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No Day at the Beach
HULL - They come from near and from far, from down the street and from down on the Cape. They come with canes, on walkers, and in wheelchairs, driven by friends or dropped off by special vans. They are dressed up and made up, and for many of the hundreds and even thousands of elderly people who have gathered in this seaside town every Sunday afternoon for as long as anyone can remember it is without question the highlight of their week, their excuse to breathe the salty, sun-kissed air and mingle with others confronting the same indignities of age as themselves. It wasn't the bands that mattered, or the music they played. What mattered most was just getting out. And now, because of another example of boneheaded incompetence by state officials coddled away in comfortable offices drawing excessive salaries without any regard for the public they're supposed to serve, the concerts will not be held this year. The pavilion on Nantasket Beach was torn down. All those elderly people who came out each week, they can just stay home this summer, thanks to the Metropolitan District Commission. If you ask the MDC, they're actually proud of what they've done. The ancient pavilion was a shambles, they say. So the agency rushed in this March and demolished it with plans to build a replica later in the year. "It was basically an emergency order due to the current state of the pavilion," says Jay Lachance, an MDC spokesman. But there are some problems with that, and one of them is logic. They tore down the old structure in March, leaving plenty of time before summer for the relatively simple job of building a new one. But alas, there's nothing so much as a worker with a hammer on the site these days. Yesterday, on the seaside cement platform where the old pavilion once stood, there were only a couple of Jersey barriers and a few teenagers skateboarding under the summer sun. The pavilion in fact had been a veritable train wreck for years, not unsafe, just unsanitary from all the pigeon excrement and rain that tumbled through the porous roof. Local officials and business people had been pleading for a replacement, but had always assumed that the old wouldn't be demolished until plans were finalized for something new. "It's not rocket science to tear down the old one and rebuild it and have it ready for July 4th," says Marty Silverman, a local real estate agent who helps run the privately funded concerts. "For so many of these attendees, it is probably the one thing they look forward to cooped up in their houses and apartments all week. People love it." The concerts can't be held without a roof because the concertgoers are of the age that they need protection from the sun. There had been talk, Silverman and others said, of the MDC providing a temporary canopy, but LaChance dismissed that last week, saying, "We're not in the tent business." Trying to figure out what business the MDC is in, I drove out to the MDC's Ponkapoag Golf Club in Canton yesterday afternoon. When last I visited a year ago, the once-stunning course was a mess, with two of the fairways closed because of severe water damage and the misnamed sandtraps filled with little more than hard-packed dirt and pebbles. Nothing had really changed. True enough, a summer concert series - or lack thereof - isn't the end of the world for most people. But the maddening fact of the matter is that it would take stunningly little effort for the MDC to actually get it right. You tear down the old when you're ready to build something new. Easy. The bottom line: Because of typical incompetence or bureaucratic laziness or just plain brazen disregard, come summer Sundays this year, there will be a lot of elderly people who will be sitting alone inside. It's our state government at work.FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Action on Aging distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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