Duxbury Signs Of Historic Importance (Archives)

We thought we'd dig into the personal gear to share out a few important signs with interesting, Duxbury-themed stories.

There's a reason that Jessica takes all the pictures for this magazine. Stephen, as you can see, has what we shall most charitably call a "blurry camera eye."

This first sign is from Duxbury's shipbuilding days. That's pretty remarkable right there. Even I have no idea how old it is. My parents may have had some expert take a look and tell us, but they died before telling me. My interest in History came about later in life. When my parents were living, I was mostly into gettin' high, gettin' fly and gettin' thigh.

However, the reason I'm bothering you with this is the story behind how we came to own it.

My father was an investor, and he came to own an interest in an abandoned property in Charleston, South Carolina. He eventually opened a nightclub in the spot, but he had to clean out the building first. Inside the corner office of whoever was running whatever was being run there, he found a sign under some drapes.

Voila! 

A guy from Duxbury Beach bought a Carolina property, and the property inexplicably had a Duxbury sign. That's cool standing alone, but it gets cooler when you think about it a bit.

Charleston, SC was where the Civil War started. They were the first Americans to fire upon Old Glory. Regardless of what some States Rights people will tell you, the Civil War was about slavery, and the people hollering the loudest about Abolition were from Massachusetts.

As my family came to understand while running businesses in the South, they don't like Yankees that much, and that was in 1983 or so. You can bet that they REALLY didn't like Yankees back in 1865, when the 54th Massachusetts regiment very blackly marched into the city as conquerors.

You can get punched in the face in Boston for wearing a Yankees shirt... I wonder how your tavern would do in postbellum, defeated, shamed South Carolina while proudly displaying a Massachusetts sign? You could put it right next to your General Sherman statue.

There's only one way you could own that sign in South Carolina and not get your hat handed to you... the sign would have to be a Trophy. 

Confederate raiders like the CSS Alabama took a lot of prizes, and Duxbury was cranking out ships during this time. A better historian than myself could narrow it down to the exact ship, but it is very likely that someone took a ship which had somehow came to own this sign. Ownership of the sign went to whoever owned 4 Vendue Range, which is right on the harbor in Charleston.

It might have been innocent- the guy in Carolina may have owned the shipyard in Duxbury, for all I know. However, I like to think that my Dad used his wealth to walk into South Carolina and erase Duxburys illicit trade deficit with the traitorous Palmetto State rascals. 

That sign is back in Duxbury, now, and Duxbury is where it's staying.

"Unless you've got one of these, you're playing catch-up ball, no matter what you tell yourself."
Ric Flair

The sign above dates back to the late 1970s. It was made out of Duxbury wood, hewn from an ancient tree (one of her acorns later grew to be Duxbury's infamous Tree Of Knowledge) that was chopped down for the shipbuilding industry. The ship carrying this invaluable timber sank in Duxbury Bay, and the wood rested in the cold water, perfectly preserved, for 300 years.

It was discovered by treasure hunters in the 1970s, and sold to the Stradivari family, who made violins out of almost all of it. One piece of this wood stayed in Duxbury, however, when a guy who may have owned an interest in a Nevada sign company kinda-sorta was around when the priceless timber had an axcident. It is said that this sign-maker had to hire legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan VII to hack the wood apart with a diamond axe.

The cost was worth it, though. This wood was petrified when Myles Standish was Meters Standish. It can be shot from a meter away with an M-1 carbine to no effect. It somehow can eat termites. Wielded in battle, it grants the bearer invulnerability, while concurrently allowing him or her (the sign is very egalitarian) to swing fast and bust ass like they were Steven Seagull.

More importantly, it is seen around Duxbury Beach as a symbol of rightful sovereignty. Whoever owns the sign is the just and rightful Mayor of Duxbury Beach, very much like how the English crown rests on the head of whoever wields Excalibur. This is very important in a village which threatens secession now and then.

Possession of this sign grants the Mayor several beach-specific powers, many of which are ceremonial or rarely/never enforced. The Mayor can perform marriages on Duxbury Beach, although there is a Droit De Cuissage obligation on the table if times are tight for the Mayor's game. The Mayor can declare war, but only on terrorists, Saquish, Green Harbor, Brant Rock, Cedar Crest and the town of Duxbury.

The Mayor can also collect taxes, as possession of the sign made Gurnet Road area residents free from taxation. However, so as not to deprive the citizens of Duxbury Proper of necessary funds, the Mayor rules from his/her own pocket, and sends the tax revenue across Duxbury Bay. "Render unto Duxbury that which is Duxbury's," said Mayor Stephen Bowden in 1986.

This was a lucky break for Duxbury Proper, as Duxbury Beach is- to my knowledge- the one village in the United States to have independent possession of a nuclear weapon. Duxbury Beach may or may not have acquired a M20 submarine-launched ballistic missile from a French double agent after the highly classified off-Duxbury sinking of the French Navy's Redoubtable-class submarine L'Imbecile in 1988.

I'm not gonna give away any military secrets in here, but they say that you don't want to light a smoke within 70 km of the house which stands where the old Gurnet Inn used to be. We'd be on some Sum Of All Fears ish there, playboy.

The sign, much like the sign at the Tree Of Knowledge in Duxbury, is said to carry a prohibitive curse. The TOK's curse involves the sign falling into disrepair- they say that when the storms or the plows knock over the TOK sign, the locals run out and fix it themselves. If they don't, great misfortune will come to Duxbury.

The sign we own that gives us hereditary Mayoral powers carries a different sort of curse. It can not leave Duxbury. It can only leave Duxbury Beach for educational reasons, or if the Mayor feels like taking it somewhere. There are those who say that the launch codes for the M20 are carved in Navajo Braille into the sign, while others say that only the sign's magic is preventing a Storm Of The Century scenario. There's even a Nostradamus quatrain about it, although the reference is heavily-veiled and shrouded in symbolism.

Either way, the sign stays where it is... and it was Good.