summer days, the handful of us remaining who raised our children in this neighborhood - from the day they came into this world to the day when each of them graduated from college and left for family-friendlier venues to start their own adventures - get to relive those good times.

 We laugh, we wave, we chat with the youngsters. Too soon they go about their kid business, as they should. It is a cool, refreshing memory jolt. Short. Sweet. Cherished.

So, where have all the children gone? Gone to save the planet, every one? Just like Professor Mike says I should be doing?  Hey! Maybe there’s an outside chance, just a bizarre shot in these darkest of dark skies, that even a wretch like me can save the planet too, one Assessor’s Map at a time!

Digress here. Let me play my guitar, like Jimi sez…Simply amazing - add the grace notes, twelve bar turnaround, key of CCA Flat, jump on the blues train, leavin’ those carbon footprints behind, It’s almost midnight, wake me when we get to Georgia. (Uh, this continent, please. Atlanta, thank you.)

This seems like a good place to take an episode break. I’m not sure exactly why, but I’m not feeling so well. Must be motion sickness from the rocking of the boat.

I hate when that happens, don’t you?