I would like you to imagine something with me.
I would like you to imagine that you are standing in your kitchen, preparing a simple dinner.
And while you're standing there cutting vegetables, your eyes drift up again to the spot.
That spot. Every house has them - those scars of documented memory in wood and plaster that show a life was lived in these walls.
Maybe it's a scratched up door where an overeager dog always begs to go out, or maybe it's the pencil marks on the doorframe marking the growth of your children.
But every day, you see them. And every day, those spots call back a memory.
This house has them too.
And this spot?
This spot is a hole.
Right up there, by the entryway.
It's about the size of a man's thumb, and if you lived in this house, you would see that hole every day of your life.
And every day, you would remember - that's from the day Jason Russell was murdered.
April 19, 1775.
If you were Elizabeth Russel, his widow - you would spend the last ten years of your long life in that same house.
Every time you walked through the front door, you would step over the spot where he was shot, then bayoneted.
Every time you took fresh linens to the bedrooms, you'd see the bullet holes in the stair steps.
And every time you stood in the kitchen, you'd look up and see - that spot.
And you would know the very floor you're standing on was once covered with corpses, Colonial and British war dead alike.
Your husband was one of them.
You'd have written that when you walked in your kitchen that night, the blood came to your ankles.
I think most every man has at one time or another asked himself what would I do, if Tyranny knocked on my door.
Many have thought about it... some harder than others.
But Jason Russel is one of the very few men in this nation who has had to answer that question.
An Englishman's home is his castle, he said that day.
He was warned to leave.
He refused.
And on that day, he died.
The kitchen is still there.
You can still stand at that kitchen table.
And look up.
And see the spot.
(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-N6zNfX8h_9A/T3erf9C5m_I/AAAAAAAAB7g/qcoZXG697PY/s912/Jason_Russell_House_Kitchen.jpg)
Jason Russell's house still stands in Arlington Massachusetts, right off Battle Road.
It's been moved around since 1775, and been added onto in the intervening years.
But in that picture, you're standing in the kitchen. Out that door you see an entryway - in the middle of that foyer you see just beyond is where the front door used to be.
That spot - right there - where Jason Russel died, with shot and eleven bayonet wounds in his body.
In the foreground you see a closed door. That's the cellar, where a half dozen militiamen took shelter from the British flankers.
The floorboards were replaced in the 1860's. The story is that when that was done, the original flooring still bore the bloodstains from the dead piled in this room after the battle.
(crossposted, Mods may wish to move/close the duplicate. My apologies)
very well written and it really makes you think.
Yes... Yes, I do think I'll be stealing that...
..This is the kind of stuff we need more of.........Nice Job.............
.......Strength & Honor............Josey Wales................
This gives me chills. I will use it, thank you.
More impact to the story! I have heard it many times, I like this rendition!
Kaylee,
Once again, thank you.
Last Sunday I stood in that kitchen and looked at those walls, floor and ceiling. Down those cellar stairs.
You captured it perfectly.
Hawkhavn
I used it in Clermont last weekend and it choked me up!
I've told it dozens of times but not from that perspective!
Nicely done, thank you for posting that perspective.
Bring a real since of sacrafice from the ones left behind. Wonderful and chilling.
Nice. And sad. :'(