Southfield- The Funny Place
I thought it was funny the other day when, while out for a walk, I noticed the padlocked gate leading into the old South Weymouth Air Base and the signs reading “no trespassing”.
I thought it was funny the other day when, while out for a walk, I noticed the padlocked gate leading into the old South Weymouth Air Base and the signs reading “no trespassing”.
If you’re old enough to remember listening to Led Zeppelin’s new song, “When The Levee Breaks”, then you might remember when the citizens of Massachusetts staged a tax revolt in the form of a petition that would restrict the revenues cities and towns could collect through a property tax levy. Up until that time local governing bodies of the Commonwealth could levy whatever tax they felt was necessary to raise revenues that would cover the cost of running their municipalities.
I know, I know, I've been slowing down on the blog. Hey, I'm busy with other stuff and that's a good thing, trust me. We have a full house again for the first time in a few months after another marathon drive to Washington D.C. and back to get my little princess and bring her home to cash strapped Weymouth.
Heading south on Route 18 in South Weymouth a sign on the left says “Southfield”.
After more than ten years of planning and meeting and squabbling the Southfield project partners, LNR and Tri-Town finally appeared to extricate themselves from the Twilight Zone when they announced plans to move ahead with the long anticipated movie studio. This was good news to all us Wahey's who found the lack of progress there easy fodder for criticism. Before we get too excited however, it might be advisable to keep the barf bags close by in preparation of the roller coaster ride we no doubt will be experiencing next.
click here http://www.waheyboys.com/2009/July/21/SouthfieldRoller.html to read what The Wahey Boys think.
News broke yesterday that the long anticipated movie studio project at Southfield (the former South Weymouth Navy Base) looks like it is moving forward. This is great news for Weymouth and for Massachusetts. We have often referred to Southfield as the Twilight Zone because of it’s beautiful façade, off of Route 18, that basically leads to nowhere. In the ten years since the Air Station closed there has been “much ado about nothing” there and certainly no revenue generated for the surrounding communities.
go to http://waheyboys.com/2009/June/19/SouthfieldMovieStudio.html#southmovie to read what the Wahey Boys think.
There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact. — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Time is an independent measuring device that cannot be reversed, slowed down nor sped up, yet anyone with children would agree that twenty years goes by in a flash. When my son went off to college I told him that four years really wasn’t a long time. He didn’t agree, for him, it was an eternity away. My father thinks that it was only yesterday that the federal government came to Weymouth and took a large chunk of land and turned it into an Air Station. He says some people probably got paid, but for the most part they took what they wanted and used it for about 50 years and now they want big bucks to sell it back to us.
click here http://waheyboys.com/2009/June/3/StartWorrying.html to read the latest on Southfield.
In response to the video and article dated May 7, 2009 in the Patriot Ledger by Jack Encarnacao regarding the Southfield Project in Weymouth.
click here http://waheyboys.com/2009/May/8/TheTurnipTruckHasLeftSheaBoulevard.html to read the rest.
- an expression for a structure or argument built on a shaky foundation or one that will collapse if a necessary (but possibly overlooked or unappreciated) element is removed.
No news is good news, well, some news might be good, well, nothing can happen unless, well, we need money to, well, whatever. Guess what? Nothing is still happening at the Air Base, ah, I mean Southfield. But Wahey, things are looking up because um, well, I don’t know why things are looking up, but everyone remains hopeful that things are going to work out.
click http://waheyboys.com/2009/April/28/HouseOfCards.html to read more
This is a jungle, a monument built by nature honoring disuse, commemorating a few years of nature being left to its own devices. But it's another kind of jungle, the kind that comes in the aftermath of man's battles against himself. Hardly an important battle, not a Gettysburg or a Marne or an Iwo Jima. More like one insignificant corner patch in the crazy quilt of combat. But it was enough to end the existence of this little city. It's been five years since a human being walked these streets. This is the first day of the sixth year, as man used to measure time. The time? Perhaps a hundred years from now. Or sooner. Or perhaps it's already happened two million years ago. The place? The signposts are in English so that we may read them more easily, but the place is the Twilight Zone. –Rod Serling
Go to The Southfield Stimulus Plan to read the rest of this article
Growing up near the South Weymouth Naval Air Station I became somewhat interested in and familiar with planes and jet fighters, because they were always flying overhead. It was a great experience to attend the “Air Shows” back then and in later years, with my son, where we would watch the “Blue Angels”. I got to see all kinds of planes over the years, but for me, there will always be “the plane”. “The plane” is the familiar memorial plane that stood for many years at the entrance to the South Weymouth Naval Air Station and that for many of us growing up back then represented the United States superiority to the Soviet Union.
When I was around 8 years old I remember, while playing with friends, instinctively stopping whenever we would hear a jet fly over. This wasn’t because of the sight of the jet itself, for that was a common occurrence; but instead, we would stop to place our hands over our ears in preparation of the ensuing “sonic boom”. Within seconds after hearing the jet, the craft would zoom overhead and then there would be a large “boom” that signified the jet “breaking the sound barrier”, at least that is what I was told. As I grew older, jets would still do flyovers, but it seemed that we didn’t hear the boom any more. I wasn’t sure if that was because the planes were not allowed to break the barrier or whether technology had changed to prevent the sonic boom. (The term sonic boom is commonly used to refer to the shocks caused by the supersonic flight of an aircraft. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion.)
As it turns out, there are still sonic booms, but through better design coupled with laws preventing planes from causing them, we don’t hear them as often.
I didn’t know it back then but that sound was most likely caused by a Cougar Fighter Plane. The Cougar’s predecessor, the Gruman F9F Panther was the U. S. Navy’s most widely used jet fighter during the Korean War. Unfortunately, the Panther’s overall performance versus Russian designed MiG’s was not good and soon after, Gruman replaced the Panther with a swept wing designed fighter called the Cougar that proved superior to the MiG 15. Starting in the 1950’s, the Navy and Marines assigned particular planes to designated Air Stations and this was the plane flown by the Marine Attack Squadron 322 or “The Fighting Gamecocks” stationed in South Weymouth. In 1959, the Cougar was replaced by the North American FJ3 Fury as NAS South Weymouth’s plane. However in 1960, the Naval Air Station donated, and the Town Of Weymouth accepted, an F9F6 Gruman Cougar Fighter Plane to serve as a memorial and this was “the plane” that stood at the entrance to the Air Base on White Street. Not long after taking its place as the Air Base focal point, another plane, called the Douglas A4B Skyhawk was assigned to South Weymouth. From 1962 until the early 70’s the Skyhawks bore the tail code Z and later 7Z.
White Street, a small side street off of Union Street in South Weymouth, was the main entrance to the Air Base since it opened in 1942 and as the Base grew in size this street would become a busy through fare for Base traffic. Then in 1982, tragedy struck when a young neighborhood boy was struck and killed by someone traveling to the Air Base. The town demanded that the Navy change the entrance location. For their part the town installed a four-way “Stop” sign at the intersection of the tragedy hoping to slow the traffic coming down White Street. It wasn’t until 1987 that the Navy finally received funding and approval to install a new entrance gate off of Route 18 and “the plane” was dismantled.
But the plane was not about what type as much as what it stood for and the Navy constructed a new symbol to adorn the new entrance in the form of the Skyhawk. After the Air Base closed in 1997 “the plane” took its place further up Shea Boulevard at its present location in the Shea Memorial Grove. “The plane” has symbolized many things over the years from the Cold War to economic change and it will continue to do so. Today it memorializes local recipients of the Medal Of Honor and represents a major change in the landscape of Weymouth and surrounding communities.