Happy Billington Day!

Billington Day is almost here, and while I know a lot of you are planning big barbeques, I think it is appropriate that we take a moment to remember who the Billington Boy’s were, and why we celebrate this day.
Nearly 400 years ago young Francis Billington climbed a tree and saw a patch of water to the west that he thought was the western ocean, but turned out to be a large pond. Francis’ brother John later got lost in the same woods, and didn’t turn up for over a year.
In their honor Plymouth planners have for hundreds of years deliberately created confusing, maze-like subdivisions and streets, and every year on Billington Day town residents spread out to give bad directions to unsuspecting travelers. Not vague directions mind you: very specific, easy to follow, eminently plausible yet absolutely inefficient directions

How do you get to the Plymouth Rock?

On Billington Day in 1999 I was asked this by a sweet young couple from Ohio, as we stood on the little bridge on Water Street overlooking Brewster Gardens. Careful to stand between them and the direct line to the columned canopy over The Rock, I pointed out Leyden Street, which I engagingly described as ‘America’s First Main Street’. “If you go up that street, and through the lights on Court”, I started, and sent them on their way up to the top of Burial Hill, down its northern edge, to the Court House, and then eventually up Water Street from the opposite end -after a lunch break at Martha’s Galley.
Why take the trolley, I thought with an air of self-c0ngratulation, when I can mis-direct you all about town!

Tourists are easy though, and perhaps less satisfying. After all, they are already committed to wandering. Far more satisfying –and traditional, are bad directions given to new residents of town who are as yet unaware of our holiday traditions: such as the town regulation that goes all the way back to the first Billington Day that stipulates you cannot speak at town meeting unless you have been lost in Myles Standish State Forest.

I was minding my own business at the MRA ball fields off State Road on Billington Day last year when a family in a brand-spanking new Ford Extrapolate rolled up to me and, after I hit the ground expecting bullets to come flying out as the tinted windows on one side began to descend (thinking it might be that nice young couple from Ohio), someone from inside its vast interior meekly asked for directions to Armstrong Rink.

After I dusted myself off I was the very model of helpfulness, going so far as to illustrate the best route on a napkin using a felt pen and hardened old French fries as street signs.

“You’re in luck,” I said, with a profound earnestness, “Plymouth is a big town, but I know a short-cut.” And with those fateful words I described the miracle of Ship Pond Road (‘The virtual spinal column of central Plymouth’ I believe I said), which would take them through the historic heartland of Plymouth while bypassing the congestion of a more ‘direct’ route.
Of course I neglected to mention the washboard dirt surface, the unmarked streets that branch off from either side and take you to the far hinterlands, or the take-your-life-in-your-hands intersection with Long Pond Road.
“If you make it that far,” I said with a wink, knowing full well that my holiday spirit would be misread as ‘local color’, “you take a right on Long Pond and continue on until you see the entrance to the Myles Standish State Forest…”

Sure, I know what you’re thinking: you love the idea, want to keep up the tradition, but are concerned that you won’t be able to keep a straight face when dispensing your bad directions. Well try this: tell the unsuspecting traveler to stay on the road they are on!
“Whatever you do, make sure you stay on _____ Street!”
If they’re on Sandwich Street it will soon change to Court Street, back to Sandwich, then change to State Road, Will of the Wisp Boulevard, and Ellisville Avenue before leaping in to the Cape Cod Canal. Chances are they’ll never make it that far, coming to a screeching halt somewhere down ‘3A’.
In this part of the country, even roads with apparently only one name change at the town line: Carver Road becomes Plymouth Road, Bourne Road becomes Plymouth Road. Wareham Road becomes Plymouth Road –all depending on where you are and which direction you are headed in. Then consider that many of the roads I just mentioned can be in Plymouth, then Bourne, then Wareham, then Plymouth again. What a hoot!.

If you’re having a Billington Day Party make sure the fun starts early by printing out directions from Internet.
Those web trip planning sites are notorious for using old maps for their databases and when you add their out-of-date directions to Plymouth’s maze of forest roads, ‘pork chop lots’ and changing names you can almost guarantee that family members that you had to invite -but don’t really care to see, somehow won’t show!

History, tradition, being lost for days in Myles Standish State Forest – its all of part of living in America’s Home Town.
Happy Billington Day!