A Day in Massachusetts

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Headed out to Massachusetts for Bob and Carrie's Wedding, and I had a day with nothing to do.
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I didn't feel lik taking the lame cell-phone walking tour of Boston...
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...So I headed south to Plymouth, the landing place of the Pilgrims.
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Now, you might think the Pilgrims were boring...
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...That seeing the first rock the settlers stepped on in 1620 wouldn't be exciting...
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Well, you'd be right. BUT THEN YOU'D LOOK ACROSS THE STREET AND SEE...
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A HUGE, AWESOME BOARD-BY-BOARD RECREATION of the Pilgrim's ship, THE MAYFLOWER 2!
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I know, I know. How can we contain ourselves?
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The Mayflower II was built in the fifties by a British guy.
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He'd served with Americans in WWII and wanted to make a symbol of the friendship of the two countries.
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(Nevermind the fact that the Pilgrims were trying to escape English religious tyranny...)
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The ship was completely open. You could go in any room.
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They had all this pilgrim food, including delicious pilgrim donuts.
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The Union Jack flew up in the crow's nest.
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I ventured aft to check out the Captain's Quarters.
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Lots of room in here. A bench in back, table in the middle for map work.
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One of the historians that worked there demonstrated the rudder system. You just push this timber...
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... It levers through the floor...
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...And slides the rudder beam left and right. No power steering for them.
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Now recently I found out some interesting stuff about my family history. One thing I learned was that my Mom's family is descended from William White, a passenger on the Mayflower.
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William and Susana had a daughter during the journey and they named her "Peregriene." And we all come from her.
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During the trip, none of the passengers were allowed on deck, except for church services on Sunday. They were all relegated to G, F and I in this picture.
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The only light they had for the whole journey across the atlantic was what came through these timbers.
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105 people spent 66 days in a dark space roughly twice the size of my apartment.
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Families stuck to their bed area and tried not to get seasick.
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These pictures are brighter than it would have been for them because the gun ports are open, letting light in.
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They wouldn't have been open during the journey.
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Only if they had to roll out the cannon for an attack. Which they didn't. The Pilgrims never had to fight Pirates.
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That's me.
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Here's their little dingy for making landfall.
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The Mayflower is parked near all of Plymouth's yachts.
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The British Flag still flies, which is funny for such an iconic American place.
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The Mayflower II is only half the story of the Pilgrims here.
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Next I went to Plimoth Plantation.
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Plimoth Plantation is a recreated series of Pilgrim villages.
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It's built on a hillside facing the sea.
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Reenactors roam the park talking like they're Pilgrims. They would only answer your questions in character. If you asked where the bathroom was, they'd point you to the old privy instead of the actual bathroom at the gift shop.
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Don't get me wrong. Some reenactors are awesome. But these guys were just too much.
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See, there was this show on PBS called "Colonial House" where several families had to live and work in a village they built with period tools, wearing period clothes and eating period food that they killed and prepared themselves.
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Experts from Plimoth Plantation went on the show to teach the people their period skills.
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The show was a huge hit for PBS. Plimoth Plantation bought the village from the show when it was over and moved it all to the park. Now people come in droves to see the Colonial House stuff.
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Thing is, Colonial House was a different period than the Pilgrims. But the reenactors have been told to answer your questions about Colonial House as if it was "another colony just down the road."
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But Plimouth was THE FIRST COLONY, so there wasn't really a colony just down the road. So to talk about it, they're technically breaking character, and they hate it. They take it out on people who ask stupid questions.
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But everybody asks stupid questions. Nobody knows anything about how the Pilgrims lived. That's the whole point of going to Plimoth Plantation. It's just not cool when a guy in a Pilgrim hat treats you like an idiot for not knowing something about his 1600's-era puritan colony.
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All the roofs were real thatch. Thatch looks cool up close.
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I don't even know what thatch is, but it looks cool. Bet it burns really fast though.
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I layed down on this bed and wondered, "Did Pilgrim guys lay in their beds and stare up at the ceiling and worry like I do?"
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Probably did. But they probably worried less about women and more about their thatch roof catching on fire from their cooking pot.
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Man. Plimoth Plantation was bringin' me down. I had to get out of there.
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I tried to go to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, but ended up at the Massachusetts Archives on accident.
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They had this whole exhibit of stuff they found while digging up Boston for the massive highway project known as "The Big Dig."
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There was all kinds of old glass and artifacts.
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Coins that were as old as America. Tools used to build the first settler's houses.
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Here's America's oldest bowling ball. This was from when bowling was banned as "The Devil's Sport."
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It's amazing what you find when you dig up the privy.
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Nearby was the JFK library. It was huge.
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Their big exhibit was about Kennedy's campaign, timed to coincide with the 2004 Presidential elections. (I was a pollworker for the 2004 Presidential Elections. To see my pictures, check out the rest of JasonJasonJason.com.)
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The exhibit followed the whole story of the campaign, starting early on when Johnson and Kennedy were rivals for the Democratic nomination.
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You jump ahead to the 1960 Democratic National Convention. (I worked at the 2000 and 2004 Democratic National Conventions. To see my pictures of the 2004 DNC in Boston, you guessed it - visit the rest of JasonJasonJason.com.)
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Johnson and Kennedy were powerhouse politicians. But Kennedy was a Catholic from the North, two factors that were hurting him in the south.
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JFK's brother Bobby relentlessly worked the convention floor all week long, bargaining, convincing and cajoling the convention delegates for their vote. This was back when the convention was a real political process, not just a week long commercial.
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In the end, Kennedy won the nomination. He asked Johnson to be his Vice Presidential nominne, and Johnson wisely agreed.
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Kennedy delivered his acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. More than 80,000 people showed up to hear him speak.
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Kennedy gave his famous call to action, speaking of America's "new frontier." He said America wasn't a set of promises, but a set of challenges.
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Kennedy and Johnson roared across the country in full campaign battle mode. They had to go full tilt and non-stop in order to compete with Richard Nixon.
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Here's a clever storeowner's way of taking both sides, and profiting from both...
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Sold blue Kennedy car pennants to the Democrats...
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... And red Nixon ones to the Republicans.
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It was an extremely divided electorate. The race was closer than any in history, closer even than the elections of the last few years.
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Kennedy's people pushed his military service in WWII, emphasizing his experience to those who saw him as a young man with none.
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Kennedy even roped his friend Frank Sinatra into recording a special campaign version of "High Hopes," complete with special "Vote for Kennedy" lyrics.
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The Republicans realized they might lose control of the White House after eight years of Eisenhower. They started playing dirty, distributing thousands of pamphlets targeting Kennedy's Catholicism.
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Kennedy fough back, though, and when election day finally came, nobody knew how it would end.
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It went poorly. Kennedy lost the popular vote by the closest margin in history. BUT through a twist of mathematics and the U.S. Constitution, Kennedy won the electoral vote. He lost the popular vote but won the election.
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Eisenhower told Nixon he should protest the election results, but Nixon refused. He said he did not want to cause a constitutional crisis. Nixon respected the decision and would return to become president himself a few years later. And we all know how THAT turned out.
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Kennedy went on to be a catalyst for change in America, forwarding civil rights, deftly handling the Cuban Missile Crisis, and starting the program to send a man to the moon.
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His work was cut short when he was assasinated in 1963.
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The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library was built to advance the study of his life and career.
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Heading back for Bob and Carrie's Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner was my first drive through the Big Dig.
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I'd seen them dig these tunnels, and now I was barreling through them at 65 miles an hour.
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Here's the new bridge by the Fleet Center.
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Bob and Carrie got married the next day. And that was my trip to Boston!