Me and Plymouth Rock

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, what you see before you (gesturing to the rock below) is but one-third the original size of Plymouth Rock. Another third of this boulder, approximately three tons, has been chipped away by enterprising souvenir seekers. The remaining third lies protected, buried beneath its concrete base." I'll never forget those opening lines. I can't. I must have said them over ten thousand times during my nine year "career" as an official Pilgrim Guide at Plymouth Rock.

Rock jock
You got the guide job by scoring highest on a three-hour Pilgrim history exam. I aced the test at fourteen, paid for my two custom-made Pilgrim outfits (forest green and cranberry tunics atop baggy pantaloons and a tasteful over-the-calf sheer black hose), and started "talking history" the summer of freshman year. We worked for tips, street performers giving brief historical lectures to tourists. The 'rock' was sheltered by a marble portico on Plymouth's bustling waterfront. We spoke of Plymouth Rock's origins ("A small band of Pilgrims used this boulder as a stepping-stone to get to dry land after their small shallop, a twenty-foot fishing boat, was tossed against it in a December storm tide."), gave an anecdote-peppered version of Pilgrim history ("They lost half their number that first brutal winter, planting corn over the shallow unmarked graves to disguise their losses"), and passed our hats for donations.

Rock talk
We'd start our talk when six or seven people would walk under the canopy, always looking up and down the sidewalk to make sure we had a shot at a "good fill." A "good fill" usually meant thirty to forty people had drifted in during the lecture. I memorized and refreshed my material continually ("Plymouth Rock was used as a military recruiting station for George Washington's army, carried around town on a wagon"). When Thanksgiving rolls around, I still have to restrain myself from spouting Pilgrim facts to anyone I meet: "Did you know that the Pilgrims first landed in Provincetown? Did you know that Native Americans saved the starving Pilgrims by teaching them to hunt and fish?"

Passing the hat
After I'd run out of things to say about the The Rock, I offered this plea, "Ladies and gentlemen, as you may or may not know, we guides at Plymouth Rock receive no monetary compensation whatsoever for any of our services to the public other than through your generosity." And then, like any good entertainer would do, I held out my authentic Pilgrim hat. Can you spell B-O-L-T? That's what most folks would do. Fleeing our hats once they heard the money pitch. But we had ways of getting them to give. One of our friends would stand right next to us throughout the talk and would then drop a dollar bill in our hat for all to see, saying "Great job, I learned a lot!" Hey, nothing wrong with a little Pilgrim ingenuity.

Thanksgiving is ours
In Plymouth, Thanksgiving is bigger than the Superbowl. Heck, it's even bigger than Christmas. Imagine if everyone in your town dressed up like Pilgrims and Native Americans. We didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, we were Thanksgiving! We recreated the first Thanksgiving feast, said prayers of thanks at the historical houses, climbed to the crows' nest on our Mayflower II, and marched from the Pilgrims' cemetery to Plymouth Rock. But there was a small problem. Thousands of tourists crashed our private party every year. On Thanksgiving, people came from miles around to see The Rock. You couldn't walk two feet without some tourist asking you to pose for a photograph.

But I learned to accept the hype. I thought of it as a little necessary punishment for the money I'd made. Besides, who wouldn't want to be in "America's Hometown" on Thanksgiving? On Thanksgiving, I didn't see myself as a Pilgrim guide working his way through college. I felt like a member of a special family.

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