Show Us Where You Live!

[Hunny]

Show Us Where You Live!

Show us pictures of your town,
tell us about it! The strange things,
the great things, whatever you got.
We want to see where you live.

[Hunny]

In Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.
TURTLE BOY!

No matter which angle you look at this thing from,
it still looks like a boy screwing a turtle.





So what the hell were they thinking, and how could this statue still be up!? Meet the famous "turtle boy"! (It's famous around Worcester, Massachusetts). I've lived here a long time, and always accepted that perhaps my mind goes to the gutter when I look at this thing. But it looks as it looks. So what's the story? Well I did some checking.

— From The WORCESTER TELEGRAM —

“Phantom Critics Drive Him to Suicide” blared the headline in The New York Times a century ago.

Another follows: “…Kills Himself in Bronx Park on Day ‘the Voices' Set.”

And later, in smaller type, “Leaves Unfinished Statue.”

The Jan. 29, 1912, newspaper obituary describes the life and death of New York-based artist Charles Harvey, age 43. The unfinished statue he left behind was none other than the Burnside Fountain, known in Worcester as the “Turtle Boy.” Turtle Boy has been gracing (or is it cursing?) downtown Worcester for over a century. It turns out the statue was the product of a delusional mind.

On the morning of Jan. 28, 1912, in Bronx Park, students stumbled upon the body of a man lying face up in the grass. It was Mr. Harvey. His throat was cut. On the ground nearby lay two razors. “Harvey was bitterly despondent about his work and so sensitive to the slightest criticism that any expression of adverse opinion caused him genuine suffering,” the artist's obituary read. “His friends and fellow craftsmen, however, were most favorably impressed with the unfinished work that stands in his studio. It is the life-size figure of a crouching boy, holding a tortoise.” The obituary continued: “But the work of his hands dissatisfied him and, as he tried to make headway, he was haunted by the voices of unseen persona, who bade him take his life. The command was explicit. The voices, from which he could not escape, directed relentlessly that he lay aside his tools and kill himself.”

The half-ton bronze sculpture, depicting a nude boy holding a hawksbill sea turtle just below his knees, would later be completed by sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry.

“I heard from him about a week ago, and there was nothing in his letter to indicate that he was despondent or was contemplating suicide,” his brother, John J. Harvey, was quoted by The New York Times after Charles Harvey's death. “I had known for some time that he was engaged in what he hoped would be a masterpiece, which I understood was for some building in Worcester. As far as I knew it was progressing satisfactorily.”

“Turtle Boy” was bequeathed to the city by Harriet Burnside in honor of her father, Samuel Burnside, a prominent Worcester lawyer. Originally placed in Central Square, it was moved to the Common facing Salem Square in 1969. It was stolen in May 1970, returned later that year, placed back on its pedestal in 1972, toppled over in 2004, and placed back on its pedestal later in the year.

Kristina Wilson, associate professor at Clark University, said no matter what one might read into the statue, she thinks “Turtle Boy” is supposed to be about innocence, joy and rebirth. Noting that Mr. Harvey was trained at the American Academy in Rome, she said, “He is coming out of a tradition of sculpture and painting where the human figure is the apex of beauty, and how well you can capture that is the demonstration of your artistic talents.”

Out of curiosity, Ms. Wilson asked around campus about “Turtle Boy,” and one of her colleagues chimed in, “Oh, that's Worcester's monument to bestiality.” “It's unfortunate, because it really does look like something untoward is going on,” Ms. Wilson said. “The thing I always end up saying to my students is, ultimately, the category of whether or not it's art, that's really not something you can argue with. Whether it's good art or bad art is something else. I would say that this is not the best.” Still, as a monument, as a work of public art and as a piece of Worcester's quirky history, Ms. Wilson said, “Turtle Boy” deserves to be protected. Councilor Kathleen Toomey said she would love to see “Turtle Boy” restored and made a working fountain again, but it's going to require $60,000 that the city simply doesn't have.

Stuart Esty, owner of Dr. Gonzo's Uncommon Condiments, 122 Main St., is on a personal mission to turn the Burnside Fountain into a national icon. “I figure if Brussels can have the Manneken Pis, why isn't Worcester wrapping its head around and taking ownership of the ‘Turtle Boy'?” Mr. Esty asked, referring to the famous statue in Belgium of a naked little boy urinating into a fountain. “Why don't we have a ‘Turtle Boy' small bronze statue? Why not turn the old Paris Cinema into a ‘Turtle Boy' memorabilia place? Why am I the only person selling ‘Turtle Boy' postcards on the planet?”

Mr. Esty acknowledges that ‘Turtle Boy' is slightly disturbing. Then again, he said, a lot of things in life are slightly disturbing. “Turtle Boy” is one of the things that makes Worcester unique. “What I love about it is seeing people who may be seeing it for the first time,” Mr. Esty said. “It's always fun to see their different takes on it, folks taking photographs, people trying to mount it themselves.”

Cathy Walsh, owner of Sprout at 118A June St., said “Turtle Boy” invites people to interact with it. “There's something about ‘Turtle Boy' that he has a personality and approachability. To me that's the great thing about the ‘Turtle Boy.' ”

Worcester Arts Councilman Helen Beaumont said the city should do something special to celebrate the undeniably quirky and distinctive fountain. Like the little statue in Brussels, which is often dressed up, “Turtle Boy” “gets adorned with things from time to time, Mardi Gras beads. He sometimes has a scarf. Sometimes he has a snow hat on. There are people in the community who dress him up. We don't know who it is,” Ms. Beaumont said.

Claudia Snell, creator of the website worcesterturtleboy.com and a series of “Turtle Boy” postcards, said she would love to see a “Turtle Boy” parade. “It's definitely a piece of art, and it's a Worcester icon,” Ms. Snell said. “There are lots of cities that have statues that are humorous or cause discussion and they embrace them. And we embrace ours.”

NOTE: These people are a bit delusional, aren't they.
Their suggestions would make us known as "the city that promotes beastiality".
And they want to parade this even. Wow. Okay.
Well perhaps we should also get a country singer to ride on the head
float and sing an original song called, "When A Boy Loves A Turtle"

"Greetings, from Worcester, Mass!"


Oh, and they want to make a visitor's center of the Paris Cinema??
The Paris Cinema is closed now, but it was one of those places
where men would pay a quarter to watch a movie and masturbate.
Yea, that'd make a good place to sell post cards
for the turtle f***er monument. 

Give it to him, Turtle Boy!

You know what would really make this statue come to life? Sound effects.
That turtle should go "rheeeeeeh!" every time you throw a quarter in the pool.

(And if you throw five bucks, it says "Call me!" )

Aaw, he looks upset. Well, you would be too, if your boy never called you.


______________________



ALSO KNOWN AS 'BURNSIDE FOUNTAIN'

Turtle Boy is actually a water fountain, if you step back and look at the whole thing.

Burnside Fountain is a drinking fountain at the southeast corner of Worcester Common in Worcester, Massachusetts. Intended to provide fresh water for people, horses and dogs, its pink granite watering trough and pedestal were designed by architect Henry Bacon, who later designed the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Atop its pedestal sits Boy with a Turtle, a bronze statue of a youth riding a hawksbill sea turtle, created by sculptor Charles Y. Harvey. The statue is affectionately nicknamed "Turtle Boy."

Harriett Burnside gave $5,000 to the city of Worcester in 1904 to create the drinking fountain. Originally, water poured from the turtle's mouth into the main trough, divided into four drinking basins for horses. On the opposite side, a lower trough provided water for dogs. Dedicated in memory of Burnside's father, the fountain began functioning in 1912.

In the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century, there was growing concern over the difficult lives of horses that provided transportation in cities. Philanthropists wishing to ease the burden of these animals provided public watering troughs. Some were simple, but others were works of art, of which the Burnside Fountain is an example.

"Turtle Boy" has become famous in popular culture because of bawdy insinuations about what it portrays. The half-ton statue was stolen in 1970, but eventually returned. Multiple attempts to purloin it have been foiled.

In the tradition of the Manneken Pis in Brussels, "Turtle Boy" is now a mascot for Worcester: a local music contest is named the Turtle Boy Music Award; a local brewer produces Turtle Boy Blueberry Ale, and the Turtle Boy Urban Gardeners, a group of volunteers, maintain the garden surrounding the fountain. In 2010 the Burnside Fountain was named one of WAAF's " 25 Greatest Places in Massachusetts." That same year, it was also nominated for "Worst Public Art in New England" by a regional Art blog.

A movement is underway to restore the piece as a functioning fountain.

[trubble]

That ''turtle boy'' info is all fascinating, Hunny. Weird too!

[alanseago]

The opening lines gave me quite a shock, I used to live in the real Worcester not this strange place called War Cess Turr.

[trubble]

It's like that surname Keogh. In England it's Key Hoe instead of the proper Kyo.

[Hunny]

Apr 17, 2012 21:01:53 GMT alanseago said:

The opening lines gave me quite a shock, I used to live in the real Worcester not this strange place called War Cess Turr.

lol, yea, when people settled over here, they just used all England's names for the new towns. Outside of Worcester is Uxbridge, Oxford, etc.. They even call the area New England. (oh, and we pronounce it Woos-tah

[alanseago]

Trés bien. Bravo! Or maybe Wusster.

[heeeeey]

I live near Modesto, CA.

If you've seen the movie American Graffiti, you've seen Modesto, CA.

[Big Lin]

Hm, I divide my time between London and Yorkshire.

I'll dig out some good pics of both my areas!

[Big Lin]

www.svpoa.org.uk/StreathamVale_crossing.jpg

And here's one of my Yorkshire home

www.halifaxpeople.com/images/so-sculpture.jpg

[justbec]

I live in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, United States. It's a small town with a population of about 2,300 people. It is the birthplace of Sinclair Lewis, a novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Sauk Centre served as the inspiration for Gopher Prairie, the fictional setting of Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street.

We live on Big Sauk Lake and have about 3 acres of property. Along with a 'sandy' beach we also have 2 small ponds. The dogs love it, in the summer they can swim in the lake and in the winter they get to go for walks on it.

[Big Lin]

Mar 18, 2018 18:10:59 GMT justbec said:

I live in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, United States. It's a small town with a population of about 2,300 people. It is the birthplace of Sinclair Lewis, a novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Sauk Centre served as the inspiration for Gopher Prairie, the fictional setting of Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street.

We live on Big Sauk Lake and have about 3 acres of property. Along with a 'sandy' beach we also have 2 small ponds. The dogs love it, in the summer they can swim in the lake and in the winter they get to go for walks on it.

It looks absolutely beautiful!

[justbec]

Thank you.. it's the home we have dreamed about for 33 years. We finally were able to have it built and move

[Hunny]

Some thought our TURTLE BOY statue a bit dirty. Well, we cleaned it!   

(an update to this thread's original post about our beastly town pride.)

Turtleboy gets a bath!  - Worcester Magazine (U.S.) April 2024



  The freshly refurbished Burnside Fountain, more commonly referred to as "Turtleboy."

By the time Thursday afternoon rolled around, things were looking up for Turtleboy. The statue on the Worcester Common – officially called The Burnside Fountain, but really, no one ever calls it that – had become the center of a social media maelstrom when it was discovered it had been cleaned … and even more shockingly, was no longer green, but instead a sort of muddy brown. By Thursday, Turtle Boy was a shiny, more defined blackish-bronze, which sources familiar with the process say is close to its original color. The work is being done by conservators and is not just cosmetic. The refurbishment ensures the beloved statue will be okay for another 25 years. In the past, restoration was needed less often, but the pollution of modern cities puts extra wear on bronze statues.

Many on social media decried that the refurbishers were removing the statue's patina, but the opposite was true: The original patina was being restored and repaired where necessary.
Some complained that they preferred the statue green, but in a lot of ways, that's like telling someone, “You looked so much better before you got healthy.”

Indeed, judging from social media, nearly everyone in the city was suddenly an expert on monument restoration, but one can't help think there was something more to the outsized emotional reaction. After all, Turtleboy isn't just a statue, he's an avatar for the city itself. That the city identifies itself with a statue of a boy having an unhealthy relationship with a turtle is a separate question, but what happened is, one day we looked up and realized it had changed. Mind you lots of things have changed, even right there on the Common. 

Construction is about to start where Notre Dame Church was.  And where there once was a pornographic theater, now there's a beer garden. [ Can't we have both? ]

There are trendy restaurants where there used to be empty shops, and WCRN radio has long left the corner of Franklin & Salem streets. Even the Library is getting a makeover. 

Whether any of these are positive or negative changes is an exercise for the reader. Sometimes change is just change, and Worcester has been undergoing a LOT of change.

Turtleboy however, was supposed to be eternal and unchanging, a touchstone at a time when the city fears losing its identity to luxury apartments and gentrification. Any change to that symbol was going to be a bit jarring. But the funny thing is, this change wasn't about taking anything away from the statue, it was about making sure it would endure.  

So it's not green anymore. So what? It's still a Boy and his Turtle, and that's all we ever wanted it to be. Only now, it's shinier and more visibly disturbing than ever.  

We should take that as a win!

sadie1263

[Hunny]

Of course, Worcester has other things to offer. It's not all dirty turtles and triple deckers. 

It's a "bedroom community"..an outlying town where people who work in Boston (America's 4th largest metropolis) live, and commute from.

We're home to 12 colleges!  We have concerts, theater, museums & historical sites, beaches, forest, a robust medical industry, an airport...

I liked it better in the 80's though, when the music scene was exploding! And this was followed by a decade of comedy in the 90's.

But it's now, and like the city itself, I've retired..so what to do is walk (or cab) somewhere, meet people and eat good food!

So I'll do that, and come back occasionally with pictures of things OTHER THAN metal turtles.

(Of course the pandemic killed a lot of businesses, so what I'm going to see is what's left!  (plus a whole lot of head shops because we legalized pot.) 

Till then, this is your roving  malcontent wishing you "a wicked good day"!     (Yea, they talk like that in Boston!  It's not far away.)

[deyana]

Sounds like a good place to live.

[johnnylee]

My hometown is Belmont NC but we moved 24 years ago because the traffic from Charlotte NC was so bad for my town, we are only a 2 lane community with a population of 5 lanes now, crimes bad also so we packed up and moved 2 counties away near the mountains in Vale NC.

[Hunny]

Apr 12, 2024 12:48:11 GMT johnnylee said:

My hometown is Belmont NC but we moved 24 years ago because the traffic from Charlotte NC was so bad for my town, we are only a 2 lane community with a population of 5 lanes now, crimes bad also so we packed up and moved 2 counties away near the mountains in Vale NC.

You know, Hooterville was in North Carolina! (Green Acres - my all time favorite sitcom! As a kid I truly loved things green.)

I worked (and even made a wikipedia entry, though it's gone now) on finding exactly where this fictional town could only be!
Granny TELLS US in an episode where she's dating Sam Drucker.
Mr Drysdale - worried about losing their money - asked Granny how she knows Sam.
She replies, "We's neighbors!" (And she tells us the mountain they lived on is only one town away.
So Hooterville is in North Carolina, just over the state border with Tennessee.

Yup.
And even though official maps don't show it, that's only because of the massive conspiracy against me.

[johnnylee]

Apr 29, 2024 17:30:05 GMT Hunny said:

Apr 12, 2024 12:48:11 GMT johnnylee said:

My hometown is Belmont NC but we moved 24 years ago because the traffic from Charlotte NC was so bad for my town, we are only a 2 lane community with a population of 5 lanes now, crimes bad also so we packed up and moved 2 counties away near the mountains in Vale NC.

You know, Hooterville was in North Carolina! (Green Acres - my all time favorite sitcom! As a kid I truly loved things green.)

I worked (and even made a wikipedia entry, though it's gone now) on finding exactly where this fictional town could only be!
Granny TELLS US in an episode where she's dating Sam Drucker.
Mr Drysdale - worried about losing their money - asked Granny how she knows Sam.
She replies, "We's neighbors!" (And she tells us the mountain they lived on is only one town away.
So Hooterville is in North Carolina, just over the state border with Tennessee.

Yup.
And even though official maps don't show it, that's only because of the massive conspiracy against me.

lol no Hun you mistaken Hooterville with Mayberry(mt pilot), Hooterville was in Northeastern Missouri, In the beginning he was in Chicago on business when he checked out a farm for sale from an ad in a publication. They also later make reference to the farm being about 300 miles from the Chicago airport. Green Acres is a 160 acre farm.

[Hunny]

Apr 30, 2024 15:08:27 GMT johnnylee said:

Apr 29, 2024 17:30:05 GMT Hunny said:

You know, Hooterville was in North Carolina! (Green Acres - my all time favorite sitcom! As a kid I truly loved things green.)

I worked (and even made a wikipedia entry, though it's gone now) on finding exactly where this fictional town could only be!
Granny TELLS US in an episode where she's dating Sam Drucker.
Mr Drysdale - worried about losing their money - asked Granny how she knows Sam.
She replies, "We's neighbors!" (And she tells us the mountain they lived on is only one town away.
So Hooterville is in North Carolina, just over the state border with Tennessee.

Yup.
And even though official maps don't show it, that's only because of the massive conspiracy against me.

lol no Hun you mistaken Hooterville with Mayberry(mt pilot), Hooterville was in Northeastern Missouri, In the beginning he was in Chicago on business when he checked out a farm for sale from an ad in a publication. They also later make reference to the farm being about 300 miles from the Chicago airport. Green Acres is a 160 acre farm.

Johnny Lee, that you know that is why you're ok!



Oops. (Alien escaped from my basement.)

[Hunny]

Apr 6, 2024 22:15:45 GMT deyana said:

Sounds like a good place to live.

For amenities, services, entertainment etc., it is.
But I'd still rather be in the forest, with the greenery, peace and blue sky, the fresh air and solitude..

[johnnylee]

Love living here but it sucks living way out here in the country with no car, and did I mention cutting and trimming this yard is hell on a old man with rebuilt legs.

[deyana]

Apr 30, 2024 16:21:27 GMT Hunny said:

Apr 6, 2024 22:15:45 GMT deyana said:

Sounds like a good place to live.

For amenities, services, entertainment etc., it is.
But I'd still rather be in the forest, with the greenery, peace and blue sky, the fresh air and solitude..

If only we could have it all huh>

I am torn between the city and the countryside.  I like both but for different reasons.

[deyana]

I do admire you, johnnylee. You are an inspiration of what real strength means.