One if by land; two if by sea…
On the road to Lexington and Concord
Nothing like a big round number to draw attention to things…
Two hundred and fifty years ago…Paul Revere’s ride…The shot heard ‘round the world.
I wonder if grade school kids still memorize it: “Listen my children and you shall hear…”
It doesn’t take much before history, myth and legend become hopelessly intermixed. The retold events of that fateful night and day in small town America have become one with our country’s founding story, exemplifying what we want to believe about ourselves.
It’s a stirring image, all right. A lone horseman galloping through the night alerting farmers and townspeople along the way…”The British are coming!!!” Quite an odd alarm when you stop to think of it…those farmers and townspeople…good British subjects, one and all.
Particularly odd because that night those countryfolk were feeling themselves most intensely British. Reaching for their muskets, assembling on the village green, it was their traditional rights and liberties as Englishmen they were there to defend against an encroaching tyranny personified by the King.
King George III…two and a half centuries later, history show him to be a pretty harmless guy…batshit crazy much of the time, but a real Caspar Milquetoast compared with history’s genuine assholes…it may be tempting to draw contemporary comparisons but let us resist. For the moment.
At the very least some very unwise decisions were made in the crazy king’s name. Bad, bad decisions, like the Stamp Act, the tea tax, the oppressive military crackdown on the Boston loudmouths. Policies that seemed very un-British to the very British Bostonians who began to seriously wonder what their crazy king was up to.
And then to prepare for the worst.
Looking back with clear eyes, it’s amazing how ordinary and accidental it all was. We’ve dressed those folks up in hero’s robes, but in life they were the most ordinary of men…laborers, tradesmen, farmers...determined to protect their heritage and stand for their rights. It was just a few dozen ordinary guys -- confused, pissed-off people -- milling around the Lexington town square when the king’s men arrived and something happened.
And all hell broke loose, and would stay on the loose for eight long, bloody years.
Last September, I walked the Lexington town square. Save for a bit of signage and statuary, it could be a city park along a small-town Main Street pretty much anywhere in the country – no sign that anything important, much less earth shaking, would ever happen or ever happened there. The simplicity of the place is a reminder that our country had its start in a very ordinary place with very ordinary people keeping faith with who they were and what they knew to be right.
Right now it seems particularly fit that we take note of how ordinary folks stood their ground against the arbitrary acts of a crazy king. The rights that were passed down to us were first protected and preserved by ordinary people in ordinary place – little different from us, here and now. We’re not called on to take the flintlock from over the fireplace to confront the redcoats on the village green, but to use whatever means in our power to preserve and protect the rule of law, respect for rights, and liberty of person that were preserved and protected by generations before us.
Let Paul Revere ride again…