So what do you think of when you hear the name “Boston”? “Puritans”? Not hardly!
Boston Baked Beans, Red Sox, The Big Dig, or the Boston Marathon Bombing? Maybe The Boston Naval Yard, The Boston (aka) New England Patriots, Tom Brady, Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, JFK, Boston Celtics, Boston Bruins, or Beantown? Okay, okay, enough is enough. Just think, how good the NE Patriot’s would be if the NY Giants didn’t beat their ass in the two Super Bowls!! Heck Yeah!!!
So before I go any farther, I posed a question to the “gang of four” (us). I asked “Who said the infamous phrase, “One, if by land, and two, if by sea”? If you don’t know that is okay. I’ll tell you who had the correct answer at the end of this blog.
Yup, Boston is one of the oldest municipalities in America, founded in 1630 by Puritan settlers from the English town of the same name. Lots of history, it was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution and the nation’s founding, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the siege of Boston. Upon American independence from Great Britain, the city continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture.
After some googling about where to park large vehicles (aka big hips/big lips), there was only one or two open parking lots in the downtown area large enough for a truck with big hips and big lips. Today we drove 41 miles to Beantown, USA. When we arrived at the parking lots, the attendant, waved his hand and said “too big”. In reverse we go, and our professional truck driver started driving the one ways streets until we found a parallel parking spot just right. Good job Howie.
We walked across a city park green space and bought our tickets for the hop on hop off trolley. Within 20 minutes we were sitting on a tour bus being narrated to and observing all that Beantown has to offer.
We decided to stay on the trolley and just get a nice overview of the city without getting off. There are plenty things to do here, museums, Paul Revere’s house, Boston Naval Yard where the U.S.S. Constitution is harbored. Oh, by the way, don’t forget the freedom trail but we weren’t there to walk or hike, we were there to see Boston while traveling 15 miles an hour through congested city streets with a narrator telling stories that were mostly true, and being humorous.
It’s always funny how these tour guys think they’re so funny. Sometimes they are, and other times they are just down right aggravating. The tour guide was able to spin some “historical ” stories to keep us engaged as we traveled through Beantown streets.
It just so happens that Howie’s truck was parked right across the street from “TV Bar” Cheers. You remember ” Where everybody knows your name”? (You sang it didn’t you?). As we walked in going to the bar, I actually “sang” that phase aloud . It was all a lie, no one knew my name outside of the gang of 4. But we had burgers and beer and we all had a good time reminiscing at the old TV show, it was fun a day.
If one were to think of Boston as the perfect symbol or beginning of the American Revolutionary War you wouldn’t be wrong. Remember the red coats, and minutemen exchanged gunfire at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. Described as “the shot heard round the world”. See ya King George…No more taxes and messing with our trade. We want Independence!
Paul Revere arranged to have a lantern lit and hanging in the belfry of Boston’s Christ Church in April of 1775. When he learned which direction the Redcoats were going to attack – one lantern if the British were coming by land and two lanterns if they were coming by sea – and began to make preparations for his ride to alert the local militias and citizens about the impending attack.
No one in the gang of 4 knew that infamous phrase was by Paul Revere. Hope they read this blog.
George being a Master Mason should know this. The Boston Tea Party was a group from a Masonic Lodge. When Masons have their Lodge meeting they go through a procedure to open Lodge. The Boston Tea Party went through the Opening of Lodge and then went to throw tea containers overboard from the ships. After they did this, they all dispersed in different directions to not be caught. They never went back to their Lodge to go through the procedure to close the Lodge. To this day the one Lodge in Boston has remained open and has never been closed. As Paul Harvey would say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”
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