Revolution to Revelations

April 19th marked the semiquincentennial (or bicenquinquagenary or quarter-millenial) 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord that initiated the American Revolutionary War. Our holiday began the Friday before Patriots Day  

where Heather and the Boston Phil played Mahler's 2nd symphony at Symphony Hall downtown

From our home in Lexington I can see Massachusetts Avenue, which follows the route of Paul Revere on the evening of April 18th 1775. Upon learning that the British were marching to Concord, Revere and another rider, William Dawes, rode through the night from Boston to Lexington, where they met at the Hancock-Clarke house and warned the Lexington militia. Lexingtonians alerted militia from surrounding towns, and even though Revere was captured before reaching Concord, he passed the message to the unsung hero Samuel Prescott, who made it to Concord and enabled their resistance.

We roused the family before dawn to assemble at the Lexington battle green at 5:30 AM for the battle reenactment. Being perfectly flat on the green, the sight-lines are terrible, but big-screen TV screens broadcast the action

At 5:45 AM they ring the bell in our Old Belfry to alert the townspeople of the arriving troops. At 6 AM the British redcoats march up the street and form their columns to face the Lexington Minutemen. The video at the end captures the chaotic encounter. No one knows who fired the first shot, but in the end 8 militiamen lay dead and the British marched onward to Concord. There, the organized patriots repelled the British advance and prevented seizure of the colonial weapons store. On the 18-mile march back to Boston, the fired-up militia fired shots from the forest, tallying 250 killed and wounded Redcoats to 90 of their own.  

I signed up for the 5-mile road race, which was started with a musket firing, and I managed a respectable 47:02

Another event was landing of the Army parachute team on the Battle Green

We flew to North Carolina for a quick trip to the Outer Banks. On the drive we stopped at Guilford Courthouse NMP, site of a key battle in the Revolutionary War's Southern Campaign. After a stalemate of fighting in the Mid-Atlantic for the first half of the war, in 1778 the British tried to cut off the Southern colonies, who were thought to be more sympathetic. Led by General Nathaniel Greene and that Polish master engineer Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the battles in the Carolinas inflicted heavy losses on General Cornwallis's troops. Starting with King's Mountain, then Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse was the 3rd "Link of a Chain of Evils that followed each other in regular Succession until they at last ended in the total loss of America"

Many people know where Coca-Cola was invented, but how many of you knew that Pepsi Cola was invented here in New Bern, NC.

Pepsi's founder Caleb Bradham invented a flavored syrup first called "Brad's Drink". Except to all those Brads out there, that name didn't catch on and in the first of many marketing master strokes, the name was changed Pepsi-Cola, pulling the root Pepsi from dyspepsia, or indigestion, which the drink allegedly lessened.  

PepsiCo employed my Dad for many years and gave all three of us kids generous college scholarships. You might say that Caleb Bradham's invention was the first in a Chain of Benefits that got me to where I am today 

We stayed on Emerald Isle in the southern Outer Banks, where the water was plenty warm enough for our cold hardy girls

Cape Lookout National Seashore encompasses a series of barrier islands on the southern half of the Outer Banks. Several of them have wild horses and we thought to visit, but Tessie was under the weather.

Instead we found an outfitter for a trail ride on the beach

The final park site was Moore's Creek. The "battle" here took place early in the War in February 1776 and involved Scottish highlanders armed with broadswords charging across a narrow bridge into a hail of musket fire from North Carolina militia. 

When I think of North Carolina's early economy, I think of tobacco, but before that the value of the land was for naval stores, specifically longleaf pine trees for ship masts and harvesting pitch to waterproof rope and boat seams. At Moore's Creek, there is a Tar Heel trail where one can learn how live trees were tapped for sap to be distilled into turpentine and dead trees were collected and burned at low temperature to release tar. This was a messy business and somewhere along the line a nickname for NC's inhabitants became the Tar Heels.

When we starting visiting National Park sites in 2015 there were 206 of them east of the Mississippi. After Moore's Creek, we have visited every one of these pre-2015 sites, but subsequent Presidents have created 14 more. We have visited 10 of the newbies, leaving 2 in Illinois and 2 in Maine unseen. It's a fool's errand chasing every President's new Parks and we might have to rest our weary feet at this eastern accomplishment. But Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument does sound compelling, doesn't it? 

As a graduation gift, we took Caroline downtown for dinner and a show, the show being the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. They closed with their performance of Revelations, which as expected brought the house down.

And Caroline's revelation to us what that she will be attending Dartmouth next year