In Summer Doldrums Local Gadfly is Running Out of Issues

WESTLAND, Mass. Emil Nostrand is a perennial burr under the saddle of civic progress in this small western suburb of Boston, a distinction that he bears with pride even though it brings him a goodly number of scowls whenever he crosses the town green. “They say I’m a fly in the ointment, the skunk at the garden party, a thorn in their side, et cetera,” he says with a sardonic grin. “And they say it like those are bad things.”

I
“We don’t need a new fire truck. The one we have is only 120 years old.”

Nostrand has fought bond issues for every type of municipal expenditure, from playgrounds to fire trucks, from police to libraries, and his generally dismal won-loss record doesn’t discourage him. “You’ve got all these venture capitalists building mega-mansions, they’ve got loads of money to pay for fancy schools for their spoiled brat kids,” he says with a scowl as he gazes out across farmland that has been in his family for three generations. “Me–I’m on a fixed income so I’ve got to squeeze the nickels ’til the buffalo are extinct.”

“Damn kids threw a frisbee on my lawn–I vote ‘no’ on a new elementary school!”

But summer finds Nostrand with time on his hands as school is out, many locals are away on vacation, and no town meetings to raise taxes or spend money are scheduled. “Your typical New England crank has what I call ‘omnidirectional umbrage,’” says Professor R. Philip Richstag of Bay State University. “He’s like Groucho Marx in ‘Horsefeathers’; whatever it is, he’s against it–but he needs something to be against.”

Groucho as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff

So it took a slightly sour carton of milk to provide Nostrand with his latest cause during the dog days of August. “I was at the Mom & Pop Diner on the eastern edge of town, over by Waltburg, and it totally ruined my corn flakes,” he says, recalling the incident with a look of disgust on his face. “Then I got to wondering–what’s the story behind those two. Are they legit or not?”

A little sleuthing around produced Nostrand’s first hint at the depths of depravity he would seek to uncover through a remorseless campaign of complaint and invective. He discovered that the “mom” and “pop” in question–Emilio and Beverly Costantini–were in fact childless, and thus the name of their diner was misleading. “We spend all this money on government,” Nostrand says with exasperation. “How they hell could they let something like that get by them?”

Next, Nostrand focused on the couple’s hiring practices. “How did she get her job–she’s his wife, fer Christ sake–it’s nepotism!” he says with disgust. “We get a lot of that in a small town. A position opens up on the police force, and the new hire just happens to be the chief’s nephew after a ‘nationwide search.’”

” . . . and their blinking neon sign is irritating.” 

When complaints to the Town Attorney fell on indifferent ears, Nostrand took out an ad in The Town Crier, the local newspaper, which prefers to focus on less contentious subjects and so had turned down his previous letters to the editor. “Don’t you want to know where your dining dollars go?” he asked in large bold print. “What else are they hiding?”

It took a free initial consultation with a young attorney who had just set himself up in practice in town with the expectation that he’d mainly be drafting wills and real estate deeds to persuade Nostrand not to make a federal, state or even local case out of his low-grade irritation. “That young fellow told me it would cost thousands of dollars to sue, and I couldn’t expect to get anything out of it,” he says, shaking his head. “And we think we live in a free country.”

Share this Post: