In trying times past and present, perseverence key
A heritage and a hope
Peter Johnston

Are these times that try your soul?

On the lighter side, consider these challenges that I faced two weeks ago when visiting my brother and parents in Charlestown, Mass., outside of Boston:

• Enduring the nightly ritual of locating a parking place in a one square mile town of 15,000 built on a hill - competing even with residents because hardly any homes have garages;

• Overcoming the nuisance each of the next five mornings of remembering where I was parked and generally having to climb uphill to locate my car somewhere around the square surrounding Bunker Hill Monument;

• Driving in Boston.

But on a more sober note what about these circumstances surrounding us?

Gasoline above $3.50 a gallon and no end in sight. A housing crisis, a government all too willing to print money with nothing to back it up. Weather patterns causing extreme flooding in one part of the country, fires in another. Divorce rates above 50 percent. International relations at critical levels in too many parts of the world. International terrorists with the capability of detonating nuclear suitcase bombs in the midst of densely populated cities right here in the United States.

Certainly those could try a soul.

On that more serious note, the revolutionary flare of Boston in the 1770s and ensuing events in other parts of the nation offer some hope for trying times. Our ancestors persevered.

Remember "one if by land, two if by sea." The Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung, is about one and a half miles from my brother's house. That event took place in April 1775. Paul Revere and others perseveringly risked their lives to alert colonists of British movement toward Lexington and Concord.

How about "Don't shoot 'til you see the whites of their eyes." That order was given because the patriots lacked ammunition, but not courage or perseverance. It was June 1775. The colonists occupied the high ground now memorialized as Bunker Hill Monument - about the length of two football fields uphill from my brother's home. The patriots were vastly outnumbered by the best trained military in the world, but the patriots persevered. Though they eventually retreated, they inflicted double the number of casualties on the British sending a message of the American will to fight.

About a year later independence was declared. But all did not go well for the Americans. Retreat was more common than victory and General Washington's army was disgruntled. Basic provisions were lacking, winter was upon them, and there was little prospect of getting paid. Washington's forces were grumbling about conditions when a copy of Thomas Paine's "Crisis" made its way into camp.

On December 23, 1776 Paine wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."

Washington had that work read to his troops, then challenged them to make a daring raid into New Jersey where he gained an important victory. Their perseverance during times that tried their souls helped propel them through seven years of war before Britain, the greatest military in the world at that time, finally surrendered at Yorktown in 1783.

In times that try the soul - perservere.

Peter Johnston, an East Bernard resident, earned a history degree from Cornell University and is a former high school history teacher.