Patriots Day

"Listen my children and you shall hear 

of the midnight ride of Paul Revere."

By mid-April each year my Medford neighborhood was awash with spring growth. Bright yellow forsythia blossomed along the hundred-foot entry to Cedar Road. The branches of young maples further along were painted with small, light green bunches of flowers, swaying in the morning air. The grass in front yards was finally beginning to turn green, as well, while light breezes blew softly in and around the new growth, bearing the smells of April into our house through slightly opened windows.

Each year, on one quiet April morning, Dad was always home from work putting on the coffee; Mom was in the kitchen making fresh muffins-jelly filled or blueberry; while very few of us kids were awake. It was school vacation week, and this particular day, April 19^th, was Patriots Day which brought activity in our home, as well as the rest of Massachusetts, to a Sunday morning like start -- slow.

But on this particular day, it wasn’t good to sleep in because in our town, for the Patriots Day holiday, there was always a parade. My siblings and I loved parades, and since our home wasn’t far from the main parade route, it was even easier to get to see them. We merely walked for five minutes, and we were there.

Most parade lovers know that a good position along a parade route is key to enjoying it. And it was the same for us. But if we moved too slowly on Patriots Day morning, if we began to hear marching music before we had left the house, we would have a tough time getting a most desired spot -- one near the Cradock Bridge which spanned a narrow section of the Mystic River near Medford Square. Now, this was important to us because it was a tradition to have a re-enactment of Medford’s portion of Paul Revere’s ride as a part of the celebration. To be in the right spot at the right moment when Paul Revere would arrive was akin to being awake when Santa arrived on Christmas Eve. Everyone buzzed with anticipation, waiting, watching, and listening for the sound of the horse’s hooves as they passed over the Cradock Bridge.

According to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” "...The fate of a nation was riding that night.” Revere’s responsibility was to forewarn the Minutemen that the British soldiers were coming and that they needed to assemble quickly and be ready to face them. A developing nation needed a vigilant army, no matter how unskilled. Longfellow stated that “it was twelve (midnight) by the village clock when (Revere) crossed the bridge into Medford town” on his route to awaken and warn the Minutemen. And so it was in Medford when I was a child, each Patriot’s Day, Paul Revere arrived on horseback to awaken the sleeping colonists as he had done over 150 years previously.

So it was our habit on Patriots Day, after sleeping only a bit longer than usual, to hop out of bed, fly down to have a muffin, and canter down to the Square for the best spot we could find on the main parade route. If we got close to the tall white house on the corner of High Street and Bradley Road across from the Cradock Bridge, we knew we would hear the horses ‘clip, clop, clip,’ and then see “Paul Revere” and his horse cross the street to the home of Captain Isaac Hall, leader of the Medford Minuteman militia. We would see and hear, Captain Hall, wakened by the sounds, open his bedroom window dressed in his nightshirt, and ask, “What news do you bring?” Revere always answered, “The Regulars are out!”  We would watch Paul Revere dismount, wrap the horse's reins around the shiny black hitching post, and enter the house briefly before finally heading off toward Arlington on his way to Lexington and Concord, continuing to spread the warning. We would watch history reenacted--every year that we got a spot close enough. 

Growing up in Medford meant learning much about its early history –the events and the people directly connected to it. And though Paul Revere’s midnight ride was immortalized in Longfellow’s poem, many other men and women played pivotal roles in that part of American History. One of those less recognized was a man named William Dawse, another colonist who set out on horseback on that dark April night after seeing the North Church tower lights, just as Revere had; however, Dawes actually succeeded in warning the Minutemen in Lexington and Concord of the imminent arrival of the British troops, while Revere’s journey was cut short when shortly after leaving Medford he was captured by the British.

Growing up in Medford meant having American history as a natural part of the cycle of our lives, our school year and our seasonal celebrations. So every April when the trees bud and the forsythia flower, I remember the midnight ride of Paul Revere and his news that sent Captain Hall on his way to lead the Medford Minutemen to an uncertain fate on that early April 19^th morning in 1775.

Pictures: Google images

All rights reserved  (c) 2017 malvena baxter 

Medford: Winter Lunch Period at the Wait School

In the late 1950’s when I was in elementary school, the winter months meant a change in our school day schedule. From September until the end of December, the day ran from 8:35 am until 3:35 pm with an hour lunch break. We walked home to eat and returned to school again to line up for the one o’clock bell.  Once Christmas vacation was over, we returned to school with a day that began at 8:00 am and ran until 2:00 pm. Our lunch period at that time of year was 30 minutes.

The change in the school hours meant going to the back hall closet at home and unearthing my metal lunch box with its perfectly fitting thermos bottle. I can still see the picture on the outside of it--Roy Rogers with his handsome smile, arm raised in a huge wave of hello, his cowboy hat sitting snugly on his head while he perched on his golden palomino pony, Trigger.

My lunches, on the other hand, were not as memorable. Some days it was bologna with mustard or peanut butter and marshmallow, while on Fridays, tuna fish was a regular.

Each type of sandwich was easy for my parents to make for five  kids, and I found mine predictable and delicious. Every once in a while, an odd sandwich filling would greet me as I unwrapped the waxed paper. The most unfortunate surprise was DEVILED HAM!   Ugh!!!   Smooth, spicy, grit-your-teeth yucky. I was a second grader when that one appeared one winter day in my lunchbox. I can tell you I didn’t eat more than a bite and certainly wasn’t hungry enough to swallow that stuff. I asked Mom about it when I got home because I didn’t even know at the time what it was called, but I don’t remember ever finding it in my lunch box again.

The thermos was always filled with hot chocolate milk which cooled to a drinkable temperature by lunch time after sitting on the classroom window sill all morning long. Unfortunately, in those days, the thermos had a glass lining, so if I happened to drop my lunchbox while being jostled by the forty kids funneling into the same small aisle leading to the back windowsill, I held my breath as I bent to pick it up, dreading the telltale sound of tinkling glass, as the broken pieces inside hit each other as they were shaken in the hot chocolate. If that unfortunate accident happened on the same day as an undesirable lunch, I was out of luck as far as food and a drink was concerned until I got home after school. There were no cafeterias in Medford elementary schools in those days, and no grilled cheese sandwich magically appeared to fill the void. Hunger followed me the rest of the day, but luckily that was a rare occurrence. My parents wanted us to have a decent lunch and made every attempt to make lunch appealing while being frugal and health conscious.

It is amazing to think of an elementary school with no designated lunchroom or cafeteria. We ate in our classrooms, at our desks, with the teacher eating her lunch along with us. Depending upon the teacher, we may be allowed to talk quietly with our neighbors. Once everyone was finished eating, we might spend ten minutes playing a quick game like “Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button” or listening to the teacher read aloud a few pages in a book like The Last of the Mohican’s or Little Women. But no matter what, lunch period was quiet and well controlled.

After April vacation, our school schedule changed back to the 8:35 am start, and I walked home for lunch once again. As far as I was concerned that really was the best arrangement because home was a place of people, appealing food smells, and lots of comfortable family rituals. Mom and my younger sisters were always there. Dad was there most days, too, choosing to walk home from work each lunch time after his last morning patient had been seen. Lunch at home varied from day to day and was colorful and tasty. It might be grilled cheese and tomato, piping hot left over spaghetti, or any variety of seasonal sandwich. We drank cold milk and didn’t have to worry about broken glass. With the family sitting around the kitchen table, the room came alive with chatter and noise, but, once we kids had finished eating, we were excused from the table. At that point we might get the mail from the thin black mailbox outside the back door, check how the garden was growing, or watch a few minutes of the "Big Brother, Bob Emery" tv show, before heading back to school.

To me, single sessions could wait until I was in junior high because, unlike at the Wait School, there would be a cafeteria with food to purchase in an emergency, a table to sit at where I could eat and talk with friends without hunger or consequence, and, oh, yes, there would be lots of happy, comfortable noise.




Pictures: Etsy & Google images
All rights reserved  (c) 2017 malvena baxter