Plymouth Rock

The highest point in the neighborhood is the site where the church of St. Mary in the Wood stood for centuries, around which many generations of the inhabitants are buried, and where the new congregational church now stands.

The view from this position, minus the sea, reminds one of Burial Hill at Plymouth, Massachusetts, the spot where the Pilgrim Fathers sleep, and in sight of Plymouth Rock where they landed.

From this commanding position at Morley, the eye takes in the entire village or town nestling around it, with its straggling streets, commodious places of worship, busy manufactories, and old mansions surrounded by ancient trees where colonies of rooks long have settled.

There are several coal mines and stone quarries in the neighborhood, which are a source of considerable wealth.

On one of these rocks the pilgrims landed.

It is now called Plymouth Rock.

Here Nixie stopped.

Then Grandma said, Oh, that isn't the way I've heard the story of Thanksgiving.

So at about the time the Reformation ended, one of the most significant developments in the proclamation of God's Word was getting underway, and you could see God's fingerprints all over it.

If you've never seen it before, Plymouth Rock, 45 minutes south of Boston in Plymouth, Massachusetts, comes as a bit of a surprise.

The legend is that Plymouth Rock is where the pilgrims got off the Mayflower when they arrived on these shores in 1620.

The fact is, this is only a fragment of the original Plymouth Rock.

The original broke in half in 1774, and souvenir hunters chipped away at the rock over the years, so there's much less of it today than there once was.

I know you don't always want the facts to get in the way of a good story, but another fact is that no one ever claimed the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock until 1741, 121 years after the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth Harbor.

But all that's incidental, really.

The rock itself is not what's important.

[laughs]

You know what Rick said the other day? You know the Puritans, the people who started, founded this country, you know, the, came over on the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock and founded Thanksgiving? The Puritans have gotten a bad rap because they have been told-- we've been told for years that they were prudes, that they were anti-sex, that they were, um, very sexually repressed because they were very spiritual people and very...

Well, that's not true at all.

In fact, they were just the exact opposite.

Okay, Jeff, tell me one thing about Massachusetts, maybe a bit of law, maybe a tradition, maybe even a misconception, or something you just think is interesting or important to do with it that you'd like listeners to take away from our conversation.

Okay, have you heard of Plymouth Rock?

Mm-hmm.

You have, okay.

Plymouth Rock, it's in the Bay of Boston, right? So it's got the distinction of being the nation's number one, number one most underwhelming national landmark.

The first time I saw it, like, so Plymouth is this quaint seaport town, and they've got these great Washington, D.C., Grecian columns and this whole thing over this thing.

And it couldn't look more out of place if it was flashing neon.

It's ugly as the day is long.

Such knowledge is exceedingly important in devising measures either for the present or the future.

This peninsula was first visited in 1610, three years after the first settlement on James River, Virginia, and twelve years before the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock.

The first settlement was made in 1632 at Detroit.

It was occupied by the French and then by the English as a trading post till the close of the war which gave independence to the United States.

So I don't know if Massachusetts is just under a curse.

I don't know what happened since we landed at the Plymouth Rock, but it's a weird dichotomy going on in my home state, brother.

It is a weird dichotomy.

And also, the mothers and the women in the pink shirts cheering on Lindsay Clancy, they're bringing their children.