A few years before I came into this world, North America was in a state of conflict.
*Wavy Image as we move through the years*
The year was 1775. The day was April 19th. A local farmer and veteran of King George’s War and the French and Indian Wars was working his fields when he spotted a well ordered line of British grenadiers marching in neat columns to relieve their harassed fellows near Lexington. The Brits might have brushed off the plow pushing colonist if it hadn’t been Samuel “Battling Sam” Whittemore. As it was Battling Sam…and because he rushed home, grabbed his musket, a brace of pistols and a saber he got from a fallen foe (who “died suddenly and didn’t need it anymore”, according to Whittemore) the Lobster Backs lost three men to traumatic lead infection.
Sam was 78 years old when this dust up occurred. He would be shot in the face and bayoneted many times over. Sadly, the old man would die…18 years later.
Why the history lesson? Well, it seems there were many people in Sam’s day meeting at beer houses and pubs. They would talk through the points and counter points ad nauseam. Their polished and practiced speeches were given all the more potency by the liquid courage coursing through their veins. Perhaps they were making those speeches that very day. They were asking questions like “How long will the government oppress us?” or “Who started this notion that we should pay more for ever decreasing representation?”
Sam was not there to answer the questions. He had to make do with the answer to the problem. He answered the problem with definitive and unquestionable certainty. There was no long drawn out speech. There was no diagram featuring time lines and levels of misery or poverty. He wiped the Massachusetts dust and sweat off of his rugged old brow and acted.
And that is what we ought to do today.
No, I don’t mean that we should reach for guns and swords. I do not advocate for hacking away at anyone. I don’t even support threats to that end. What I mean to say is that we should, where ever possible, lay aside the beer hall banter about who did what (if only for a bit) and go do what it is that we do. Do the neat and orderly lines of the Covid Cadre demand that you wear a mask where it is unreasonable and unhelpful to do so? Do not wear it. Does a pedantic passerby screech like a coked up Sally Struthers because you dared eschew the vinyl gloves? Bask in the humor and proudly wave, with unvinyled flesh, at the hyperventilating fearmonger.
We do not have to endanger lives to make points. We do not have to actively spread disease to get our freedom back. We do have to get back out there and live. In doing so we might come a across a wayward germ. The odd fungus, virus or bacteria might hitchhike for a few miles. Sadly, that is the world we live in.
Perhaps we can count ourselves lucky that we aren’t facing bullets and bayonets, like Samuel Whittemore. Something tells me old Sam would have been less than cooperative when told that he would damned well wear a mask and shelter in place or face a severe fine and arrest. The beer halls are closed off to idle complainers and speech makers anyway.
2 replies on “The Answer to the Problem, Not to the Questions”
Oh my….”coked up Sally Struthers”…best line ever! I’m using it with your permission. And great post. I’ve been resisting here and there, mostly with the mask, as a sign of we need to get over this.
By all means, Tim. Thank you!
I believe that emerging from this issue will not be sufficient. We must rise from the sleep of convenience and fear. These twin evils have us trembling at the thought of being perceived as “extreme” or “nationalist”. They weaken our knees and strengthen the tether that has kept us from assembling to show our outrage at the government(s) that seize every possession and every opportunity within its reach.
We need, I think, a Battlin’ Sam perspective.