The Power of Words. Bob Kerr: Break a knee, drain the lake, make your point

3/25/98
Break a knee, drain the lake, make your point

By BOB KERR
Journal-Bulletin columnist

       You stand by the water's edge off Reservoir Road in Pascoag, waiting for the telltale circle of bubbles and steam and the distinct sucking sound that tell you Vincent Mesolella Jr. is about to emerge, the muck and weeds of the bottom feeder clinging to his sodden legislative duds, a drain plug dangling from his teeth.
       But then someone tells you you're just being silly. Vinny's only sunk to the depths; he's not living in them.
       So, feeling just a little embarrassed by your Monster of the Black Lagoon fixation, you leave the shore of the diminished Pascoag Reservoir and drive to the Adult Correctional Institutions, where you ask to talk to a guy doing hard time for extortion.
       And you ask the guy, who is showing some prison pallor, if he ever tried draining a reservoir to get people to meet his demands.
       No, he says; he just threatened to break people's knees, maybe blow up their houses. He never even thought about draining a reservoir.
       He asks how much time in the slammer the guy who drained the reservoir was given.
       No time, he's told. But the state may give the guy $425,000.
       The prisoner asks to be taken back to his cell.
       As you drive away, you know the extortionist will lie in his bunk for a long, long time and wonder why he picked a career in the kind of extortion that puts a man in prison instead of in clover. He will probably go a little bit crazy.
       And Vincent "The Plug" Mesolella - a state representative from North Providence and one of the crown jewels of a legislature encrusted with some real gems - will continue to provide a compelling example of how money and power don't come with handling instructions.
       Mesolella has done something so childishly moronic that it inspires the same kind of stunned fascination as the man who sets his beard on fire to get a woman's attention.
       He has drained half the water from the Pascoag Reservoir, also known as Echo Lake, to try to force the state Department of Environmental Management to buy it from him for $425,000.
       We have all seen this kind of behavior and probably been guilty of it. But with any luck, and the wise guidance of parents and teachers, we leave it behind by the time we face the challenge of junior high school.
       But not The Plug. The Plug is refusing to concede the passing of the years and the attendant farewell to childhood rant.
       At a meeting with state and local officials on Monday, The Plug's lawyer, John C. Dean, tried for a cutting lawyerly quip, which sounded really dumb but confirmed a rock-solid bond with his client.
       If the lake is completely drained, Dean suggested, maybe high-rise apartments could go up there.
       John C., you rascal. Bet you've got a dozen dead-fish jokes just waiting for the next round of Drain the Lake.
       Yesterday, at the reservoir, docks stood several feet above the water and rocks once submerged were bathed in spring sunshine. And homeowners - several of whom have clearly tried to match the Nevada lakeside opulence of the Corleone family in Godfather II - were left to ponder the slow retreat of their cherished water view. Some have hired lawyers.
       But this has little to do with whether Mesolella has the right to drain his lake, or whether he actually owns the water.
       It has a lot to do with the piggish insistence of one aberration of the elective process that his interests take precedence over the interests of hundreds of others, who see a lake and think fishing and swimming, instead of dealing.
       There is one obvious solution to this face-off with The Plug. Pay him what he wants. But pay him with the understanding that he go away, forget the 401 area code, and never darken Rhode Island's government corridors again.
       It would be a bargain.

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