Community Corner

Local Rivalry: Some Reasons Lynnfield Is Better Than North Reading

A good-natured look at the two neighbors as they prepare to play out their annual Thanksgiving football rivalry.

One thing about a good sports rivalry is that there's usually a fair amount of banter and ribbing back and forth between the two teams. In that spirit, local Patch websites are jumping into the fray with light-hearted looks at what makes their towns better than their rivals. With that, here goes:

- North Reading's most famous residents include an Obama Administration speech writer and a 19th Century author who wrote under the name "Oliver Optic." Lynnfield residents have included Carl Yastrzemski, Dwight Evans, and numerous other Boston sports legends.

- Both Lynnfield and North Reading have an iconic local building on their town seals. Lynnfield has the Old Meeting House and North Reading has the Flint Memorial Library on its seal. Lynnfield's seal explains what its building is and throws in a couple of key dates from town history. North Reading's seal was possibly designed to fool tourists looking for Disney's Haunted Mansion. It also may or may not contain a set of lottery numbers that will come up around 2016.

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- Lynnfield keeps its tax rate low because with all that light drifting over from the strip malls in North Reading, who needs streetlights?

- North Reading has a McDonalds, while Lynnfield has about 100 McMansions. We'll have to call that one a draw.

Find out what's happening in Lynnfieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

- If you're not careful when googling "North Reading," you could easily end up on the website of the notorious anti-literacy group "No Reading."

- But seriously, Lynnfield and North Reading have many similarities and strong ties, and they will take that spirit to the field with them on Thanksgiving morning. Part of that is due to the fact that at the end of the day, at least they can both make fun of Middleton!

Finally, in the spirit of this longstanding football rivalry, North Reading Patch has a few ideas on why its town is better than Lynnfield. .


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