# A Fairly Random Anecdote



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I grew up in a suburb of Boston, where every year on or about April 19 (Patriot's Day) various parades and re-enactments commemorated the start of the Revolutionary War. Because it coincided with Spring vacation, we would often take our kids down to visit their grandparents then and let them absorb history.
As things got more elaborate, Revolutionary War re-enactors would come from wherever and set up encampments to inhabit while waiting to chase the Redcoats back to Boston from Concord. (The real "Minute-men" were locals and whiled away the time in a local tavern.) I remember standing atop a hill overlooking one such -- tents, campfires, muskets set in tripods, people smoking long clay pipes, occasional drum tatoos, someone noodling on a fife . . .

Every time I heard the fife, I kept expecting it to start sounding the piccolo obligatto that begins the fugue in Britten's "Young Person's Guide." I still think it would be appropriate thing for the soldiers to march to.


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