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Beware of Lonely Rangers

I spent an hour in Lexington getting a personal tour of the Lexington Green, where the skirmish was fought, from a pretty tour guide, then I hopped in my truck and continued driving west along "Battle Road."  If you ever visit this area, be sure to stop at the Minuteman National Park Visitor Center outside of Lexington, where they present a terrific 20-minute film depicting the battles of Lexington and Concord.  I don't often get goose bumps while watching a movie (other than the last scene in "Titanic") but I did after watching this presentation.  Judging from the silence at the end of the film, I think everyone else in the theatre did, too.

Above:  Concord, Massachusetts during the 1800s was a literary haven for Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and others.  This is "The Wayside," owned by the Alcotts.  Later, it became the home of Nathaniel Hawthorne and today it's a National Park Historic Site – though a lonely one.

Concord, Massachusetts, a few miles west of Lexington, was the cradle of the Revolutionary War in the 1700s and the cradle of American literature in the 1800s.  Today, it's a cradle of gawking tourists.  And of course, it's also the birthplace of the famous Concord Jam.  

Before getting to Concord, as you fight your way through the Concord (traffic) jam, you pass two interesting old houses on the north side of the two-lane highway.  One was owned by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 1800s and the other, a short distance away, was owned by Louisa May Alcott's family.  Louisa, of course, was the author of "Little Women."

The Alcott house, though privately-owned, is open to tours.  The Hawthorne house is also open to tours but is owned by my favorite federal agency, the National Park Service.  The NPS has turned the Hawthorne house into a National Historic Site and has converted Nathaniel's old barn into a nice, air-conditioned Visitor Center.  

	Above:  Next door is "Orchard House."  The Alcott family moved here after selling "The Wayside" to Hawthorne.  Louisa May Alcott wrote "Little Women" in her room on the second floor, center.  She based the book, however, on her childhood experiences in The Wayside.

I had visited Concord once before briefly, back in June 1995 during one of my drives around America.  I made the mistake during that visit of walking into the Hawthorne house Visitor Center, where I was immediately pounced on by three very lonely National Park rangers.  This was before the main tourist season and I could tell these rangers were desperate to tell someone, anyone, all about Nathaniel Hawthorne.

One of the park rangers asked me if I'd like a tour of the house and, since she was kind of cute and because I felt sorry for her, I reluctantly said yes.  She took me into the 100-seat amphitheatre and proceeded to give me a very well-rehearsed speech on the entire life of Nathaniel Hawthorne.  She had obviously written and prepared the speech for a large audience (silly her), so I felt a little foolish sitting alone in the front row of the auditorium with this ranger standing only three feet from me waving her arms, talking glowingly of Nathaniel, and making eye contact with the numerous rows of empty benches behind me.

After her exuberant presentation in the Visitor Center, we got up to walk over to the house when another ranger peered out the window of the Visitor Center and excitedly announced, "Here come two more visitors!"  All I could think of was:  "Suckers."  The three of us spent the next hour politely strolling through Nathaniel's house with the cute ranger, learning more about Hawthorne than any of us ever cared to.  Sure, I thought Hawthorne was a talented writer, but I didn't want to spend two hours inspecting his bathroom.

Anyway, I briefly stopped at the Hawthorne house on this trip, six years later, and walked into the Visitor Center.  I noticed that the large amphitheatre was no longer there, which didn't surprise me.  But with memories of that 1995 visit dancing in my head, I politely declined a ranger-led tour of the house.

Above left:  Here are a couple of Little Women.  On the left, that's Louisa May Alcott, who I thought bore a striking resemblance to Monica Lewinsky.  That's Louisa's sister, Anna, on the right.

Above right:  Just down the road from the Alcott house is the North Bridge in Concord, where the first real battle of the American Revolution took place.  A few hours after the skirmish at Lexington in April 1775, the British advanced over the bridge from the right but they were turned back by the patriot Minutemen. 

Above left:  Minuteman statue at the North Bridge.

Above right:  After driving the Redcoats out of Concord, the Minutemen hid behind rock fences and fired on the retreating Redcoats as they fled on "Battle Road" all the way back to Boston.  Many Redcoats were killed on this, the first day of the Revolutionary War.  The war would end six years later in Yorktown, Virginia (see News: July 18, 2001 for pictures of my visit to Yorktown).

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