EPISODE 091

Better Off, part 1

Tales from the Loop – The Lenox Loop

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“Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes!” – Abraham Lincoln

Three middle school kids in a factory town at the foot of a mountain range find adventure together in the mid-eighties.

To learn more about how Tales from the Loop is played check out our primer episode.

The World: Pittsfield and the Lenox Loop.

Pittsfield, MA – in the Berkshire mountains on the border of NY and Western MA. In the 1940’s General Electric was contracted by the government to supply parts and electrical equipment. GE were also paired with MIT and a Federal Research Facility to carve a particle accelerator into the deep rock beneath the mountain range just south in Lenox, MA. They also carved cooling towers from the rock itself. The loop passes just under Pittsfield proper. The center of the city are large GE transformers, power lines and the bustling GE plant.

To the south, a mile or two down South St, HWY 20 is the turn off to Bousquet Mountain, a ski area. A bit further south are the cooling towers and the subsurface labs.

The kids live in a small spread-out development south of Pittsfield. Their neighborhood is made up of Loop employees and GE factory families, as well as a smattering of people that perform seasonal work at the ski lodge. The kids are all students at Herberg Middle School.

Starting in the 80’s the demand for transformers has dwindled and GE has been ratcheting down production. The past few years have been unseasonably warm, some blame the factory output, some blame the thrumming cooling tower and the Lenox loop. Whatever the case the ski tourism has been hit hard, further depressing the area.

The Kids:

Ollie Barker – Bookworm (Dan McCoy) soft-spoken book-learned kid, tends to sit apart, observing.

Chad Dawson – Popular Kid (Stuart Wellington) big mouth & big hair, uses his confidence, comfortable family standing, and sunglasses to charm his way through the early teen years.

Rush “Spud” McKenzie – Hick (Ken Breese) rough and tumble, more at home in the woods with his dog Hobo than stuck in school.

Find Dan McCoy on twitter @dankmccoy

Find Stuart Wellington on twitter @flophousecat

Find Stuart and Dan’s podcast The Flophouse on the flophousepodcast.com and on the MaxFun network. You can also follow the podcast on twitter @theflophousepod

Find Stuart’s podcast Till Def Do Us Parrdy on soundcloud and through itunes. You can also follow the show on twitter @tilldef

If you’re in NYC make sure to get over to The Hinterlands, Stuart’s bar in Brooklyn

Find John on twitter @LordJoho

Find Ken on twitter @Berlingsbeard

Follow us on twitter @boredghostworld

Our Bored Ghost theme comes from the amazing Pat Cupples, see his band website Hotels and Highways.

Bored Ghosts we hope you found some distraction from your eternity in the void this week!