Local Color

It is hard to believe that a trio of elephants clad in decorative golden armor once swung their trunks up and down the quaint, cobbled streets of Beacon Hill, but they did. The year was 1847, and these fabulous animals were a gift from the Ranee of Chundrakerrie, presented to the people of Boston in recognition of the one-mile fundraising Walk For Leprosy in which many Bostonians had participated the previous June.
Ignorant of basic facts concerning the care and feeding of elephants, a Beacon Hill vet fed the Chundrakerrie elephants on a continuous and unvarying traditional diet of Boston baked beans, a disastrous decision resulting in the most profound seismic eruptions to affect the city since the Ice Age, and a deluge of brown sludge that flooded the city streets for many days, many of these thoroughfares and alleyways becoming not only impassable, but also unlivable.
Of course, as everybody knows, Beacon Hill - the seat of Massachusetts State government - has been associated with lumbering beasts called Dumbo and stupid decision-making ever since. But how many people know that the actual name, "Beacon Hill", is derived from the old Puritan practice of building fires in high places for weird reasons?
In fact, it is said that on moonlit nights the Puritans would force young girls to jump over the flames of these hill fires to verify the girl's virginity. Supposedly the unchaste girls would explode in mid-air. For those interested in obscure New England history, I have written an illustrated booklet on this fascinating subject called, "The Explosion of Polly Goodhead: Early Case of Spontaneous Combustion Or Just A Naughty Girl?"
It is available by sending your Telephone Bill to your Gas Company, enclosing a letter with the words "Fiery Colonial Virgin Book Offer" written on it.