Author's note: February is a mercifully short, cold month, but it is packed with adventure. In addition to Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day, we in the US have Presidents' Day, because Washington and Lincoln had birthdays then. To be truthful, I think Washington was born in January, but they moved the calendar on him. Anyway, the weather has been so bad I've had nothing to do over here but write history lessons and do my taxes. Which has led to the following reflection upon...American history and taxes. I hope you enjoy it. Maybe you can win a pub quiz with some of the information.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the doings of Sam Adams and Paul Revere...

British Hootooers sometimes scratch their heads and wonder about that big wrinkly continent to the west of Greenwich Mean Time. They ask themselves, How did our Prime Ministers get to be following that Commander-in-Chief fellow around, instead of his taking orders from us, as is right and proper? Weren't those people colonists, after all?

You are quite right, my British friend. We used to be British—even those of us who spoke German, Gullah, or Algonquin. How we got to be something silly called Americans¹ is an interesting story. And of course, it's all Boston's fault. If it weren't for them, we'd be speaking properly and playing soccer instead of watching that dumb Superbowl³.

It all started with the Automobile Wars, naturally. Pontiac's Rebellion was the first shot – bow-and-arrow, of course – across the bows of...whatever. Chief Pontiac was annoyed because Simon Girty and his friends wouldn't stay out of Ohio. So he started an industrial action by laying siege to Fort Detroit⁴. What Pontiac was hoping to do was in effect a hostile takeover, then return the fort to the French and do a deal with Peugeot. Alas, it was not to be – even after the unfortunate incident when they barbecued a British Regular⁵.

The Automobile Wars escalated when Pontiac's troops besieged the centre of the steel industry, Fort Pitt. The less said about this, the better – everybody got sick, the baseball season was ruined, and when General Bouquet (obviously an ancestor of Hyacinth's) showed up, everybody was relieved. Literally. They rang the church bells in Philly to celebrate the end of hostilities and the beginning of football season. Some yahoos in Lancaster went around t.p.'ing⁶ the Indians, but their parents said it was just rumspringa, and Ben Franklin told them off, as usual.

King George III, bless his little pea-pickin', said all this fighting and car-racing was expensive, and he expected the Americans to pay for it. Yep. He said, 'Americans', like we weren't the same thing as Englishmen. How do you like them apples? Uh, wait...he said something worse...he said something about paying for something...hey, now wait a minute...aren't we supposed to be getting military protection for free???

NEIN, says Farmer George. And also nope, nay, and not on your life. I've just sent 10,000 troops over there to guard the western border, and I expect you to quarter them.

Er, the Injuns already quartered one of them...with hot sauce, we think...

Not like THAT. Quarter them, as in, give them food and shelter. Oh, and rum. And beer. And Cyder. Soldiers drink a lot of that sort of thing.

Colonists were outraged, especially the Temperance Union. And farmers with daughters, who didn't want the military sleeping in their barns. (The tavern owners were secretly pleased, as they had a lot of low-quality Cyder to unload.) But Cyder or no Cyder, nobody wanted to pay all those taxes.

At first it was just molasses. And the tax went down, which should have been cool – but wasn't. You see, this time they were going to enforce the tax. Now, how shabby is that? Then they went to town – London, probably – and taxed:

• Sugar, spice, and everything nice.
• Coffee, tea, wine, rum and coca-cola.
• Paper, stamps, parchment, stamps, ink, stamps, legal documents, stamps, playing cards, and stamps. This was known as the Stamp Act, because it made people stamp their feet in frustration from licking all that glue.

On top of everything else, the government forbade us to buy French wine. Now, we didn't hate the French back then – in spite of their being in cahoots with the Car Indians – and we liked a little Beaujolais nouveau now and again. Things were getting seriously annoying. Words like 'boycott' were being bandied about.

Meanwhile, in Boston, home of the bean, the cod, and domestic terrorism...Sam Adams, professional hothead, and his low-life friends, such as Paul 'The Silversmith' Revere, are fomenting revolutionary ideas out back of the Customs House. Sam's been writing letters to all and sundry⁷, telling them not to pay the taxes. (He didn't even pay the taxes on the ink and the paper, the cad.) Ben Franklin's doing much the same down in Philly, the sly old kite-flyer, and his buddy John Dickinson is writing to the newspapers, something called Letters from a Farmer. Even when Dickinson is outed as a lawyer and not a farmer, it doesn't help – the fickle publick keeps getting even fickler, and boycott is all the rage. But Sam 's not happy until he's got a riot going...which brings us to...

Now, having 700 soldiers in town when there's no parade on isn't exactly a picnic. Besides snagging all the best tables in the tavern and snogging all the pretty girls, they've been holding floggings on Boston Common, which is playing merry H with the bowling season. And they're insulting us all, saying we're not real Englishmen, calling us Yankee Doodles and saying we wear macaroni in our hats, stuff like that.

It isn't our fault we're behind on the fashions – it takes the ships a couple of weeks to get here, and by that time all the X-Factor DVDs are out of date, and how did we know that Jedward weren't really cool? Anyway, there's the periwig problem. You love 'em...we, er, don't.

See, it gets hot over here. A lot. And poncing around in those hairpieces just isn't on, it makes the dog bark and Aunt Sukie laugh, and besides Judge Sewall, that Puritan stalwart, HATES the things, and if you put one on he'll come over to your house for an Intervention and tell you you're going to hell...something about how those Wiggs are made of ladies' hair, well, really...

Of course, all the officers are wearing Wiggs, pretty cool ones with pigtails and all, and the lasses are going right for them...that and the fact they NEVER pay their bills on time will just get right up your nose, it will...

So when they started the snowball fight in Boston, well, a lot of people pitched in. John Adams, the old stick-in-the-mud (who was wearing a Wigg, too), said the soldiers fired in self-defence, and they hit poor Crispus Attucks, who was probably minding his own business, and yeah, yeah, branding people on the thumb is kind of harsh (ouch!), but John said his cousin Sam shouldn't call it a Massacre, it was just a bunch of Riffe-Raffe and Irishmen⁸. But Sam called it a Massacre, anyway, and Paul R engraved the hot pic of the week and sent it out everywhere, even to yahoo, and the videos on Youtube alone...

Of course the pic wasn't exactly what happened — there was photoshop involved, but hey, the end justifies...er, wait...tax-a-tion with-out rep-...oh, whatever.

If you want to play Gotcha with the pic, look here. And shut up about it — these are our Founding Crooks, er, Fathers. Or something.

Well, children, that's more or less how it was, back in 1763-1770. At least, that's our story, and we're sticking to it. Sometimes we wish we hadn't started it. You guys have all the cool TV, and that RP accent gets the girls...

Fact and Fiction by Dmitri Gheorgheni Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

15.02.10

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