Our 40th Anniversary And Other Reasons To Go To Boston

"Huzza, her sides are made of iron," yelled a crewman on the USS Constitution. Thus the name, Old Ironsides, was born. The crewman in question was on the USS Constitution, which was locked in combat with the British frigate Guerriere about 750 miles off of the Massachusetts coast on the 19th of August, 1812. The two ships were broadside at about 50 yards or less and the Guerriere's cannonballs were bouncing off the heavy oak sides of the Constitution.

The ship has had a long and storied career and retired undefeated. She is still commissioned and lies in port in Boston Harbor with a U.S. Navy crew of about 70. She is directly across the harbor from where she was first launched from the shipyard in 1797. In wartime she carried a crew of 450 crewmen which included 55 Marines.


I bring all of this up because my wife has had a fascination with this ship and its history and every year since I can't remember when has said, "We should take a fall tour into the New England states to look at the fall colors and maybe see the USS Constitution." Harvest being the devil that it is, has kept us from doing that. Early September would have been better for such a trip but all you would see is the color green at that time and I can stay home and look at a tractor or late season weeds to accomplish that.
This year was different. The Army Corps of Engineers had pretty well taken care of about 65 percent of our harvest with a slight miscalculation of the storage capacity needed in upstream dams to protect us down-streamers should it happen to rain or snow too much in the high country. Okay, slight is the wrong word but I wasn't sure how to spell gargantuan.
A few months back Marilyn suggested that this might be a good year to try our color tour since we don't have much left to harvest. "And besides, it is our 40th anniversary in September and we should do something memorable." "I guess so" was my long reply, and so we went.
Looking at the Google Maps satellite view made it seem like "well this big airport is here and the ship you want to see is right here. They were both in the same picture and it seemed possibly within walking distance were it not for this Boston Harbor which I later found the correct pronunciation to be Haba. Now if we can find some colorful trees nearby, possibly up on this Bunker Hill place, we'll be done in a few hours.
We could have made life easy for ourselves by getting into a taxi and saying, "We want to see the USS Constitution," and our cabbie would have said something like, "No pablem buddy, it's right across da Haba from heya." Nope, we're smarter than that, we rented a car. Those of you who have been to Boston are at this point slapping your hands to the side of your head and yelling, NO CLIFF, YOU DIDN'T REALLY RENT A CAR DID YOU? Yes we did and we later named it the "Albatross." We actually found a small parking lot about 10 blocks from our ship but later were shocked that it cost us $16 for the two hours we were there. The next day we backed out of a parking garage in downtown Boston after seeing their sign that began with "0 to 4 minutes- $6." We went back to our $16 lot.
Yes, we had learned the first lesson of Boston: come for a visit but we really don't want any more cars in our city.
We got tickets to a trolley company that stops at eight historic locations around Boston and you can get off, spend as much time as you care to and get back on. It was about $40 for all day and the drivers are as well versed with the history of the area as can be expected. Nothing can drive home the fact that we were at the birthplace of America than to have your guide say, "This is the historic Granary Burial Ground dating to 1660, here you'll find the graves of Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin's parents."
The USS Constitution, the Bunker Hill Monument, the burial grounds, and many of the attractions are at no charge to the public.
We had some trouble finding our way around town, We went past the Boston "Gaaden" where the Celtics and the Bruins play, three times on purpose and five times accidentally. At one stop, I got out and walked behind our van. Marilyn asked what I was doing and I said I was going to remove the bumper sticker on the back, the one that says "I'm from Nebraska and I farm so please honk at me often." They don't like folks going a mere 5 miles over the speed limit, but it's hard to manage much better than that when a lot of the highways are under ground and you're trying to use a GPS map with no service.
The Boston area is a great place and I would encourage you to visit but use the 'T', Boston's subway line. Turns out you don't need to take your own drawn butter either, it comes with the 'lobsta.'
On our arrival at home, the two brothers who help me at harvest already had the soybeans harvested and had started on the corn. Now we need to find some place to go until the corn is done.
Next issue, we'll head up the coast to Kennebunkport, Maine, and down the coast to Plymouth, Mass., and talk about the food.