It's a Nice Place to Visit, But I Happen to Live Here

Doty's Tavern: My house is the barn in the back!I almost think it’s a little weird that the first thing most of us did was look up our home states. This is a class about people going places, but we’re all in such a rush to see what these old guides say about the places that we’ve spent the most time. Of course, this was the first thing I did, too. And instead of just reading about general Massachusetts, I wanted to get more specific—I typed the town I grew up in the search thing. And to my shock, not only did my little town show up in this book, my actual house was in there, too (kind of).

I lived most of my life in a little town only a few miles from Boston called Canton, and while there’s no Canton section of the Massachusetts book, there are a few pages where it’s mentioned as a slightly notable stop along State 138 (which is still there, only now it’s Route 138). For some reason, I thought it was really strange that this book would mention the same anecdotes that I always heard from my elementary school teachers about the town—it got its name from a guy who thought it was directly on the other side of the world as Canton, China (and even though they figured out this wasn’t true almost immediately, they never changed the name); Paul Revere started the first copper mill in the country in Canton, which then provided the copper for the dome on top of the State House; Canton manufactured an oddly large amount of the muskets used during the War of 1812 (all this is on page 614 of the Massachusetts book). These all seemed like things that were cool to kids, but got less and less so as time went on. By the time I got to fifth grade, I barely cared that Paul Revere once lived here, so why would anyone put it in a book?

And then I saw, on the bottom of page 614, the mention of Doty’s Tavern. I almost fell out of my chair. If it weren’t for some trees, I would have been able to see the stone with “8 miles to Boston Town” engraved on it from my lawn, and Doty’s Tavern was listed as a sight to see at the 8.2 miles mark along 138. My house, the one I lived in most of my life and go home to even now, was the barn for Doty’s from the time it was built in the 1850s until the Tavern burned down in 1888, and it’s mentioned in this guide book. It’s just so so weird to realize that something that has been such a regular part of my life for so long could be considered a tourist destination for someone else. And then I thought about all the people who are connected all the other places in the other guides. Do the people who live at 819 N 4th St. in Atchison, Kansas, think it’s weird that their house is in one of these books? Do the people who play tennis at the Seabright Lawn Tennis Cricket Club in New Jersey search for their hometown in the book and get surprised that it’s there? It’s interesting to think that wherever you’re going, someone is from there.