"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
There's a lot to be said for having been born on Patriots Day in Medford, Mass. Each birthday brought with it a holiday from school and a parade. Someone playing Paul Revere would ride through Medford Square and stop at Gaffey's Funeral Home to alert the night-capped proprietor, sticking his head from a second-floor window, that the British were coming.
Turns out when the real Paul Revere galloped through Medford that fateful April night in 1775 he may well have left with a snootful.
Local historians...say that when Revere left Medford, he had a belly full of rum.
And there may be something to that. After all, Medford was home to Old Medford Rum, a potent and internationally distributed liquor owned by a family named Hall. The captain of the local militia, by the way, was Isaac Hall, from that same Hall family, himself a distiller. Medford historians claim Hall was famous for his hot toddies, and, furthermore, that Revere partook in this particular rum cocktail that fateful evening.
It is very possible to imagine that on that chilly April night in 1775, Revere might have paused in his famous ride to drink a rum cocktail or two.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
