A King's Highway Runs Through It

I have lived close to a King's Highway most of my life. Charles II ordered the first such highway built in the mid-1600s from Charleston, South Carolina, to Boston, Massachusetts. The path evolved into the Boston-Post Road and Highway Route 1, stretching from Maine to Florida. Someone must have walked or ridden a bicycle the length of that historic road and published a travel log. It will not be me to do it if not. But it is a worthy quest.

Almost one hundred years later, another king, perhaps George II, built a highway crossing New England from Portsmouth to Vermont. We live along the remaining elements of that King’s Highway in the Monadnock Region. It is a quaint, tree-lined road, partly paved, mostly dirt, leading out to Nubanusit Lake, past a farm or two and the Harris Center for Nature Conservation and Education. We brake for turkeys on the King’s Highway today.

I went to school in Canada for five formative years and got used to the Queen’s picture on the currency, driving along the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), turning right on Queen Street to school, and praying for Her Majesty each day in Chapel (yes, each day and twice on Sundays). At school banquets, we made a toast to the Queen. The first instance of that for me was the Lower School Cross Country banquet. Once everyone was assembled, the headmaster stood at the head table, and everyone stood with him. Not a word was spoken. I followed along. When the room quieted, the headmaster announced, “To Her Majesty the Queen.” All arms went into the air holding a glass of something, probably milk. “To the Queen,” we all responded and sat down.

I have a Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Medal Award from those days. The late Prince Philip founded the Edinburgh program around the Commonwealth to help inspire young people to do great things. My great thing was finishing a semester-long first aid class run by St John’s Ambulance, a Canadian organization that provides first aid training and assistance. The very proper, very stiff instructor stood erect at the head of the class each week, in uniform, hands folded behind his back (what the heck, he may have even had a riding crop), facing a room of high school boys with whom he did not share a sense of humor. He endured, and we got medals. “Bloody kids,” I expect he said to his wife at night.

In 1976, a friend and his family generously invited me to the Olympics in Montreal, which Queen Elizabeth attended along with Prince Philip. Their daughter, Princess Anne, was an equestrian competitor in those Olympics, and I believe it was at an equestrian event where I got to see the Queen. The scene was hive-like: a throng of people around the Queen, moving as a hive with the Queen at the center. Like bees. Trying to watch her daughter compete in the event must have been very hard.

While watching the hive pulsate across the hill in front of us, I commented to my friend on the important role I felt the Queen played in the world. “Really?” he responded with a smirk, “She’s not the richest person in the world.” His comment landed on me with a thud. But, yes, I was grateful to have a wealthy friend invite me to the Olympics. We went into Montreal a couple of evenings and drank gin and tonics for eight dollars each. This was 1976, I remind you. At college, in those days, we drank gin and tonics during happy hour for a dollar-fifty. In 1981, I stayed at this friend’s bungalow in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, and was up at four in the morning to watch Charles and Diana marry. My friend slept through it.

Today, the Queen lies in state while hundreds of thousands file past her in tribute, not to her wealth or power, but her decades of faithful service up to her final days. Enough has been said and written about that. The people of the realm and worldwide can put aside their differences about monarchy to come together around the indisputable fact of Elizabeth’s sense of duty to the very (very) end.

The Guardian of London suggests that every nation in the world is going to want to send someone to the funeral. Stripped of its power over centuries in favor of constitutional government, sequestered in its castles, fed what to say in matters of state, and derided as a circus act, the British monarchy draws us to it. Why? Perhaps for the same reasons we are drawn to the great pyramids. It is a marvel, constructed over the ages, pummeled by the forces of nature.

Still standing.

We are not ticketholders but stakeholders in these things. Keep Calm and Carry On reads the grocery tote we keep in the car. We do, or we try. We carry on. We feel our way forward. We follow the course. And a King’s Highway runs through it.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King.