|
A neighborhood divided
BY MARK FONTECCHIO
The Patriot Ledger
Published Jan. 13, 2004
HOLBROOK - The Hendersons, Henrietta and John, have two cars. They live at the same
house on Springvale Avenue and park their cars in the same driveway.
When Henrietta pays excise tax, Holbrook gets the check. But when John pays
his, Randolph benefits.
"The property tax bill, of course, goes to Holbrook," she says.
The Hendersons are one of 11 families on Springvale Avenue and part of
Woodlawn Road in the western part of town who live on an island of sorts.
No, they don't take up residence on a tract of land in the middle of Lake
Holbrook. But their neighborhood is isolated from the rest of the community,
cut off by wetlands and the Old Colony commuter rail tracks. The only way to
get there is to go through neighboring Randolph, taking Centre Street to
South Main Street and then turning onto Woodlawn.
The peculiarity has led the families to experience delayed or lost mail.
Road maintenance is forgotten and cable service connections come from the
wrong town.
"If any mail says Holbrook on it, it takes an extra week to get here," Patty
Quinlan says. "It's ridiculous."
Residents have their mail sent to Randolph, because that post office if the
one that delivers to Springvale and Woodlawn.
You want mail? Have it sent to Randolph. Cable? Expect local programming
from Randolph, not Holbrook. But when you pay taxes, Holbrook gets the
money. Put out your trash on Friday, because that's when it gets picked up -
by Holbrook. Maybe your road hasn't been plowed. Call the Randolph Public
Works Department, but don't expect anything quickly.
|
Some of that has improved. Ron McDonald, the Holbrook Post Office delivery
supervisor, says mail sent to that neighborhood is caught by an automated
system before reaching the Holbrook Post Office. But sometimes the system
misses something.
"Then we'll just redirect it to Randolph," McDonald says.
The Hendersons have lived here for 20 years. Thomas and Patty Quinlan have
been here for seven. And John and Lydia DeAscentis just moved in two months
ago.
"We keep telling people that we live in Holbrook, but," John DeAscentis
says, trying to figure out how to best explain the situation.
After all, when people want to send him mail, he advises them against
sending it to Holbrook, a place where he's trying to convince them he lives.
Still, the DeAscentises have only been there a couple months and haven't
experienced all the snags yet. They're still unpacking.
But as years pass and residents get accustomed to the eccentricities, most
just smile and shrug their shoulders. Maybe they tried fighting the town at
one point. Now they know what they need to know in order to get what they
need to get.
"You know, you go through the whole song and dance," Patty Quinlan says. "No
big deal."
You want mail? Have it sent to Randolph. Cable? Expect local programming
from Randolph, not Holbrook. But when you pay taxes, Holbrook gets the
money. Put out your trash on Friday, because that's when it gets picked up -
by Holbrook. Maybe your road hasn't been plowed. Call the Randolph Public
Works Department, but don't expect anything quickly.
"We are one of the last guys to get salt down here," Henrietta Henderson
says.
Holbrook Highway Superintendent Thomas Cummings says the town has an
agreement with Randolph to plow those roads. But the streets are private
ways and sometimes get the tail end of service.
Cummings says neighbors on another street, Fargo Road, have similar
problems. Half of the road is in Weymouth, half in Holbrook.
"I would say that there are many communities that have streets where you
have to go through other communities to get there," he said.
When a serious house fire in the neighborhood starts, as it did in April on
Springvale, Holbrook has primary responsibility, but Randolph fire engines
might get there first.
As for road repairs, residents here don't expect much from either town. They
live on private ways and there is no town obligation to fix them.
So John Henderson, 75, does it himself. He has patched the road before and
now he wants to cut down a 30-foot-high tree that hangs over the street and
is rotting at the base.
Henderson is worried that a strong wind or heavy snow could tip the tree
into his yard, destroying his pick-up truck parked in the driveway. "It's
hazardous," he says. "It's going to fall."
And if that happened, Henderson would have a logistical nightmare: a
Holbrook resident trying to get his insurance company to pay for a Holbrook
tree crashing down on a car paying Randolph excise tax.
It's something that could lead to a lot of shrugs and smiles.
| 