22 November 2007

Three Cheers



I am not cooking today, and that saddens me a bit. There has been a snap in the weather, and the glass will be dropping all afternoon, almost in sequence with all the other glasses across the country that will be dropping as we do the big holiday feast.

Thanksgiving in Big Pink means the garage empties out. Not many real families exist in the building, at least the traditional kind that have dining rooms and Norman Rockwell turkeys.

This holiday is supposed to be celebrated with a big crowd in that happy chaos of kitchen and family room, football and pilgrim cartoons.

The people that remain in the building- and this is a generalization, mind you- are mostly old or disassociated, like me. The young couples have taken off to juggle the holidays between one set of in-laws or the other. I notice the periodic decline in the number of cars in the subterranean world around the holidays. Big Pink is actually a destination of sorts in the summer, since the pool and tennis courts make this a sort of resort.

Not so in the late Fall and Winter.

It was a total coincidence that I was here at all, since I should be somewhere else. I should be with the other lemmings on the road, or on a plane, or making the seasonal pilgrimage. For a variety of perfectly good reasons involving vacation time and money, I am here and stuck with it.

Some friends have kindly offered to host me for dinner, so I will be permitted some companionship and several glasses of wine, and I am grateful to them. I will draw a big “L”” on my forehead before I go over this afternoon.

That is what the colonists might have done down at Jamestown, the first English settlement in the wild vastness of North America. They were there more than a dozen years before the dour Pilgrim Fathers dragged the Pilgrim Mothers over onto the Rock at Plymouth and told them to get cooking.

The first references to the Rock as the stepping-stone to the future of North America were not actually recorded until more than a hundred years after the arrival in 1620. The town of Plymouth is quite certain that the Rock is genuine, though, and they are a little concerned that only 25,000 people came to see it last year. The Queen of England came to see Jamestown.

They used to have a monopoly on the Colonial experience, and exclusive rights to Thanksgiving. Since archeologists discovered the real Jamestown was still here, and not washed away by the river, this is been subject to challenge. They are finding all manner of real artifacts, bones, foundations and trash pits; Jamestown is coming to life in death, and Olde Plymouth is left mostly with its Rock.

The first Thanksgiving didn't happen in Plymouth, either. The year before the Puritans got to America, a group of English settlers arrived at the Berkeley Hundred, a land-grant of about eight thousand acres near Herring Creek about twenty miles from Jamestown. They had a feast of Thanksgiving that year, and determined to make it an annual event.

The colonists decamped two years later, after an unfortunate incident with the indigenous locals. None-the-less, the Virginians were the first to have had the traditional green-bean, mushroom soup and deep-fried onion casserole. The Pilgrims did not discover the recipe until 1621.

A number of artifacts have been found at the site of the Berkeley Hundred, which eventually became the site of the Harrison Plantation and has never been paved. Building activity was almost continuous in New England, so there is nothing left to tell their side of the story except the boulder.

Americans have a lot to be thankful for, and have expressed that concept down through the years. Still, had it not been for If it weren't for Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book, the popular women's journal of the 19th century, Thanksgiving Day would not have existed beyond a general sense of satisfaction with the predisposition of Providence. Sarah wrote editorials and lobbied for the designation of an official day for Green Bean Casserole, and eventually President Lincoln succumbed to her pressure.

Since the Civil War, a Thursday in late November has been a "prayerful day of Thanksgiving." You can imagine that Mr. Lincoln was not interested in honoring the Virginia Colonists, who had been the leaders of the rebellion against the Union, so Plymouth won the symbolic lead for the nation ever since. All the Presidents since Abe have made an official Thanksgiving Proclamation on behalf of a grateful nation.

FDR codified the day as the fourth Thursday in November, partially to spite the Canadians who celebrate it in October.

I recall the first time I saw the Rock, though not the exact year. It would have been almost a half-century ago. I vaguely remember a Rambler station wagon, and a Gazebo in a public park near the water. The Rock was under it, but frankly, it was just not that impressive. It had been split in half, cracked when the locals tried to move it, and cemented back together. Most had been lost to souvenir-seekers down through the years, so experts say there may only be a third of it left.

One thing is certain: it is certainly old enough to have been around when the first of the Puritans showed up, though that could be said of the Saber-tooth Tiger as well.

The Rock only gained fame after the hard days in the Colony were done. In around 1740, a hardy individual named Elder Faunce learned that a wharf was to be erected over the Rock. He identified it as the landing point, saying it had been well described to him by his father. He became quite agitated over the prospect that it might be lost, and though he was ninety-five years old, insisted on having himself carried in a chair to make a short address over the gray granite.

His house was three miles away, so his insistence doubtless made a strong impression on those who carried him.

A number of the Plymouth locals were assembled to witness the patriarch's benediction of the boulder, and it assumed a new life as a symbol of the Pilgrims and of our national Thanksgiving over the saving of the Union. Obviously, the Virginians were not going to be part of that national myth.

The funny thing about the Rock is that there is a lot more history, but we don't know it or care very much. The town fathers in Plymouth are incensed about it, and think they will refurbish the Gazebo over the rock and are talking about building an interpretive museum with informational videos to explain the significant of the stone that lies below the directly the bank of Cole's Hill.

In 1775, though not formally at war, George Washington had six ships operating along the New England Coast. One of them was named the Harrison, not associated with the landed Virginia gentry who owned the Berkeley Hundred. The ship was captained by a William Coit, and he was a private citizen carrying a letter of Marque from Washington for general commerce-raiding.

In November of that year, Skipper Coit captured two British merchant ships laden with geese, chicken, sheep, cattle and hogs, bound from Nova Scotia to supply the British troops stationed in Boston. He was home-ported in Plymouth, and that is were he headed with his bounty.

Coit was known to have a raucous sense of humor. When he brought the British prisoners ashore, he made them step on the Rock.

Not to be outdone, the prisoners gave three cheers and wished the Rebels well.

Turnabout being fair play, from Virginia, home of Thanksgiving, I give three cheers for Plymouth.

Copyright 207 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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