Cultivating Leicester

Today, two pot shops are scheduled to open in Massachusetts, which will make our fair Commonwealth the only state east of the Mississippi that has recreational MJ emporia.

One of the locations makes perfect sense. Northampton is lefty, hippy-ish, social-justice-y. In 2016, in a state where Clinton beat Trump 60.8% to 33.5%, Northampton gave Clinton 80.3% of its votes, with a paltry 11.7 going Trump’s way. (It almost goes without saying that Northampton voters gave more than double the percentage of votes to Stein than did the state as a whole – 3.9% vs. 1.5%.)

In Leicester, on the other hand, Clinton way underperformed her state average. She came in at 40.3% while Trump took 50.1% of the votes. (Stein got 1.3% in Leicester.) Attitudinally, this makes little old Leicester an unlikely location for a pot shop (and more likely to believe that Reefer Madness was a documentary).

Leicester is variously described as a “small wooded suburb of Worcester”, a “former mill town,” and a rural backwater “dotted with dairy and vegetable farms.”

It is also the final resting place for many of my family members, including my parents, my sister, my grandmother, my aunt, my uncles, one set of great-grandparents, an assortment of great aunts and uncles, and a bunch of my father’s first and second cousins. Not to mention that, kitty-corner to her grave, the family who lived in the third floor flat of my grandmother’s decker is buried. (My grandfather predeceased my grandmother by 55 years. He’s buried in his home town of Barre, Massachusetts. Nanny was a Leicester girl and wanted nothing to do with godforsaken Barre.)

I grew up in Worcester, but Leicester was right next door.We took the Cherry Valley bus, Cherry Valley being one of the villages of Leicester. It sounds lovely, but when they call Leicester a “former mill town,” they’ve got Cherry Valley in mind. There was Duffy’s Mill, where when he was a kid – from 6th grade through high school, I believe – my rather worked after school as a candy butcher, selling candy and sandwiches to the Irish mill girls who couldn’t leave their machines to grab something to eat. At some point, he was promoted to bobbin boy, which was more lucrative. He became an expert at identifying the best (knot-free) bobbins and provided them to the girls who tipped the best. My father acquired this job after his father died, and he got it through pull: his Uncle Joe was a foreman. I think my great-grandfather, Matthew Trainor, had also been a foreman at Duffy’s, which is probably how Joe got his job. Matthew and Bridget Trainor had settled in Cherry Valley after the immigrated from Ireland. It was in Cherry Valley that they raised their family.

Another mill that I recall had the intriguing name of Elfskin. I always wondered what exactly it was that they produced there…

Anyway, Leicester was familiar territory.

We went swimming at the little beach at the Castle Dairy on Lake Sargent.

We got ice cream cones at the Cherry Bowl.

We ate 10 for a dollar hotdogs at Hot Dog Annie’s.

I spent a miserable week at Brownie and Girl Scout Fly Up day camp at Leicester Junior College.

At the age of four, I tripped and fell coming out of a packy on Route 9 in Leicester where my father had gone to buy his monthly case of beer. Forever after, when our family passed this site, as we did frequently on our “spins” out to the Cherry Bowl for ice cream, someone was sure to announce “that’s the place where Maureen fell.” (I think that Leicester was also the town where “the monkey stole the cookie from Kathleen”, an incident that occurred before anyone other than Kathleen was born, yet still held a major position in family lore. I.e., when we drove back, someone was sure to announce…)

And now Leicester will be home to a store that will be far rarer than the packy where I fell, and far more popular than the spot where that nasty monkey stole Kath’s cookie.

And Leicester is all prepared for what’s heading their way.

The police chief has readied traffic details as part of a “special operations plan.” Overflow parking has been set aside at a garden nursery. Buses have been rented to shuttle buyers to the shop. And a food truck will feed the hungry masses waiting in line for their first legal high.

…The closest event Police Chief James J. Hurley can compare it to is Black Friday at the local Walmart, which draws 1,700 bargain hunters every year. But at least Walmart, unlike Cultivate, the local marijuana shop, has a massive parking lot, he said.

…“We’re either going to get everyone in the state who wants marijuana coming here, or it’s going to be half the state that wants marijuana coming here,” Hurley said, as he prepared to go over final details of the opening with a private security firm hired by Cultivate. “Either way you look at it, we’re going to have a crowd.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Local restaurants are looking to cash in, hoping that shoppers come (or go) with a case of the munchies. The Parks and Recreation Committee hopes that some of the pot-related revenues will help them improve the town’s playgrounds. Some residents, however, fear that Cultivate, which has already been running a medicinal MJ dispensary, will attract the wrong crowd. (Perhaps they fear Jill Stein voters?)

Some locals are more neutral towards Leicester’s becoming a pot-town.

At Wayside Floral, a candy-colored shop with a pressed tin ceiling, there were more shrugs than enthusiasm for recreational pot. Christine Anderson, the owner of the shop, said she didn’t expect marijuana sales to help her business, or change the town much at all.

“People will come and go,” she said. “No different than when Walmart opened.”

Well, I’m guessing it’s going to be bit different than when the Walmart opened.

Anyway, with Cultivate’s recreational pot shop opening, these are heady times for Leicester.