I can get lost in a good library or bookstore. Being a bit of a bookworm, I will spend hours just drooling over the shelves, finding of all the books I've read, all the ones I want to read. Personal libraries are even worse. As I peruse someone's collection I'll get all giddy to find a personal favorite, and if I find enough of those -- a good book critical mass -- I'll start making mental notes of all the other titles on the shelf, knowing there are probably a lot of new gems tucked in there to add to my reading list. My personal opinion of someone will be significantly adjusted by a scan of their personal library.
Having said that, Kurt and Susie Richardson are good people! They were kind enough to put us up in their spare room with a floor-to-ceiling bookcase - and what a bookcase it is! Books and books, on every conceivable subject, and just enough of the ones I've read to know I really should be photocopying their card catalog. Plenty of classics and lots of history. I was especially happy to find that Kurt is a fan of Sir Winston Churchill. I have made several (unsuccessful) attempts to read
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. (The lack of success was not due to the work, but the reader.) Kurt had those, and many other works by the statesman. Someday! Someday they too will be on my "have read" list! Kurt and Susie seem to have a special heart for children's literature, for there were many sentimental old favorites from that genre woven in.
I should have expected this. A couple of Christmases ago they sent us a copy of one of the most useful books I've ever seen on, well, books.
Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt is a wonderful review of all the fantastic children's literature out there, with thoughtful discussion and recommendations, broken down for age ranges and genres. It's been updated several times as new, worthy literature continues to be added to our coffers. Stacy and I have loved this book and have used it to steer our own kiddie reading.
When we got up Saturday morning Kurt had already left to go to a function in New Hampshire, but Susie was up and she helped us plan our day. She had lots of good maps of the Boston area and she pointed out the best place to park. She was also busy that day, so we would be left to our own creativity until we all regrouped that evening. A little intimidated to drive in Boston, I nevertheless loaded the fam and we headed to the thick of things. We somehow survived my total lack of orientation (and Stacy's total lack of ability to read a map in realtime) and found our destination, parking at Boston ground zero in a subterranean garage buried underneath the amazing Boston Common.
I'd been to Boston once a long time ago as a kid, but since then it's only been fly-bys through Logan. Logan does nothing to give the city a positive spin. I entered the city reluctantly, expecting all the people to be as rude and abrasive as the Logan locals. Fortunately Logan must hire selectively. Everywhere we went we were treated with enthusiastic pleasantness. It was almost creepy. I began to feel like a restaurant critic who is supposed to be incognito, but the staff has figured it out. Everyone seemed to be out to sell the town to us. It worked.
We emerged from our parking hibernation into the sun of the wide open Common. It is a huge park with lots of paved walkways that criss-cross with no particular logic or intent; I loved the border of skyscrapers that circled the parks periphery. A jungle gym on the horizon caught the attention of the under-18-year-olds in our party and we were tugged by the hand in that direction. As we headed there the decent-size pond that we'd seen from our garage escape hatch materialized into something unexpected.
Not a mere pond after all, but an ankle deep wading pool with a fountain in the center to shower any would-be pond walkers -- the Frog Pond! It was fairly early, but there were a few make-believe amphibians hopping about already. L and N had to be essentially tackled and hog tied to keep them out of the water. Things would have gone badly from the start had they not believed our promises of "later" and had the jungle gym not loomed significantly close by to serve as substitute attention magnet. We continued on to the play area where we let L and N run rampant while all these strangely nice strangers helped them up on ladders and over rope bridges.
Jungle gyms may captivate L and N for hours, but I can sit and watch the kids play only for so long and I start getting antsy. Stacy knows me well and around 11:00, as my fidgets started to surface she gathered the grumbling kids and we left the playground (I think it was called Tadpole Park or some such thing) and went to hunt out the "Freedom Trail," a marked path through old town Boston that hits a number of blessedly close-packed Revolutionary War and Colonial era sites.
I don't think we were more than ten feet from the jungle gym when N decided to, once again, give in to gravity's call and perform his patented "look-ma-no-hands" face plant. That boy's skull must be filled with iron and the ground with magnets. I've never seen a forehead so accustomed to kissing the concrete. Of course he wailed and would not be consoled until he received a napkin filled with ice supplied by an enthusiastically nice snack vendor. (Is there something these folks are drinking? I want to import some to L.A.) His cranial contusion was quickly forgotten when he realized he had ice to suck on. L, momentarily forgotten and not happy about it, began her own whining until I gave her some of the cold ice tea I'd bought from the happy vendor as a thank you for the ice.
Recovered and refreshed, we again sought out the Freedom Trail and found it right at the edge of the Common. We left the park to follow the follow the follow the follow the follow the crimson brick road. A scant stone’s throw from the park was the Park Street Church. (Can't imagine where that name came from.) While not a Revolutionary War player (it was established in 1809), it was an active participant in the abolition movements and other social concerns of the 1800's. Adding to the benefits of its long history of social consciousness was the fact that it was well air-conditioned and had an accessible bathroom. After partaking such the modern ministries, we returned to the Trail and the significant heat that the midday had drummed up. Already considerably after noon, the kids were hungry, so, as usual, our plans were steered accordingly. My goal was to make it to Quincy Market and have lunch there.
As we progressed down the Trail we passed King's Chapel and a really cool statue of Ben Franklin. I knew as we walked briskly by that history had enveloped us - it was seeping out of the brickwork and gurgling up between the cobblestones - but with hungry young ones, modernity trumps history every time. As we shuttled past little churchyards with graves filled with hundreds of household names, Stacy and I agreed we both needed to read up on our colonial history to better understand and appreciate what we were flying by. I did notice in one churchyard we passed the gravestone of Samuel Adams, and I assure you I doffed my cap for the good patriot brewer.
The Old South Meeting House, the Old State House and finally Faneuil Hall were graced by our walk-by, though with each passing monument our guilt at our historical insensitivity bumped up a notch. We've
really got a lot of reading to do when we get home, Stacy and I promised each other in an unsuccessful attempt to expunge the shame. But soon Quincy Market stood before us, the Emerald City to which our little brick path had been leading, and our rag-tag group (having as of yet taken no advantage of all the opportunities to instill brains, hearts and courage), now hungry as lions, went on in to see what the wizards of Boz had cooking.
I can appreciate utilitarian preservation. Museums as preservation tools are nice, and certainly I'm all for them in many circumstances, but if every 200 year old building is converted into a museum to honor its history, after 200 years or so there won't be much in the way of living space left. So I like what they've done with the Quincy Market. Rather than rope it off and sell you tickets to see it, they've made it into what it always was and always should be - a market. They've taken the original structures, polished them up and filled them to the brim with restaurants and merchants. The place bustles and breathes with a swirl of humanity, just like a market should. How sad a museum this place would have made, but what a wonderful living testimony it has become! We grabbed our lunches and found a place to munch them. I took advantage of the fact that there were about a hundred restaurant options, so everyone could get just what they wanted and I could get some Indian curry that I can otherwise rarely talk Stacy into getting with me.
After lunch we poked around a couple of the shops before beginning our retracing back to the Common. We'd just passed Faneuil Hall when N screamed "Look -- a fiowtwuck!" Sure enough, a spit-shined red engine was parked against the curb. One fireman was hanging out beside the truck, evidently holding down the fort while the rest of the crew grabbed grub at Quincy Market. L wanted her picture taken by the truck and as she ran up beside it and posed, the fireman (as eerily nice as all the other not-quite-normal nice people we'd been seeing everywhere) asked her if she wanted to get in. In a heartbeat she was up in the shotgun seat, ready to roll. Fire trucks really are awesome - all spotless and gleaming. I love the obvious sense of pride the men put into their equipment. Once the fantasy had been adequately played out we thanked the fireman and continued on our way. After crossing busy Congress street we looked back to find all the other firemen back at their truck, eating their lunch inside. I bet anyone who spilled their milk in there got a really good spanking.
The Old Statehouse, somewhat dwarfed by modernity.
As we wound our way back we found that the refueled kids had a bit more moxie in them and we were able to snatch a piece of history here and there. As we passed the Old State House we decided to go through.
All in all, a fine museum, but especially fun were the two high school boys in volunteer outfits who, with characteristic Bostonian niceness, taught L and N how to play tavern games from the old days - nine pins, pig knuckles (kinda like jacks) and other assorted entertainments. L was surprised to learn from these young men that kids like her and N regularly drank beer and ale at the local taverns ("Daddy Juice," I had to translate), since historically the water was unsafe, but the beer blessedly bacteria-free.
Back at the Common we had to pay up on our debt of "later," so we headed in the general direction of the Frog Pond. As we approached, however, we saw a group of men and women in old prairie-like garb, singing Sacred Harp music
a capella. The women were all in long plain dresses, the men in black pants, white shirts and overalls; I would have expected them to be bearded, but few were. I nevertheless imagined they all had names like Hezekiah and Japheth. I don't know if they were Amish or Mennonite or what - I guess on second thought they weren't Amish, unless they'd liberalized their views on the use of rudimentary sound equipment. We sat down to listen to them sing for a while -- they were rather good and even on the upbeat songs, had that sad type of harmony that is somewhat akin to the bluegrass lament. After ten or fifteen minutes or so they stopped singing and their pastor/preacher/evangelist came up to the microphone. I was somewhat looking forward to this, expecting some fiery Puritanical preaching in the heart of Boston. But unfortunately this guy wasn't raised on Jonathan Edwards. I'm not sure he was raise on much of anything to be honest. He stammered and hemmed and couldn't quite figure out what he wanted to say, and he eventually started mumbling something about self-esteem. I was really bummed. I wasn't expecting a Charles Spurgeon, but was hoping for a little more than 21st century pop-psychology from a guy in 18th century duds. We got up unredeemed and headed for the Frog Pond.
Our first and only rule ("Roll up your pant legs and don't get wet") fell in record time. 30 seconds to 1 minute tops. But it was hot, the kids were wired, and we really didn't care. By this point the Frog Pond was, if you'll allow me, really hopping. Every kid in Boston aged 7 and under was kicking up spray in the wide pool. L and N quickly joined the fray, with Stacy wading alongside like a Mommy moose keeping a watchful eye on the cavorting mooselets. I stayed decidedly ashore, unable to purge my mind of the knowledge of what every toddler does immediately upon stepping into a warm, shallow body of water. Before long L was on her tummy doing breast-strokes in the 6-inch water and I was imagining new and ever more virulent strains of penicillin-resistant bacteria. (Why couldn't they swim in beer?)
Frolicking complete, the kids emerged and got "special treats" at the concession window. As wet as they were, we knew they would dry quickly enough, so we strolled about, eventually walking the length of the Common and across the street into the Boston Public Garden adjacent to the Common. While the Common had some nice tree-y areas, it is generally an open park with lots of sun. The Public Garden is much more lush and verdant. Those Robert McCloskey fans out there will know the Boston Public Garden as the setting for the famous
Make Way for Ducklings story, and L and N immediately ran to the pond to see the island home of the web-footed heroes and to watch the stately swan boats go back and forth across it.
Not too far from the pond was a brazen tribute to the McCloskey story - a series of statues of the mother duck and her ducklings all in a very duckish row. N squealed when he saw them and immediately hopped aboard mother duck and rode her for the roses. He looked every bit like a jockey from a freakish, not-so-parallel universe.
We let them burn a little more energy at the expense of the statuesque metal work before rounding them up to head back to our car hidden in Boston's version of the bat cave. We burst forth from our secret lair and into the wily streets of Boston. Amazingly I found my way to the freeway with no loss of life or self-esteem. We talked about jumping the river to go see Bunker Hill and the U.S.S. Constitution; I could tell Stacy was as wiped as I was, but neither of us was going to fess up to being anything less than the consummate tourists and admit to being too tired. So it was left up to me to pretend to miss the exit and "convince" Stacy that it would just take too long now to circle back, and that our only really viable option was to just go back to Reading.
That evening we had dinner with Kurt and Susie and their daughter Lisa and settled into their ample couches to finish a movie we'd started the night before --
The Court Jester with Danny Kaye - a really clever and silly movie with tons of people you've seen elsewhere. In addition to Danny Kaye, the cast included such big names as Angela Landsbury, Basil Rathbone (made famous in the role of Sherlock Holmes in the late 30's and early 40's), and Glynis Johns (the suffragette mother from
Mary Poppins). We occasionally have movie nights at our church, so I'm going to have to recommend this one for the next flick.
We were no more than 15 minutes into the film when there were satisfying snores from a couple of spots on the couch. A frog pond, a fire truck, a few rounds of 9-pins and 250 years of history can take a lot out of you!
She seemed relieved, like she wasn't all that up on the idea of hauling a group with five squirrely tykes around. Instead we meandered about on our own. We wandered up to the 4th floor which held all the balcony entrances for the legislative chambers and proceeded to poke around. Unfortuantely we ended up unintentionally shadowing the route on which the tour guide was leading the only two other people who had agreed to a tour, and I got the distinct impression that she felt like we were trying to cheat her -- not signing up for an official tour, but still trying to get one on the sly. 
I wanted to grumble something like "I pay your salary, lady! Get over it," but remembered that I actually don't, so I let it slide. Instead I concentrated on keeping L from destroying anything too particularly valuable as her mood continued to deteriorate, dragging mine down with it. (I can't imagine why the tour guide wasn't thrilled to see us...) Eventually a little trip to the men's room with L brought about a considerable attitude adjustment that served us well the rest of our state house visit.
After the state house we took a drive around Harrisburg and along the Susquehanna River, eventually winding our way back to the van Bastelaar's for sandwiches and chips. I took Stacy and the kids back to our hotel for naps, then Jeff and I set out to find our own take on refreshment: the Troegs Brewery - a pretty decent microbrewery not too far across town. (We enthusiastically recommend their sampler platter.) Our "rest break" took us right up to the appointed time we were all to regroup at our hotel, children all bright-eyed, for the next in the day's activities.
A ten/fifteen minute Disneyland-esque ride through fields of happy mechanical cows singing jauntily about the wonders of chocolate - not just any chocolate, of course, but the finest quality Hershey® brand product. These marketing moo-ers and shakers walked us all the way through the life cycle of our friend the cocoa bean, never failing to highlight their own crucial contributions to the chocolaty enterprise. All the while the heady chocolate aroma built and mounted like the soundtrack (nose track?) of an overly dramatic chick-flick. The tour, as expected, dumped us into a massive candy store, and they were crafty enough to pass out a couple of Hershey Kisses to each of us to bring the steadily mounting chocolate cravings to a full crescendo.
