An American Treasure--Bob Jolly

Nobody's Opinion: They told me his name was Bob Jolly. They might as well have said, “Jolly Bob” because I didn’t believe it. In fact, I still can’t believe my luck getting Jolly Bob as a guide when I took The Freedom Trail Tour last week in Boston…a tour put on by “The Freedom Trail Foundation,”---a group of actors and actresses who relive the moments of the founding of America.

Something tells me it’s not a tour that Nancy Pelosi has done, and more’s the pity.

In fact, I suggest that the teachers out there in the Eastern seaboard should just forget those horrible tramps with the busloads of kids to our tainted Capitol, where they can get lost (or even pregnant) in the bowels of the Smithsonian…take them to see Jolly Bob.

He’ll take good care of them, and you might learn something too.

The brochure said, “Walk Into History on the Freedom Trail," and it does. You follow the guide from the Boston Common to the Massachusetts State House, to the King’s Chapel, to the burying ground of Sam Adams and John Hancock, to the Boston Massacre Site, Faneuil Hall, and much more. You actually walk on sacred hollowed patriot ground.

What the brochure didn’t say that this incommensurable man, dressed up in Revolutionary garb, would so stun-gun me with his performance as Nathaniel Balch (the Boston town hat maker) that I would come home ruthlessly searching through my memory of “the most impressionable people” that I have witnessed in my life for a comparison. I must say…Jolly Bob is at least in the top three. I still have to think of the top two.

If I could have taken this actor, cloned him, and put him in every American public school, I’m sure Mr. Jolly’s performance would lead the children to another revolution---one where they would actually wake up and yell, “Oooosay!”

I were a producer, I’d put him in a movie.

Come on…we all remember how boring history was made in our classrooms, don’t we? Some idiot decided that history was not something that kids needed to know (along with intelligent design) so they “intelligently designed” real knowledge out and “cleverly designed” the “Let’s program the little buggers to fit into the working class where they can learn to give free community service!”…in!

Ahh……it would have been enough to make Sam Adams run to The Green Dragon Tavern and have a few rums before storming the school yards with a battalion of men dressed up as nuns.

We could use a few Sam Adams right now.

All right, I admit I’m a bit biased here. Having been an entertainer of over forty years, I actually know how hard it is to entertain a crowd of people. Bob not only entertained them, but he used his vast hippodrome pool of talent to teach them, informing them with all the facts that they never heard in school, or on television. You can always tell a true artist--they never looked rehearsed.

Jolly Bob, with his excellent voice projection (amazing…no mike) his lickerish sense of humor, the rolling of his throat, his gestures…ah…you have to see it, especially in this politically correct world of our nation being berated in our news media daily.

Your heart will soar.

As I was soaking up all of Jolly Bob’s information, which is more than most Harvard college professors will teach you in two semesters (Because the first semester they would have to cover global warming), I was thinking back to Thomas Edison who said, “If there is one evil in the world today for which there is no excuse, it is the evil of stupidity.”

As we all know by the state of our political system today…evil abounds.

Tom also said, “The trouble with our way of educating as generally followed is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mould. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning.”

And he was right. So many of our teachers forget they are competing with the latest gory video game. It wouldn’t hurt them to become more entertaining.

And now that America is being invaded from the South, attacked from the East, and corrupted from the top…men like Bob Jolly might just light the last patriotic flames to remind us why we are here.

And that is? To save America….Oooooosay!

Nobody's Perfect: Okay, I must admit, I wanted to clone the man for my own pleasure...What? You think I wouldn't like a hat maker in my closet?

Nobody Knows: Who this guy REALLY is....something tells me, I will never know.

Nobody Cares: If I could go on that tour again tomorrow...I'd be there. Digital photography, is not my forte, as you can see from the picture. But don't let my lack of talent in that department keep you from taking you're kids and grandkids. If you miss this guy, you are missing more than you will ever know.

And hey, Bob...if you ever read this...thank you.