GenePoool Blog

Posted Monday, July 06, 2009 by Gene

Another day in which Boston gets smaller

We had a house guest over the weekend in form of a Friend Who Is A Boy of daughter Becky, said child having come in from Los Angeles at the end of last week. We felt duty-bound to take him on a walk through parts of Boston, which was fun insofar as we never ever do that ourselves.

But we should. We started off at Downtown Crossing; took the long way (past South Station-- I got a bit turned around in navigating) along the new harbor park that replaced the raised southeast expressway a few years back; to Faneuil Hall, then North End and the Paul Revere statue everyone has seen but which we had never found before; then to the Holocaust Memorial; through Government Center; to the Granary Grounds cemetery; to Park Street and the Boston Commons; then the Public Gardens and the swan boats.

We had started off at a little after Noon, and by the time we walked all of that it was a bit after 5 PM. The kids wanted to walk back up to Park Street and the train at that point, to head home and recharge, while wife Deb and I decided to wander down Charles Street for a bit.

Charles Street ended at the Charles/MGH subway station, so we hopped the train to get back home ourselves... and ended up in the same car as the kids. Note for future reference: from the public gardens the nearest train station is not Park Street, it is Charles/MGH.

The reason we had to hurry home to relax was that all this travel was taking place on the 4th of July, and there were fireworks for which to plan.

Fireworks

I have never been to see the fourth of July fireworks in Boston, and yet I have lived in Boston my entire life. Let the speculation begin regarding why this is; I'm not personally certain I know, except maybe that it just all seems like a pain.

But anyway. We left the house again at 9:40, took the train to Charles/MGH, and pushed through the enormous crowd on the Salt and Pepper bridge until we found open space overlooking the open sky where fireworks were expected to manifest in a short time.

(Aside: if you think you don't know what the Salt and Pepper bridge is, you are probably wrong. Every movie and television show where even a portion was filmed in Boston has featured a tracking shot of this bridge. There are little sentry posts in the middle that look like salt and pepper shakers. Trust me; you've seen it.)

This all worked out well, more or less. We did get separated from the three kids when getting onto the bridge, and we couldn't reach them to tell them where we were because all of the cell phones were being jammed from receiving anything (I suspect the explosives were being detonated electronically). But that was okay; they were on the bridge, they saw the same show we did.

And it was a good show. Lots of shit went up and exploded and there were colors and everything.

But after a half an hour, the show was over and the five of us and roughly one million of our closest friends all wanted to go home at the same time. Rather than brave the 50,000 person line for the outbound platform at the Kendall square station (Charles/MGH station was closed by security for, possibly, security reasons) we decided to walk.

So all told, on July 4th we walked somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-15 miles.

Which is okay; it offset the chowder.

The chowder

Sunday was a blisteringly hot and sunny day, the very best kind of day imaginable to consume large amounts of clam chowder.

Or not. But that was when the Harborfest people scheduled Chowderfest, and by God, we were going. Well, Deb and I were. The children have no interest in chowder, something I'll never fully understand.

In our opinion the best chowder was from the Algonquin Club, which took well the following lesson: Americans love anything that tastes a bit like bacon. The Fish Pier had the worst, although that might have been from poor planning. They ran out of chowder early and had to race more in from their base, and they clearly rushed the preparation of the new batch, because it tasted like flour. That's what happens when you rush your roux.

Comments:

Actually, you were born in Sacramento CA and lived there almost a year and then were in Louisiana for about 2 months before coming up here to the Boston area. You were only 13 months old when you arrived, but still ... not your entire life.

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