GeekForce

This journalist has been remiss in failing earlier to post the account of a recent trip to Massachusetts. When I mentioned to a certain Super Geek, known to this site as David, that my friend, Linda, and I were on our way to Concord, Mass, he suggested we mention his name.

Well, more specifically, he said to mention his name at the John Buttrick Museum.
After the requisite visit to the Concord Cheese Shop for some of the best French Gruyere in the world, and an impassioned lesson about Citi Bank’s desire to over develop that fine village, we headed over to the Concord Museum. And, a fine museum it was. However, we had over stayed at the cheese shop and soon learned that the museum would close in less than an hour, so we rushed straight to the point.
“Where’s the John Buttrick stuff?” we ignorant midwesterners asked. (Well, we were a little more graceful than that.)
We were told that the Concord Museum housed only two pistols that belonged to John Buttrick, and decided that the $8 entry fee was a little more than we wanted to spend just to tell David that we had, indeed, honored the memory of some distant relative of his. Fortunately, a Minuteman happened to be on duty and enthusiastically directed us instead to the John Buttrick Museum, down the road a piece. A former librarian commando volunteering at the museum said the Buttrick House was is disrepair, but Mr. Minuteman said, not to worry because it was currently being restored.

Well, maybe the little cottage museum would have a nice picnic table and we could enjoy our cheese and a glass of cabernet. So, off we went to see the cottage where John Buttrick, David’s great, great something or other had once lived. As we drove down some historic road, a sign directed us to the John Buttrick Museum. A small sign denoted the site, which, much to our surprise, included a huge, yellow Colonial clapboard farm house on one side of the road, and a marvelous early 20th century (1911) stone mansion on the other.
As it turned out, both houses were part of the John Buttrick Museum estate, a sprawling country manor the size of Forest Park, and resplendent with ancient birch and sycamore trees, and acreage that expanded as far as the eye could see. Within that range of vision was the famous North Bridge where the Minutemen, a group of farmers, craftsmen and other ordinary folks, took up arms against the well trained, well outfitted and totally pompous soldiers of King George for the first time in the embryonic history of the United States of America.
As for good old John, he was a gentleman farmer who wanted to keep a fair share of the money he generated on his farm, and did not want some overstuffed royal across the Atlantic telling him what to plant. He joined the Minutemen and was happy to serve in the background as a captain. But, as it turns out, John got promoted, instantaneously, to Major and shoved to the front of the line - face to face with the redcoated British Army prepared to extinguish the handful of Minutemen facing them.
There they were, all subjects of the king, facing off with only the short and narrow North Bridge between them. An act of defiance against the King was tantamount to treason. But, when Major John weighed the costs, he decided on the side of freedom and shouted, “Fire! For God’s sake, fire!”
With that, John discharged his musket and fired what was immortalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne as “the shot heard ’round the world”.
There it is. David Buttrick, Geek par excellence, is the seed of American history; a direct descendant of one of our bravest forefathers. If you have ocassion to travel to New England, I suggest you make it a point to visit Concord and, especially, the John Buttrick Museum. And, hey. Tell them you know one of “the Buttrick Geeks”.