"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 19th, 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 19th morning in 1775.
Pictures: Google images
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