Benjamin Franklin (East Meets West)

Written By: Luba Dvortsova.

Boston of old remains the highlight of my trip to the US, and as I wandered around the Quincy Market I was transported back to a place and time long forgotten. I remember I had just been walking through old Boston and Paul Reveres house so I was primed for a ghost sighting or two.

Today’s Quincy market encompasses quite a large area and the restaurants, shops and office building are well disguised behind their early eighteenth century facade. Strolling inside the main center building I seemed to walk even deeper and deeper into the past, thinking how long this market has been in existence. A quick stride across the old cobbled market square and up some stairs, put me into the antiquated Faneuil Hall, where oil paintings of prominent Americans surrounded the inner walls of this old town meeting place. I even stood at the podium (not without a stiff glare from the security guard) where all these historical characters had stood before me, I was trasfixed, and it was there I watched Benjamin Franklin open the door. At first it seemed quite natural but this character was out of his time and as he walked across the meeting room floor he crossed into my time period and greeted me with a huge infectious smile.

“Hello”, he said, “my name is Benjamin Franklin”. Well you can image how shocked I was, even though I'd been half expecting a ghost all afternoon, but to actually meet one was too much for my delicate heart to endure. In a nervous reaction I blurted off the top of my head, “Hello”, my name is Alexandria Fyodorovna Romanova, wife of Nicolas Romanoff Tsar of the Russian Empire”. It was my way of countering his surprise entry into my unruffled world. I was very impressed by his reply though, in broken Russian, as he went on to talk about his knowledge of Tsar Nicolas and how nice it was to meet me, his elegant wife. Benjamin stayed in character never admitting that he was trapped in the twenty first century as we both talked of days past and I never did find out who was inside that beautiful costume.

This was a very interesting meeting for me, and I will never forget our chance meeting, I'm sure that if you were to visit the old Boston Market you to may have a similar encounter with this American icon, wandering Faneuil Hall "Cradle of Liberty." This was where Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin and others had voted to turn back the ships to England without unloading them, some cargoes rotted other shipments were destroyed—ala, the Boston Tea Party...

Written By: Luba Dvortsova

Bublished By: Music Borders
http://www.musicborders.com/