Mild agitation seeps into me as I maneuver the streets of Prescott. The Yahoo! map I printed out implied I should turn north on Arizona 89 from Arizona 69. But I didn’t realize the road I needed had already forked away from 69, leaving me heading in the wrong direction. The streets don’t match up to what I’m seeing. I flip a U-turn. I see Granite Creek, but where’s the park that goes with it? It’s surely not in that industrial complex. A fear gnaws at me: I might just have to stop and ask directions… wearing white 18th Century breeches, stockings and a waistcoat.
Eventually I figure out my mistake. I find my way to Granite Creek Park, discover I can’t get in from the west side, navigate around some more streets and find a place to park.
I emerge from my modern-day carriage with a haversack over my shoulder and a picnic basket in my hand. It’s time to picnic like it’s 1759 on a gloriously sunny day, as the family of
We Make History gathers for good food, good company, and games from the past.
Lord Scott spots me nearly from the moment I step into the parking lot. Dressed in a red jacket and a rose-adorned tricorn, we exchange friendly wave-salutes. My blue felt coat with the pewter buttons, the one I decided would not cut it for the balls, suits me fine. The breeches and waistcoat, the labors of My Dear Aunt Susan, serve me well once more.
“Mr. Francis!” he says. So glad you could join us.
Always
Mister Francis. Never just “Francis,” like people say at work, a nomenclature of my own invention designed to alleviate confusion amongst other Chrises.
Families are gathered in period costume, spread out on quilts, enjoying sandwiches and beverages in silver cups. A picnic table is devoted to dominoes, and young patriots in three-cornered hats enjoy an anachronistic game of Frisbee, running about in the clearing just before the highway and under the power lines. Young girls chase hoops with sticks.
I pull up a chair and get down to the business of eating, drinking, and making merry, munching on peanut butter and bread, reacquainting myself with people who I know I’ve met before and yet sadly don’t remember their names.
My shoes, the new pewter-buckle shoes, seem to be holding up.
“I wore them to work yesterday to break them in,” I say to Lady Scott. “I was sliding all over the place. People told me to go out in the parking lot and scuff them up, and I said I don’t want to wear them down. They’ve got to at least last me until November.”
“You’ll get at least six years out of those shoes,” Lord Scott replies.
I talk about how my colleagues enjoy hearing about my adventures in this other “world,” and how they can tell when another historic event is coming.
“Do you want your two worlds to meet?” His Lordship asks.
A colleague is thinking about attending a ball, I say.
Another family greets him and the subject changes before I can expand upon my answer.
I walk amongst the gathering, greeting others with an offering of home-baked chocolate-chip cookies. Yes, your patriotic producer does bake! It’s time for some Frisbee followed by lawn bowling.
The game requires only moments to learn. Roll your team’s balls closest to the “jack” -- a white ball about the size of a cue ball in pool, albeit much lighter. Your team scores a point for each ball you get closer to the jack than the competition’s, and double if the ball touches the jack. No pins stand to fall, but if you’re lucky, you might knock a few opponents’ balls out of place and improve your score. The game ends at a preset figure, 7 or 10 points in our case.
Modern bowling has me hitting more gutters than pins, so I’m relieved to take a shot at this. No shortage of curious competitors awaits, so we enjoy several rounds in the green May grass. A star emerges. Miss Alia, a charming lady, proves herself to be a formidable opponent, consistently rolling balls closer to the jack.
“We need the tape measure,” is heard again and again as we have to make judgment calls on close balls. A whimsical thought crosses my mind of how that would have looked in 1759. Did two men in blue-and-white jackets and tricorns run onto the field from the sidelines with two sticks and a chain?
Everybody is keeping score, but yet we have to keep asking what the score is, as if nobody really wants to win or lose… let’s just try again!
Over the course of the day, curious onlookers from modern times wander over and talk to us.
We explain ourselves and our mission.
“We just had to see the Pilgrims,” one woman says. A century off, but that’s not bad.
A woman and her daughter walk over to greet us. So does a man on a bicycle who starts talking about how he came from Vermont.
“Those Indians could fire ten arrows in the time you could get a shot off from one of those blunderbusses,” he says, rambling into a tangent about how development had taken out some historic land.
“People always look at me,” I observe after he leaves, not sure whether that’s true or not. It must be the tricorn.
“It’s that gleam in your smile.”
I had much to smile about. Relaxation and the beauty of a spring day. Some folk musicians are playing a few hundred yards away. An idea springs to mind.
“Maybe one of these days we get both groups together and we have a dance here on the lawn!”
Families come and go, but a small group of us remain, enjoying each other’s company and conversation. A woman from Portugal describes a history of oppression in her country. We hear other stories of tyranny in Africa, and it gives us pause, a reminder of how so many yearn for the blessing of liberty while we enjoy ours.
Afternoon dissolves into early evening. At one point, Lord & Lady Scott and I stand silently, savoring the moment and the wonder of nature around us.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he says.
If we could have frozen time at that point, we would have -- stretched the minute into an hour or more under the setting sun and the light breeze, the green leafy trees and the blue skies.
“Do you enjoy Starbuck's?” Lord Scott asks me.
* * *
We walk up the hill and through the half-empty parking lot in the full regalia, past the Staples and the closed shops. The sidewalks are nearly deserted, but I tip my three-cornered hat to a few smiling strangers as we make our way towards the coffee house. The warmth within me soon meets a cool double-chocolate concoction, compliments of His Lordship.
“Sir Christopher,” he introduces to the barista, who writes it on the cup.
Lord Scott tells me of how he would occasionally get discounts or even a freebie for walking into Starbuck’s in period costume.
Some folks in a pick-up wave to us as we cross back across the blacktop to the park -- making friends everywhere we walk.
* * *
At one point in the afternoon, a gentleman in modern attire asked me several questions about what I got from We Make History. He had derived some insight from Lord Scott, but he wanted to hear some more from me.
“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Thirty-four,” I said, “but today I feel like 22.”
I told him how I felt the entire experience -- three historic balls, one battle and now one picnic -- had uplifted and inspired me to be a better person.
“I see the world in a whole different way now.”
I told him how the journeys back in time had elevated my standards and given me something to take back into my other life and time as a television news producer.
“I had a choice to make the other night,” I explained to him. “I could either let my reporter do this story about two robbers who did a million dollar heist from the Gem Shows in February, or I could let this reporter do a story about the Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics which had great kids, great video, and a message of encouragement, and he could get it done in about 1:10. I chose the latter. I don’t regret that choice.”
I told him how I sought out relevant and informative stories.
“If I’m going to ask you to give me a half-hour of your life, I better make it worth it.”
He compared me to missionaries he’d known who had been abroad and then come home to find home wasn’t the same.
And then he hit me with the big question, the one my parents have asked in one form or another, the one I know my friends and colleagues ask silently.
“What message do you take away from all this?” he said, motioning to the people around me, submerged in the past.
Other times I would have struggled with the question. But now, my eyes misted and I immediately knew what to say.
“Life is worth living,” I replied softly.
I offered him a cookie before he left.
* * *
“Is that Francis in the background?”
The message crackled over the control-room intercom during a commercial break as I walked through the newsroom to the set, the plastic container of cookies in my hand, still fresh even after the long carriage ride from Prescott. I had to move quickly and surreptitiously to say hello without accidentally making it on the air.
“You look like Paul Revere!” a colleague exclaimed.
Someone pointed a studio camera at me as a joke and I shuddered for an instant. But no viewer at home saw this stranger in patriotic attire.
However, they’ve felt my influence for sure.
Did I want my two worlds to meet? They already have.
More photos coming soon!
My father has this aura of persistence, one surely passed down to him from Grandpa Francis, World War II veteran and cryptographic specialist who helped us defeat the Axis in ways he took to his grave. 
