St. Michaels, the town that fooled the British

St. Michaels has long been known as “the town that fooled the British”, or so they say. Quite often, it’s the locals who add, “or so they say”.  The moniker comes from the legend of how the locals learned the British were coming (the war of 1812 had begun and it was now 1813) and so the good townspeople darkened their homes and hung lanterns in the trees. The British, fooled by the light of the lanterns, overshot the town on which they fired and the town was saved, “or so they say”. There are a number of  holes in the story, not to mention the possibility of fires in the trees; the terrain hereabouts is flat, the newspapers of the time had no reports about the lanterns but did report on the heavy fog. Nonetheless,  it's a cute story and it gives St. Michaels some cache in folklore history. We all like a good fish tale.

Time passed and, like the fish that grew at each telling, we're now brought to the Bicentennial of the Battle of St. Michaels and the Legend of the Lanterns festival ('legend' being the operative word). Small towns make their own fun. There are no giant rock concert halls, no shopping malls, no movie amphitheaters; we have only each other’s company to amuse and entertain, and we do a good job of it. During the festival, the main street shops were festooned with red, white and blue colored banners and a host of welcome flags. A few of the restaurants featured 1812 fare along with their regular menu.

The day began with a respectable parade and a few hopeful rays of sunshine. Men and women dressed in period costumes (think Jane Austen in cotton dresses and silk lined bonnets), with the Fort McHenry Guard Fife and Drums, the 1812 Eastern Shore Militia, the 2nd Battalion, the 5th Volunteer Infantry and the 1812 Royal Marines, all marched down the main street in their dress parade uniforms, along with the mayor, the chief of police (a nice guy, by the way), the owner of the local real estate shop, and a few other organizations, such as the Veteran Volunteers and the local fire department. The streets were filled with cheering onlookers all waving little flags and children quizzing "isn't that Uncle Joe?".

After the parade, there were a few book signings at the book shop by local authors, art shows by locals, horse drawn carriage rides, and two skipjacks stood by in the marina to take visitors on cruises along the river. There was a small park for children’s activities, while groups in costume, The Dover English Dancers, would entertain the crowds with dances and music from the early 1800’s. An older gentleman, watching their dance, chuckled “I thought we invented line dancing; guess not”. A woman responded “like my teenage son, who thinks his generation discovered the Beatles”. The dancers and costumed militia appeared at regular intervals throughout the day in various parks dancing their minuets and trooping their colors, all the while weaving their magic on face-painted children and charming adults alike. Occasionally, men in period costume, looking eerily like Benjamin Franklin, would unceremoniously pick a spot, stand atop their box crates and begin their sailors’ stories or talks about the evolution of the flag to whomever happened to be standing by, as was done in “the olden days”. They generally garnered a small, but appreciative, audience who stood and listened while their ice cream disappeared.

The afternoon wore on, the sun peeked through only occasionally, and the offshore breeze moved the air, which made for perfect walking weather. The patrons of the shops, restaurants, and ice cream parlors ebbed and flowed, depending on the time of day. I noticed young people were walking and talking with their families, while I counted only two sets of earbuds on youngsters all day long (obviously from the DC area and not locals). It was a perfect summer day, the clouds formed and dissipated just long enough to keep the air cool and the crowds comfortable. Young couples rode their tandem bicycles down the cobbled side streets, clearly delighted with their coordinating abilities. Boys chased their dogs that had ingeniously unhooked themselves from their leash, while moms wiped ice cream off the faces of their children. I had the sensation that at any moment Pollyanna was going to come skipping around the corner chasing her metal wheel. No one was concerned about the political correctness of the military drills, or the musket firing demonstrations or the cannon firings, although a few of those cannon firings did wake up a number of folk who were enjoying a pleasant afternoon snooze on their park benches.

At 5 pm the closing ceremonies began with the lowering of the flag in the main square, accompanied by the Brass Quintet from the Annapolis Naval Academy. These handsome young men, in their dress whites, appeared so pleased to be here, playing tunes in the big white gazebo, while the townspeople sat on the surrounding grass, listening to their music and eating free cake that had been provided by the event organizers, occasionally turning their attention to the boats bobbing in the nearby harbor.  And so we sat, for a couple of hours, on a soft summer evening, listening to the band’s selections ranging from Anderson and Souza to excerpts from West Side Story, while young boys tossed frisbees, long legged prepubescent girls giggled amongst themselves, young parents chased their happy babies and older folk tapped to the music, happily sitting by their partners and completely unconcerned with the rest of the world. At dusk, the trees lit up with candled lanterns, a bugle tapped and so ended a perfect summer day.