The house at 14 Green Street, just off Charlestown’s Monument Square, has served many purposes in its history. One of the neighborhood’s famous brick colonial buildings, it was once home to Samuel Dexter, treasury secretary to President John Adams. In 1886, it passed down to a group of Union Army veterans to serve as a meeting hall for those in the area who fought in the Civil War. Deeded to them in perpetuity, the Memorial Hall of the Abraham Lincoln Post 11 of the Grand Army of the Republic remains occupied by that same veteran group. Almost all the members are from Charlestown, operating it as a gathering place for themselves and for any group in the community.
“There’s nothing interrupting us,” said Wally Southern, a veteran and the house’s building manager. “We have plenty of plans.” This includes letting out space to many of those groups. Walking through the house, Southern notes they host a children’s ballet and music group. Additionally, the Charlestown Preservation Society meets frequently and shares office space with the veterans. Among the other groups using the space is the Scottish American community. In a room with zoo animals painted on the walls, beneath the dance studio where veterans of Gettysburg and Antietam practiced their formation drilling, they’re preparing for Burns Night, which celebrates the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns, whose most famous work is “Auld Lang Syne.”
Sarah Ritch is running down the preparations for the Burns Supper, which is the centerpiece of the Burns Night celebration. For several years, Ritch used to host informal Burns Night celebrations at her old apartment on Monument Square. It allowed her to bring together longtime friends from the neighborhood together to celebrate their Scottish heritage and, indirectly, celebrate the strong sense of community that is uniquely fostered in Charlestown. A move out of the neighborhood for Ritch means that they have moved their tradition to the veteran’s hall. Even a snow-forced delay brought about by the recent storm that reduced the usual number of RSVPs couldn’t reduce the sense of community, which is running high.
The Burns Supper menu is straight out of the seventeenth century Scottish lowlands. In addition to Scotch, there needs to be neeps and tatties (turnips and mashed potatoes), cullen skink (a smoked haddock and potato soup), and, of course, haggis (sheep’s heart, liver and lungs in its own stomach). The only nod to changing tastes is the option of a vegetarian haggis.
There will also be Irn-Bru, Scotland’s popular soda. So popular is it that, as Guy Burn is keen to point out, Scotland is the only country where neither Pepsi nor Coke are the most popular soft drinks. Burn, 85, is not fond of the taste himself.
Burn is the evening’s emcee. A former advertiser from New Zealand via London in the sixties, he is overseeing the Burns Supper’s traditions. This goes from the pipe-and-drums (provided tonight by Tim MacMaster, a second-generation highland piper from Dorchester) to the recitation of Burns’ poem “Address to a Haggis.” But just like the vegetarian option on offer, the translation to English from the Scots Gaelic Burn included also indicates changing ways.
Take, for example, Dave Alexander. Unlike Southern and Ritch, Alexander is not a Charlestown lifer. He moved here just over a year ago, he says. But he too is deeply involved in the community. When he’s not running a global organic food wholesaler, he is president of the board of directors for Courageous Sailing, a youth sailing program whose mission is to foster leadership and teamwork skills. Clad in the kilt of his ancestral clan, Alexander explained how he wanted sailing to shed any historically elitist connotations it may have in order to reach as many children in the community as possible. “There is nothing like seeing them realize these new skills that they never knew they had,” Alexander said, describing the moment the youngest residents of Charlestown and throughout Boston take control of a boat for the first time.
At this point, all were asked to stand as the cook brought in the haggis to great fanfare. Delivered on a platter and accompanied by the piper, it is the part of the Burns Supper with the most pomp. Burn then recites “Address to a Haggis,” which ends with the lines telling off historic enemies of Scotland: “You Powrs, that make mankind your care/And dish them out their bill of fare.” It is, through its most notable dish, an assertion of Scotland’s community. One that is held, fittingly, in a building that is evocative of Charlestown’s.
