Yankee Porpoises: Welcome to Boston

My father hates Boston, “a city designed by drunken sailors,” but that’s because he once had to drive a car through it. If you hail from a squarish-shaped state like ours, with grid-patterned roads all neatly apportioned, Boston appears to be some kind of M. C. Escher hellscape. However if you like walking and public transportation, as I do, it’s charming.

In fact the city is astonishingly compact and streamlined. Whereas navigating New York City’s subway system involves complex rubrics of numbers, letters, express trains and goblins, Boston just has three or four trains to worry about. And while going from Queens to Brooklyn within New York City is generally considered a day trip in an of itself (moving from one borough to another often ends friendships), in Boston you can get from any point to any other point in about twenty minutes.

Between the compact size, hyper-educated locals, and abundance of parks and pubs alike, it strikes me as a fine city to settle down in. This is of course assuming that I were I to do so I could afford a pedagogue for my offspring, lest the Heaton brood grow up speaking through their sinus cavities like some form of bipedal Yankee porpoise.

Although I wouldn’t allow my children to wield it themselves, I love the Bostonian accent. The locals have maintained their bur while the rest of the country has more or less homogenized through television brainwashing or regional shaming. It’s rare to hear someone with a “Vinnie the cab driver” New York accent anymore, or a truly molasses-dripping Atlanta drawl. But no one within the confines of Boston could pronounce an “R” if you held a gun to their head.

I also love the history which abounds in the city. In most of the United States an “old” building is one constructed before 1900; my own state did not come into being until 1907. Boston, a British seed of the 17th century, has a wonderful parade of architecture and history stretching from the 1660’s through to today. And it claims enough famous sons and/or people it regrets having killed (witches, Catholics, feminists, etc.) that it’s littered with statues.

One of the more dignified buildings in the downtown area is the old State House. It’s been restored so that its roof is flanked by a golden lion and unicorn, as it would have been in its early days as the Royal Governor’s residence. In 1776 these were torn down as a patriot stepped out onto the (now absconded) governor’s balcony to address the city and read the Declaration of Independence to the ecstatic throngs below.

It’s an event which is reenacted annually on July 4th each year, although most certainly the most spectacular iteration occurred at the bicentennial in 1976. Not just on account of the significance of two centuries, which all their fanfare and fireworks. Not just because the charismatic fireball which was then-president Gerald Ford personally appeared on the balcony to deliver the speech.

No, because we invited her majesty Queen Elizabeth II to also sit on the balcony, so that we could literally read a document about how awful we thought her ancestors were, and why we didn’t want to be a part of her country, while she primly sat throughout until everybody applauded uproariously.