Patriots Day For All

So, Patriots Day.

We got up and left at 3:50 am. We got to Lexington at about 4:15 because it turns out there's no one driving around at 4:15 am. We parked at the home of the parents of a girl in our ward and walked down to the green. And then we stood around and waited until 5:30.

The mayor or somebody has a megaphone and tells you what's going to happen. A church bell rings, signaling for the 20 or so rag-tag colonists to assemble. A guy starts calling orders. And then you stand there for another 20 minutes or so until you can hear this faint drumming. The British ARE coming!

Finally, you get a glimpse of the British troops marching along. And they line up on the green across from the colonists, who start to run away in fear. The Colonial captain yells at them to get back in line, and they do. And the British just keep coming; there's probably 75 of them. You really start to feel bad for those poor colonists! You know they're all just standing there waiting to "die".

The stand-off looked pretty much like this (this is someone else's picture)


The troops stand there for a few minutes, and then the British are ordered to raise their bayonets and start marching towards the colonists. Someone fires a shot, and then there's lots of shooting, and what I assume is good old-fashioned warfare. I say "assume" because I didn't see any of the actual fighting. No. After waiting for an hour and a half, I did not see the battle. I saw the troops assemble, heard a bunch of fighting, and then caught a glimpse of this:



And then the megaphone guy comes back and announces that almost all the colonists died; the ones that didn't die retreated. The British troops reassemble for a "Huzzah" victory shout, and then continue marching to Concord. Then the megaphone guy reads the names of all the men who died and one by one, the reenactors "rise from the dead" on the battlefield. I thought this was interesting, but most of the crowd did not, so it was hard to hear or see any of that either. Everyone was chit-chattering and rushing back to their cars.

It was a patriotic, New Englandy thing to do, but it also reminded me of my serious dislike for large crowds. Also, I'm just gonna say that I don't think people should bring their children who are too young to understand what's going on, or what the Revolutionary War is. It's 5 am and most people don't want to listen to your kids whine [and then cry] through the whole thing while you try to convince them to look at "those guys fighting." (I was really really surprised by the number of children age 5 and under that were at this thing...)

So there you have it. Now it's pretty much like you were there too.