9 - Boston

Day Twenty-six. Thursday, 30th September.

Up at dawn again - half-past eight to be precise and off to Boston. We thought we'd go the scenic route instead of the Pike but the scenery was nothing so we joined up with the main road after about twenty miles.

I felt we'd made a mess of New England. We wanted to see more of the Green Mountains, the top of Vermont and a bit of New Hampshire. But we also wanted to see Norman Rockwell and OSV and we hadn't the energy to do both - nor the time. Perhaps another day. Perhaps.

We fought our way into Logan Airport and then back out by bus to the Park Plaza Hotel. This was truly palatial. For the benefit of doubt it should be explained that all the big city hotels were booked through an agency long before we ever left Bonnie Scotland. Presumably they have buying power. It was certainly enlightening to compare the rate for the room posted on the inside of the door with what it actually cost us. These were moments of financial cheer in a bleak world. The Park Plaza made the Orchard in San Francisco look like a shack. The lobby was the size of Ayr Town Hall and we were on the fourteenth floor. The view from the top over the city was panoramic. After dark there were lights everywhere and we could see planes coming in to land at the airport (at least I hoped they were - we were awfully far up in the clouds in here).

We went for a walk through the park to Cheers. As often with man-made dreams, the reality was a disappointment (not really - it was no worse than I had expected). Outside it was not called Cheers but the Bull and Finch. This was a play on Charles Bullfinch, a Boston architect who seemed to have designed every building in the city worth a mention in the guide book. Inside it was nothing like the TV set although Anne swore that if you looked in one of the corners and half shut your eyes and multiplied it by four (like a kaleidoscope) it was just like the island bar. In fact, it was all wee rooms in which customers and sightseers jostled for space. The place was like an ant-hill and somebody had obviously cashed in on his vicarious TV fame.

We wandered up the street on Beacon Hill, all brick-paved sidewalks and elegant terraced town houses, past the State House with its golden dome and suddenly we were back in Grub Street. Another quarter mile and we were back among the top shops. There seemed to be no town plan that I ever could discern.

We stepped into the King's Chapel built in 1689 in the name of King James II as part of the battle to let some folks worship as Anglicans instead of Puritans. The Puritans had apparently become a little intolerant (does that surprise you?) and it took the Royal Governor's intervention to acquire land on which to build one of the oldest buildings in the U.S.A. There was a special pew set aside for the Governor. A plaque indicated that the pew had been abolished in 1826 as being 'an undemocratic reminder of another era'. Somebody had eventually had second thoughts and given the Governor back his chair.

I was a bit less sure about their doctrine. They described themselves as 'Unitarian/Universalist in the Christian tradition'. Their noon service the day before we arrived was based on a book by James Herriot. They would probably think me peculiar too.

We walked over a stone slab denoting the site of the Latin school, one of the oldest in the U.S.A., founded 1635. Where's your Ayr Academy now? (Where it had been for 402 years before, that's where.)

I bought a book in the Globe Corner Bookshop, the present day successor to that used in the 1800s by Emerson, Longfellow, Harriet B. Stowe and even Dickens. Following in the footsteps of such famous people, I felt honoured to have Anne pay the $15. One book didn't seem nearly enough, but I knew what would happen if my abstinence slipped.

By this time we were lost. I knew it but Anne didn't agree. She knew exactly how to get back to the hotel and by the time we did my legs were like jelly.

Day Twenty-seven. Friday, 1st October.

This was bus tour day in Boston. It would be impossible (and wearisome) to list all we saw and heard and did. Boston was America's Bannockburn, Edinburgh Old Town and Burns' Cottage all rolled into one. They don't have much history but what they have, they flaunt. (One very noticeable difference between Britain and the United States is they frequency with which they display their national flag. We found it in cemeteries, front gardens, above shops - everywhere. To achieve the same exposure in Britain you need to win a war or crown a king.) All day we kept meeting Paul Revere, John Hancock and Samuel Adams riding horses, fighting the British, standing on plinths or lying in cemeteries. I explained to an American lady that England had never beaten the Scots. 'No,' she said, 'but we beat you' which I thought to be a remark in extremely bad taste.

In the morning we toured Cambridge, Harvard, Lexington and Concord (at least). Our guide, Edward G. Fogarty was kin to Henry of the Grand Canyon. However, he spoke faster, like a Bostonian, between his teeth, wore a suit and didn't drive the bus at the same time. He couldn't have done so. He talked most of the time and since driving in Boston was a full-time job, he would have killed us in the attempt. Unlike San Francisco or Washington, Boston was obviously not planned, but just grew. Throughout our time there, I never succeeded in knowing where we were or the road to where we were going. However, Edward and his lady driver, Jackie, knew all that between them. Jackie was an enormous woman in a huge shapeless bulk of jersey and bad teeth but with muscles like Rosie the Riveter. One of the features of America was the high proportion of female bus drivers. Usually they were driving automatic vehicles with power steering but Jackie was in control of the real thing. She worked for her money. The traffic was totally individualistic and I was exhausted just watching her. Edward wore a ring with a stone about the size of the rock I was carrying around from Arizona. 'Class of '53' he explained, but did not add if it were Harvard or Milwaukee Technical College.

We set off for history, on the north side of the Charles River. We passed the fire station with small doors that looked big enough only for horses. They were. When the internal combustion engine arrived, they bought new wagons and discovered they wouldn't go through the doors. Since the doors were arch-ways, enlarging them would have caused the whole building to collapse. Answer: Boston Fire Service now has a specially miniaturised fleet of fire engines unique throughout U.S.A.

We passed the river where Harvard men rowed and noticed that Boston had the same solution as many other places to disused warehouses - they turned them into flats. Finally, we came to the town of Cambridge and its claim to fame, Harvard - part of the Ivy League. Unfortunately, the ivy had started to eat the cement and later buildings now discourage the stuff like the plague. We passed round the block where J. F. Kennedy was a freshman. Everybody claims to know which room was his - 'pick your own window' said Edward 'you've as much chance of being right as anybody else'.

Harvard was just like Glasgow University - buildings all over the place around the central core. The first thing we saw was the van from the Maintenance Department - you get them everywhere. Nothing however could hide the Johnny-come-lately look of its 1638 foundation. Edward explained that on high occasions and big graduations, visitors were invited to join the procession in order of the date of foundation of their universities. I reckoned that Glasgow would have few competitors at 1451.

This side of the river, like the whole of Boston, I was to discover, was full of churches. All around were University divinity schools and Jesuit colleges and the stoodents were sent out to practise their skills on the locals.
On all sides was American history. Henry Longfellow lived here. Mary Baker Eddy was buried there (how come she ever died?), and Anne Sullivan (pal of Helen Keller) had gone to the Day Blind College there. Nowadays it ran a compulsory course for baseball umpires. American joke by Edward.

We had been passing through up-market frame houses all this time. Now we came to the very up-market area. Henry Kissinger lived over there. The Allcott girls stayed at Orchard House over here, Ralph Waldo Emerson was around somewhere. The place was stiff with history. And, of course, modest cough, Edward, our courier, lived over there (obviously not short of a bob).

Next was Lexington. Here was where it all happened. Note well the name of Paul Revere and the date of 19th April 1775. My knowledge of Paul R. had been a bit vague heretofore but no longer. Advised by secret light signals from Boston, he rode through the night to warn that the British were coming. Captain John Parker was ready for them - 'Don't fire unless you're fired upon but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here'. Fighting talk. The British arrived and both sides had a long look. Then, said Edward, somebody known to all Lexington but kept secret ever since (the fellow was drunk), fired a shot which was 'heard around the world' according to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Poetic exaggeration, of course, but it was the first colonial bullet fired at soldiers of the king. War was on the way.
And so into Concord. More of the same. Cannon, graves, plaques, Paul Revere, John Hancock, Sam Adams and probably Uncle Tom Cobley. They had all been here on 19th April 1775.

We trampled all over a battle field and Edward retold the story of every bullet - who had fired it and who stopped it. We crossed bridges held to the last man and circled flagpoles where the cause of freedom was proclaimed. It was just like Bannockburn or Culloden with an American accent.

Back across the river we stopped for lunch. Our choice fell on The Purple Shamrock - Boston's answer to Jinty McGinty's. At least the music was cheerier than Ashton Lane but equally repetitive and tuneless. On the wall were posters and other ephemera. 'Joe's Morgue. You stab 'em, we slab 'em. Some go to heaven and some go to hell. Mastercard and Visa accepted.'

In the afternoon, Edward and Jackie took us round colonial Boston. Again, a total confusion of streets and vehicles. Again, a plethora of sights, sites, buildings and people (either in solid stone or crumbled dust).

This time, it wasn't Paul Revere and the battle that punctuated everything, it was the Boston Tea Party. This started over the colonists' objection that taxation without representation was tyranny. What they did not realise, said Edward, was that taxation with representation was no great deal either. We saw the building where the piece of effrontery was planned. Later we saw a full size replica of one of the ships - the Beaver, and were able to throw overboard into the harbour large mock packages marked 'Tea'. We then hauled them back in on the end of a rope so someone else could have a shot.

The buildings weren't as bizarre or varied as San Francisco and there weren't as many official buildings as Washington but nevertheless Boston had it all. Much of the town was expensive hotels. Many buildings were churches - the first of this, the old of that, the re-building of something else. Again, as noted above, some seemed to have more concern for their social position, their place in history, than their theology.

What else? Alexander Graham Bell's laboratory. The John Hancock Building (a little after his time - it was faced from bottom to distant top with glass). The Subway - 1895. Glasgow made it by 1896 - not too far behind this time. The first of everything in the U.S.A. - public library, free public library, public school, anglican church, papal mass (although they had to wait till the 20th century for that). Here was the statue of Edward Everett who spoke for an hour at Gettysburg before Old Abe said his piece. There was the hotel where Ho Chi Min washed dishes.

The harbour was full of wee boats and in due course we arrived at what had been Charlestown Naval Yard. This had been closed some years back. (There was some complicated political joke about Nixon doing it for revenge in Democrat country. I didn't fully catch it but Edward made it clear his sympathies did not lie with ex-Governor Dukakis and presumably therefore not with President Clinton.)

Here was lying U.S.S. Constitution, an old sail driven battleship, built in 1797 and nicknamed Old Ironsides because the British gun shot just bounced off the strong wooden sides. Old Ironsides had long been pensioned off but for reasons too obscure for me to understand it was presently in dry dock being given a face lift. All the masts had been removed and a chunk of the main mast was lying nearby. It looked as thick as a whole redwood tree from Muir Woods and it surprised me that the boat didn't turn turtle.

We all tramped round this mast-less hulk which below decks looked like a joiner's workshop and admired the stout build of what we could see and the stout hearts of those obliged to live and work aboard her. We were accompanied on our tour by a very small, very pert, piece of skirt, wearing her blue battledress top, her white trousers and her blue sailor's hat `a la mode 1800. She looked about eighteen if that and she explained that in order to act as a tour guide (as part of her duties as a U.S. sailor) she had had to get rid of some of her marked southern accent. You'd never have guessed. After she had harangued us at each part of the boat, she shouted, without a pause 'Any questions?' No one dared to ask in case she had them whipped with the cat o'nine tails.

And so back to the hotel. After a day of it I was exhausted. How Edward (seventy if a day) and Jackie felt, I could only imagine.

Day Twenty-eight. Saturday, 2nd October.

Our last day in the U.S. of A. We rose late, grateful that we had spent half the previous night re-packing in an effort to make all four suitcases evenly weighted and balanced. There ensued a long hassle at the check out and luggage storage for no good reason that I can remember and we were out in the street. Once again we were lost in no time but Anne soon found the road to Filene's basement. This was like Aladdin's cave in the depths below one of Boston's prestigious stores. It appeared to contain the whole of the Glasgow barras twice over and everything was CHEAP! The principle seemed to be that what didn't sell upstairs came down below at a discount. Every week the price fell until it was either sold or given away to charity. Not surprisingly, most of it appeared to be rubbish. I had never seen so many pairs of knickers in my life. I was so glad we hadn't found the place before we had packed and even Anne gave up before its sheer enormity. We passed on out.

Back to history. The Old South Church had been Congregationalist but was now a museum - just like OSV but up market. Box pews with doors and portable heaters (anything from warm bricks to the family dog), blankets and note books to record the finer points of the sermon. There was not much room for dancing. It was possible to hear an (authentic?) audio recording of part of the morning service on 18th July 1745. The preacher had an English accent and spoke of these troublous times (something to do with a fellow in Scotland called Charlie). The service began by singing the Old 100th with the help of a precentor and the sermon was on the grace of God. A fine word, shouted loud and clear to all present. Families sat in their own pew but the poor, the slaves and the teenage boys sat in the gallery (presumably to follow their own devices without disturbing the more pious below).

A copy was displayed of the sermon preached on the glorious and happy victory of the Duke of Cumberland on 14th April 1746 at Culloden in Scotland. We ken noo who our friends were. The church was also used for town meetings and there was an audio of the discussion on the tea tax. Uproar and indignation. I'd heard much the same for different reasons two hundred years later.

We saw, but skipped, the Old State House, the home of the British Government complete with Lion, Unicorn and Crown on the top of the roof. Today, there hangs a U.S. flag of thirteen stars and thirteen stripes. Across the road stood Scott Fletcher in his kilt and bagpipes playing every known Scottish tune for pennies. We couldn't get him to stop blowing and start speaking so we didn't get to learn his provenance, whether he was a Scotsman on the make or an upstart colonial adulterating the pipes for money.

We also met Benjamin Franklin looking remarkably fresh for his age. 'A photograph? Sure. $2.' Don't bother. We'll remember what you looked like. He wasn't like Benjamin Franklin anyway. We reached Paul Revere's house - a kind of American Burns' Cottage but Paul was a silversmith and obviously lived better than Rab. Outside, a bunch of nondescripts in tired-looking uniforms were standing around while their leader mumbled on about life as a militia man or a regular U.S. soldier in 1775. It was a golden opportunity for entertainment turned into complete boredom. The only action we saw before giving up reminded me of R.A.F. Bridgnorth on one of its worse days. It was obviously going to be a long war. The captain said militia duty was not popular. I'm not surprised. We passed a few cool moments (it was 70°) in the New North Church - an R.C. establishment attended by Paul Revere in his day. It was very white, very plain, very appealing to hot and weary feet.

Finally, to the Old North Church. This was still in use as a church and the old boy in the pulpit who gave us his spiel was over ninety, the last man to be born in Paul Revere's house (so he said, and who were we to say he wasn't?).
This, of course, was the church from whose steeple the sexton shone the lights to warn Paul Revere - 'one by land, two if by sea'. Having given the signal, the sexton scampered home to bed. The British also saw the signal and roused the sexton to open the church and search for the miscreant. He couldn't be found, funnily enough. So it was interesting to be told that the original steeple had been blown down by a hurricane long, long ago and what we now saw had no more to do with Paul Revere than Ayr Town Hall. It reminded me of Wallace's axe.

Here again we had our firsts. The organ and the clock were both the original in use after more than two centuries, and maybe the man said they were the oldest in U.S.A. Maybe he didn't. In the adjacent museum was the original of a painting of Paul Revere's ride - a wild-eyed man on a wild-mouthed horse, galloping through the darkness.

And there, on the wall of the church, a plaque to the effect that forty years before, in 1736, the Rev. Charles Wesley had preached during the months of September and October. Isn't the world a shrinking place?

We walked back through the Italian sector of the town. On every corner stood wildly gesticulating Italiano shouting at each other as if they had all gone deaf. They would soon if they kept up that noise.

We went up again to the top of Beacon Hill, this time from the other side. I've forgotten where it was when Paul Revere was needing it but today it was crowned by the State (Capitol) House and a large eagle on top of an obelisk. And on the pedestal these words appear: 'Americans, while from this eminence scenes of luxurious fertility, of flourishing commerce and the abodes of social happiness meet your view, forget not those who by their exertions have brought to you these blessings'. I thought that Paul Revere would have liked that.

J.F.K. was standing round the corner outside the State House so we took his photo and walked back through the park to the hotel. We collected our bits and pieces and climbed aboard the airport bus.
The holiday was over.

Click for previous chapter         Click for Epilogue

Click for USA 1993 Contents page