[Unidentified]: and through the wood to Grandmother's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the wood, oh, how the wind does blow. It stings the toes and bites the nose and over the ground.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Welcome to Looking Back at Medford History. I'm Laura Duggan, your hostess. Today's guest is Max Heinig, Medford's current Poet Laureate. He's also an English teacher here in Medford and has been so for 28 years. Also, you can add songwriting and singing to his resume. If that's not enough, Max is the co-founder and the brewmaster at Medford Brewing Company, located at 30 Harvard Ave in West Medford. Max Heinegg is originally from New York, where he received a BA from Union College and was a rock star with the Hounds. He then made his way to Massachusetts, earned a master's at Boston University, Eventually, Max made his way to Medford and teaching. The poems by Max have been described as full of tenderness, wisdom, and buoyancy. They focus on family, nature, travel, and politics. Max has won the Sidney Lanier Poetry Award, the Emily Stauffer Poetry Prize, and has been the finalist for many other poetry prizes. He's written and published nearly 300 poems. Max, welcome to Looking Back at Medford History.
[Heinegg]: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, my first question for you is how did you get into writing poetry?
[Heinegg]: I think I was about 15 years old, and it started as a combination of being really interested in music and starting to write songs. Child of the 80s, loving lots of different bands and starting to be interested in one day being in a band, but also just starting to read poetry because I had a lot of really good English teachers, and I think I was... That makes a difference, don't you think? Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You have a teacher that excites you about a subject like poetry.
[Heinegg]: 100%. I feel like that and being in the school's drama program.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Were you in the drama department too?
[Heinegg]: Yeah, I was in the high school plays in Schenectady, New York back in the late 80s. What plays? Let's see. I was in some Shakespearean plays. I was in Midsummer Night's Dream.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK.
[Heinegg]: And I think that, along with the teacher that I had who used to do kind of funny impersonations, were not impersonations, but he would play the role of Lady Macbeth.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: He played Lady Macbeth?
[Heinegg]: Yeah. And I think all of us were just really taken by that. And I started to sort of just hear the power of language. And so I started writing poems when I was 15.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: 15, so that's when it all started.
[Heinegg]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK. So how do you go about creating your poems?
[Heinegg]: I would say that for me, the first stage is fairly free. I'll either speak them into existence on my phone using the Voice-to-Text app, or I will write without self-judgment in my Google Docs, and I'll just sort of say what I have to say at that day or that time, and then I'll go back to it at a later date to read it to see if it's got anything of merit.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So like a rough draft?
[Heinegg]: Yeah, very much it's drafting and then I think that the real, the experience and how that helps you is to try to take it from something that's rough and somewhat shapeless and deciding on its final form. So I think writing is an everyday thing for me. It's very much a function of just picking up my phone and if I'm waiting in a traffic light I might just You're creating? 20 seconds here, 30 seconds there, or whenever you travel, jotting it down. And then later on, you look at it, and you say, does this have anything in it that might be interesting to somebody other than me?
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK, because you want to be able to find something that can reach people.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, I think that there's stuff that you write for yourself, and then there's stuff that's worth sharing.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK, that's interesting. I haven't heard anybody actually speak of that, but that's an important point.
[Heinegg]: I don't think you want to be so in love with your own ideas or your own voice that you think that everything you think is, you know.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It's going to be absolutely, you know, loved by everybody else, yes.
[Heinegg]: We're deserving to be in print. Okay, well. Not all of our thoughts are, you know, our best thoughts.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You're a modest man here, I think. Okay. Well, we're going to start with, let's see, Keepers of the House. And you're going to read this one. And I have to start by saying I really love your last line. But let me just be quiet and let you read it. Share it with the audience.
[Heinegg]: So this is the poem that shares the title of the collection. And it's a book of poems that focus on my teaching here at Medford High School. And it begins with an epigraph from the book of Ecclesiastes. So the poem is Keepers of the House. And the epigraph is, the day the keepers of the house tremble, and those that look out of windows be darkened, because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. In his apron, Vincent plucks the vivid Italian cookies, doubting correctly, they're for my girls. He slaps his gut, nothing wrong with a sweet tooth. His name's tattooed elbow to wrist in cursive, neck adorned by a thin gold cross, telling me the drugs are why he left town, turning into Gloucester. Poison just handed out to kids. I hear you. I've read the epitaphs of morning texts, learned the limits of a teacher's influence, and haven't seen the last of the young shadows like the one my colleague follows home from school, trailing the specter of powder and the silence of a sun, like the two ghosts in my classroom who return to take their seats when I open the window for the breeze. When they're listening, I preach, trust yourself, speak, don't court danger. But I'm talking to myself. I regret I never told them that I used to relish that back tongue bitterness, taking emptiness for oasis. Friends died, but I was lucky. When I needed safety, I still had keys to the house I couldn't wait to leave.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, wow. That, you know, very powerful poem there.
[Heinegg]: Those are a couple of my students, not for a very long time, but there was a time when I think people hadn't really woken up to the dangers of opioids. Yes. And we had some neighbors and some friends and some students who passed. And I think collectively we've started to, I've noticed that based on what I've read, that the numbers have dropped. And I think collectively, you know, not to start on such a serious note, but I'm teaching Fahrenheit 451 right now. And we're talking about, you know, the dangers of drugs in a society. And you see it as a teacher, hopefully not very many times in your career, but, you know, maybe once or twice where you wish you could have prevented something bad from happening.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, you sort of brought up a memory I have of that. Because a long time ago, I was working here in Medford High School as a substitute teacher. And I was talking to a student. He started telling me about a friend of his who had a problem with drugs. And he was talking about it. And you need to talk to somebody about, get him to some help. And I did what I could in talking to him. And then about maybe two weeks later, I picked up the newspaper, and I'm reading about an account about somebody who was found in a hotel room, and it died. It was that student.
I shudder when I even think of it now.
[Heinegg]: I've taught about 4,000 kids, and luckily we're talking about just one kid in particular, but sometimes those things are the ones that really sting and stick with you.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You do what you can, but anyway. Okay. I do like that last line. Would you read that last line again? I mean. Yeah, yeah. I like that.
[Heinegg]: Yeah. And so, when I needed safety, I still had keys to the house. I couldn't wait to leave.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Isn't that the way? You can't wait to leave your parents' home, and yet when you get into trouble, it's a safe haven.
[Heinegg]: That was me as well. That was me before I took some time in between starting my bachelor's and finishing it. I went to New York City to sing for a band, and then towards the end when I realized that I probably should go and be a teacher.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Go be a teacher, yeah.
[Heinegg]: And maybe find a balance between the two activities. That's when I came back and I still had keys. And I got the bachelor's. And then from there I was able to wind my way towards Medford.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Wind your way through Medford. And we're glad that you did get here. Yes. Okay. And then we had the, I think the second poem here was, oh, let's see.
[Heinegg]: Joy Division.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, yeah. Joy Division. And let me get here. And now you said, I think you live near Oak Grove Cemetery.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, I do. I live very close to Oak Grove. I can see the statue, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, Ciampa's statue. And basically, during COVID, when we were teaching from home, I would often walk to Oak Grove. And I was at home with my daughters, who both went to Medford Public Schools and graduated from Medford High School. And we would take some walks. And basically, while doing that, I wrote this poem.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Okay, well, let's hear it.
[Heinegg]: This is Joy Division, and it was also the band that my daughter was enjoying at the time. Joy Division. The body above the graves of Oak Grove Cemetery holds its post. No hangdog face, no fretful ghost in the light. It does not shine a reminder, abiding. If not today, perhaps tomorrow. My daughter lowers her mask and says, it's peaceful here, and shows me a rose quartz headstone, private by the pines. Distancing this spring, she discovered the older plots and family vaults blocks from our house. I thought, too dark. Her walks listening to love will tear us apart. But that's the draw for both of us. Melodies stained away from brightness. I know these dead saw worse omens come true, wars we choose to know about, soldiers too soon shorn threads. This daylight moon says some curses are just the worm turning the soil for a crop we'll never see. That's fair, her phrase returns to me. This isn't a plague and I don't believe in curses. The moon keeps our quiet, looking on like a father but only a follower.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Wow. I think one of these stanzas, I know these dead saw worse. When I was reading this, it sort of reminded me of William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, which was a poem I was really obsessed by at one point.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. And it stays relevant.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And it seems to keep coming back relevant all the time, doesn't it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I used it actually. I was writing a history final about World War II. And I used this, the last lines are this rough beast sits round, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.
[Heinegg]: Yeah. It's a very strong sense that war feels like the apocalypse or the second coming as in Yeats' poem where basically it's the end of days. It's the end of times. I think what I was trying to put into perspective was the stress that we were feeling about COVID as neighbors and as people at Elderleaf, you know, family members, and then also having a young daughter, you know, who is wanting to be with her friends and walking through Oak Grove Cemetery and some of the plots that are dedicated to the military. It's just a little bit of perspective on things. And I've often enjoyed walking in Oak Grove. I think it's a really beautiful cemetery that brings me a lot of peace, but also makes me think about American history.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It does. You know, they are restoring that statue, you know, the one with the, is it the angel?
[Heinegg]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It's out there. A friend of mine, Dee Morris, is involved with that, too. They're restoring, they got funds to do that.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, both of the statues are interesting to me. I wrote a poem recently about the one that's on the intersection of Playstead and Winthrop because the soldier seems to be standing on his rifle. And at the time, it was considered controversial because it wasn't thought of as sort of not necessarily jingoistic, but as warlike as it should be, because it was as if he was saying, well, we're done with our rifles. And I thought that that was an interesting thing. So I did a little research on it. And I think we're very lucky to have those statues here in Medford.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: We are. And, of course, you know I'm working on getting another one. We'll get to that later. I want to stick with the poetry right now. Well, the next one, I always like to read one of the poems of the poets I interview, and so I picked this one here, and I'll tell you later. Not that this one. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Almost got sidetracked. Keep me on track here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: All right. History is the smoke of the towers as the boy's head rests in peace on the desk asleep aloud. I know he works all night and just yesterday borrowed the Iliad because his father made him read the Odyssey. And though I rouse him, he sleeps, again, while the man falls, an arrow, whose photographer saw bisecting the two buildings, one where a high school friend died, the other where my cousin worked and was on vacation from. I wonder if this is what it means to teach in the empire where soon there will be no longer recognition of fault or anger. Waking him for the clip of Osama who explains what will happen if America aims at Mecca and Medina and the flashback ends. The class is reminded what Mecca means and the child who works to help feed his family has to be told he's missed the bell, that he was dreaming perhaps of places he wants to visit and things he wants to happen in America.
Oh, yes.
[Heinegg]: Thank you. That was a great reading. That was a powerful day. I think that we're still trying to teach the kids what 9-11 meant. And to a great extent, they just don't know. And they don't really grasp what it meant to us, the older generations. And so I was fortunate enough that my cousin happened to be the only person in his office who was on vacation that day. And I was unfortunate enough to have a high school friend be in the building that day.
I think the idea is that the job of the poet is to take the material they're presented with, and in my case, it's a teacher's perspective, and I've got a student who's falling asleep during it, and I'm thinking, well, that's not going to happen. You know, we're not going to allow you to fall asleep during a lesson on 9-11. So I wake him up. But I happen to know him, and I know why he's exhausted. It's not because he's being a slacker. It's because he's got a full-time job, and he's busting his hump outside of school. And so at the end of the class, he's in a class of 25. He's off in the corner, and he's about to doze off again.
And I thought, it's kind of a shame that he missed that lesson. But again, the new generation is needs to be made aware of the significance of the events, and they need the context. So they don't understand the back story to it, they don't know about Afghanistan, and they don't know why the events are so powerful to us.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Exactly. Exactly. Well, I can tell you, there's a, my older son, who was working for the State Department at that time, and he was flying regularly from Dulles to Los Angeles, and that morning he was flying to, as he usually did, and my husband knew it, and I sort of knew it, but I started going, oh my God, the plane, one of the planes left for Los Angeles from Dulles at that time, and we hadn't heard from him, and we didn't know whether he was on that plane. And finally, his girlfriend, who later, the woman he married, got a hold of my husband and said, he's all right. And he said later to us that he took an earlier plane that day. And then he said they were there, they must have been there when I was there. Well, you can imagine.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, that's terrifying as a parent.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Absolutely nothing. So it's, yeah, when you've lived that, you know, it's, yeah. So anyway, that's, you can see why that spokesman, but also the whole thing about the student, you know, the student. You know, sometimes a student falls asleep, it may have nothing to do with, as you said, being a slacker.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, we don't always know what the kids are bringing with them into the room.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: What they're bringing into the room, yes, exactly.
[Heinegg]: So we have to assume very little and try to discover by paying attention and talking to them.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, you obviously get to know your students then.
[Heinegg]: I think so. It's been different as the ages have come upon me. I think when I started, they thought of me as like a quirky uncle because I had a ponytail and I didn't have gray hair. Yeah. And now I'm hopefully like, you know, just a trusted adult who's, you know, that they're comfortable with.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, that's good. That's a it's a it's a fine thing that you're doing, working with these students.
[Heinegg]: I'm OK with being the aging hipster. I'm not worried about losing the street cred.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: All right, so now let's go to, I think I had skipped, yeah, Between the Rocks. And this is a long one, and it's a great travel one. So you're going to give us like a- I'm going to give you a couple pieces. A couple pieces of it, but it's going to be in a book that's coming out soon, right?
[Heinegg]: Yeah, I have a book coming out later in the year called At the Art of War, and it's a book that responds to a lot of current politics and talks about the ways in which we are sort of spectators to violence in American culture, whether it is watching people beat the heck out of each other on television or on Sunday, whether it is the myriad wars that America is involved in, or whether it's just us trying to contend with a culture that maybe has lost some of its gentility. So within the world of sonnets, there's the usual sonnet that's 14 lines and has some rules. And then there are crowns. And crowns are seven sonnets that are interlaced. And then there's the fanciest, which is called the heroic crown.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: The heroic.
[Heinegg]: And that's 15 sonnets. And this is just seven, but I'm going to just do the first two. My wife and I enjoyed traveling to Mexico. and we would take our two daughters and we all speak a little bit of Spanish but basically we enjoyed going to Tulum and so we had a really wonderful taxi driver who we kept hiring and he would take us around give us some history and teach us a little bit more you know that we thought we'd get and so the beginning of the poem has this this cab driver who basically takes over as a character in the poem. The poem is called Between the Rocks, which is what Tulum means.
Okay, so Between the Rocks. Strangers yet to sacrifice, we hire a driver to reach the castle to hear tales of death by the limestone cliffs. Jonathan asks, what song will you have, senor? Born and raised in Tulum, he backroads it to the ruins from the strands of the Caribbean Sea and its bohemian strip of yoga, juice bars, retirees, and families avoiding Cancun. We're teachers on break who want nothing but what's playing, cumbia and corrido, nimbly over speed bumps. Men selling peeled oranges in plastic bags, Dodge cars to tempt our eyes. Every storefront has sombreros, worry dolls and dream catchers. The buyers know as little of Guatemala as of the Ojibwe. The gifts are nearly endearing, no matter who's dreaming. And that was the second one, and the idea is the Ojibwe is where we actually get the dreamcatchers, but they'll sell anything. It's kind of cultural appropriation for money. The second part, nearly endearing no matter who's dreaming, the symbols noticed regardless. You have to respect the Maya for selling a spider its web. Their circle is widening, reggaeton slips the border, and the web reveals itself. To Jonathan, it's catch as catch can. For his PayPal, each tourist's peso, a drop of rain from the sky that abandoned an empire. I bow to enter through the seven-meter wall to see the way the guide instructs, the way the Spanish came to a port city between the rocks, assuming the temple a palace, until dawn fell. In the shadow of the diving god, survivors filled the cenotes that once saved them. Droughts made them geniuses at reading the star's will. The blood, fair price. And so as Americans, and of course, it's like the Spanish came there and they saw the human sacrifices, they thought we should burn their religious books. We should take what they thought is holy and destroy it because they were mortified, as we might be, by those things. But they thought, you know, it was a fair price to do a few sacrifices to find out if they were going to die of drought. It's pretty intense.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: But there's only four books that remain. I think that's what I read. I've also traveled that area. Did you climb up the top of the temple?
[Heinegg]: I did. Well, no, no. I didn't get to go to the temple in Chichen Itza because it's no longer allowed. Because when you go up, people's treading on it will dislodge the rocks. But we were able to circle it and to, as we were talking about before, to see where they played the Mayan ball game.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, yeah, the ball court. That's fascinating, huh?
[Heinegg]: So we loved seeing Chichen Itza. It was one of the wonders of, you know.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, I thought that was incredible.
[Heinegg]: It's still one of the wonders of the world. It's incredible.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: We were there a long time ago, and my husband did climb to the top. Yeah. But I tried to, but I have a problem with heights.
[SPEAKER_04]: OK.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I got up halfway, and I froze to the side of the pyramid. Now, my husband, being the great guy he is, he saw my face. You did the cougar thing up there, and I'm like this? Yeah. I cannot move. Yeah. I cannot move. And he comes down and very quietly and gently talked me down to it. And so I was very grateful. I would still be there, Max.
[Heinegg]: I would still be there clinging to that.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That's awesome. Yeah. But anyhow. So you must have had a good guide there too, I'm sure.
[Heinegg]: We had incredible guides. They were incredibly knowledgeable. And I was taking notes the whole time thinking, I hope I get a poem out of this. But it really enriched our experience of it. You know, we're older so we weren't going to Cancun to drink margaritas.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: We were trying to that's a really ticky tacky place, isn't it? You know, it's not for people who are in their 50s not where you you got some bad water or something He doesn't like Cancun.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, we were there really to To be with family, but also to get in the history, and also just to enjoy the beach and the weather.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Of course, of course, because you're working as a teacher, you need a break from that. It's a very demanding job. I don't think people appreciate teachers enough. I mean, if they were to try to do that, they probably would freak out trying to do it.
[Heinegg]: I'm not going to fight you on this.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK. I didn't think you would, because I do know how hard it can be.
[Heinegg]: We enjoy our breaks.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, you need them. And, oh yeah, what was it? Oh, there was a couple of, I just wanted just to go over a couple of phrases I thought were good. One, droughts made them geniuses at reading the stars. Of course, that's why they came up with a calendar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Got no wind to plant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I mean, that was a great line right there. That one I liked and, oh, where was the other one? Oh, Plastico Fantastico.
[Heinegg]: That's what the guides called it. They said, if you want to go out there and buy some souvenirs, we're not going to stop you. You just bring out your Plastico Fantastico.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I love that. That's a great one.
[Heinegg]: We did. We went into debt.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, super nice.
[Heinegg]: We got some keepsakes.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, yeah, I think you do get that. So we finished with these.
[Heinegg]: Got a family one to finish.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, yes. OK. There was one. Yeah, it was about. Oh, was it called? Yeah, I think Ava at 13.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, this is my daughter.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I thought this was a lovely one. I wanted you to read that.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, I have a couple from just Ava at 11, Ava at 13, and she's now 21. And so I try to remember what they're like because they do get older.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yes, they do.
[Heinegg]: Ava, 13, she lets her sister be served first, doesn't hover as I take down the candles. I'll want to remember this patience in the photograph, not you and me worried out of the frame, probably marking the party we put on. Tonight before the dark stifles any tears. I admit, we have five years, depending on interest. You talk saving for what memories we can afford, but what did we ever want from our parents except knowing they were at our performances? You dread the possible distance, promise to follow her, readying shawl and yarn. I've got my guitar, George and Martha to read them. Say the word, daughter. We'll sell the door's gold hinges, the garden's good dirt.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think the line that I think everybody, a lot of people can relate to is that, did we ever want from our parents nothing but, that they were at our performance? I think that is the thing you want to see. Just another little funny little story. I was playing with the Tufts Symphony for about 10 years as a community person, as a violinist at the time. And my mother was from California, and she happened to be visiting. And we were playing a concert. And I'm sitting there where the orchestra was getting ready to start. You know, they're going to tune up soon. And my stand partner says to me, look, somebody's mother's waving to someone in the orchestra. And I turn around, and I said, that would be my mother. Here I am, a grown adult. And I got such a charge out of it. I went back to a little kid, oh, my mom's here.
[Heinegg]: I mean, that's the thing. That's what you want, yeah. When you perform or when you write, you're interested that the people you love and care about are there to take it in. Absolutely. And if possible, like it.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: If possible, like it, yes.
[Heinegg]: If you're lucky.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, I'm sure they like it. Anyway, we have that one. So now we're going to turn to your 20 years as a rock star, OK? And your band was The Hounds.
[Heinegg]: I was in a bunch of bands. Tell us about that. When I dropped out of college for the first and only time. I was a teenager working in New York City, and I sang for some bands in New York City, including the Hounds, between ages like 19 and 21, and I'm 53 now. I moved to Boston after playing music in Chapel Hill and in Portland, Oregon, and I basically was in a band called the High Ceilings that played the rumble. Played T.T. the Bears in the Middle East and the Paradise, and we did that when I was pretty much between like 26 and maybe like 32. And then I was in a band called Bang Camaro for a little bit that toured and did Lal Palooza and Jimmy Kimmel.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Played guitar, right?
[Heinegg]: Bang Camaro is just one of the many singers. That band was infamous in the Boston music scene for having three guitars and 20 singers. So it had a man choir.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Three guitars and 20 singers?
[Heinegg]: 20 singers. One drummer and a bass player. 25 guys and I was just one of, a part of the party. I wasn't running the show. And then for the last, I guess on off for 20 years, I've been making, I've made five solo records.
[Unidentified]: Oh, good.
[Heinegg]: And here's a picture of one of them. So show that to the camera. And basically, I play guitar, sing, write songs. And then the most recent project that I just showed you is I was teaching students that songs and poetry have a lot in common. So I took 14 poems from the public domain or by author permission, and I turned them into songs. So I took things like Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. or Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman. Basically, I turned them into songs. I picked some ones people might like. They're all on iTunes and on Bandcamp. I play them for the students to mixed reactions, but generally, it's better than homework.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah. I'm sure they like that a lot. It might be good to have you do the Emily Dickinson one.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, I'll play one for you. Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK, I'm going to have a treat here.
[Heinegg]: Everybody going to stand up and grab the guitar.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: This man is very talented, multi talented. Emily Dick, she's one of my favorites, you know.
[Heinegg]: And I'm going to just bring up the lyrics on my phone just like a teenager would.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK, well, yeah, just so I don't screw them up. Yeah.
[Heinegg]: Like most Emily Dickinson, there aren't really that many lyrics, because most of her poems are pretty short. That's right. But as I was teaching Emily, I thought, because she writes in ballad meter, right? I was unaware of that. Ballad meter? Yeah. So ballad meter. So she writes, most Emily Dickinson poems can be sung to it like, to buy the world a Coke.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So everybody can know that if you want to sing her poems, right? All of them.
[Heinegg]: Pretty much all of them. They're all to that meter. So they go ba-bum.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I never knew that.
[Heinegg]: They go four and then a three, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, four, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, three. But if you do that, the students will get really mad, and they will think you're super irritating.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: How did you notice that?
[Heinegg]: I got that from Crash Course. That's actually from John Green. I'm not going to take credit. But Ballad Meter is something that's in a lot of poets, like John Keats. And so what I tried to do with this poem, which is Wild Nights, is I tried to not do that. I tried to give Emily a break from that. So I'm going to play a short version of Wild Nights, which is for someone who is thought of as a spinster. or at least misinterpreted as a spinster. This is a kind of a romantic poem.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wild nights, wild nights, were I with thee.
[SPEAKER_03]: While night should be our luxury. Were I with thee? Were I with thee? wind to a hardened port done with the compass done with the chart were I with thee were I with thee while night should be Oh, luxury. Two, three, four. Might I but mourn tonight.
[Heinegg]: Here's the end. Tonight. what a treat normally sing it really loudly but i think that at the end but i think that might not have worked so well right there i liked a memo like that that was really nice it's kind of gentle and a lot of emily's stuff is sort of um understated but the fun thing is she doesn't mind an exclamation point She's got, if you look, there are a couple exclamation points.
[Unidentified]: Oh, yeah.
[Heinegg]: Wild Nights. Wild Nights.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Wild Nights.
[Heinegg]: OK. We don't think of Emily Dickinson as wild, though. Not normally. Not usually, yeah. If you go to the museum in Amherst, you've got the white dress. You've got the idea of her walking between the two buildings and composing nearly, what, 2,000 poems that she kept in a little box that her sister found after she died.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Isn't that amazing story how they found them after she died?
[Heinegg]: She only published, I think, nine. Nine? Nine or twelve poems in her lifetime. And, you know, thanks a lot, sexism. Yeah. At least the sister found them. Written on everything from envelope backs to, you know, just little pieces of paper. Really? Scraps of paper? Yeah, if you Google Emily Dickinson poems and click on images, you'll see these little handwritten bits and just more than you can imagine by this quiet little genius hanging out in Amherst.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Amazing. So if you've got somebody in your family that's writing poetry on bits of paper, save them because they might eventually become a famous poet. You never know. OK, we're going to take a break here for a moment. We'll be back. Now it's time to move to another side of Max, which is basically home brewing and that he has a business, too, that's in West Medford called, was it Home?
[Heinegg]: No. I'm the co-founder of Medford Brewing Company.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Medford Brewing Company, and that's located where?
[Heinegg]: We're at 30 Harvard Ave. in West Medford, across from the commuter rail, and we're next to the fire station.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: near the fire station.
[Heinegg]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, how long have you had this place?
[Heinegg]: So we've been open for three years, three years, I've been brewing for 20 years, 20 years, we started the business, we just celebrated our 10th anniversary. Oh, wow. So I went, I went from being a homebrewer for about a decade, and then to four. So years one through 10, I was doing homebrewing, I ran the Boston homebrew competition, I became a certified beer judge.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You are a certified beer judge.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can give me a beer and I can tell you what's wrong with it. And how to fix it. And how to fix it too? Or what's right with it. I can tell you what color everything should be, how bitter it should be.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Throw it down the sewer, it's not going to be good.
[Heinegg]: I can tell you the history of beer. I lecture on beer, I write about beer. But what happened after a decade was my daughter and one of her soccer friends Basically, we had a party at my house, and basically, the parents came over because we were trying to meet the parents of our kids' friends. And Nick Belytho, whose kids went to the high school, is a Medford citizen as well. We both started this company 10 years ago, and we basically had contract brewing for seven years where companies would make my recipes. I would sell them and go to farmers markets. And then four years ago, we raised money to buy a building. And then three years ago, I started brewing professionally, in the sense that I make the beer with my hands. You're a professional brewer. I'm a professional brewer, yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: No amateur here. You're a professional.
[Heinegg]: I was professional when I finally made it with my own hands. My recipes have been sold for a decade. I've sold hundreds of thousands of beers.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: My goodness, so you invent new beers?
[Heinegg]: Absolutely, absolutely. But I'd like to say that there's a long tradition from the major brewing traditions of, say, Germany, England, America, and Belgium. And so anytime somebody says, like, I invented a beer, you want to be cautious and say, it probably falls within one of the great traditions.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: One of the great traditions, OK.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, there are easily more than 100 plus types of beer. But I've made almost all of them.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh my, well, that's saying a lot right there.
[Heinegg]: Well, it's a lot of fun and it really only takes about maybe like nine hours or so to make a beer, but then you have to wait. And I don't want to get you into the weeds here with this, but there's a lot of stuff. We could just talk about beer. But basically, within a couple of weeks to a month or maybe five weeks, you can take the thing you make on that one day and then you can serve it to someone. And if it's very strong, it might take more time to age like wine, but most beer is best consumed fresh. So I make it. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's a fresh beverage. It's what built the pyramids. Historically, it was always what was safer to drink than water. And so when in the colonial times, basically they wanted beer. because they were terrified of water. Water meant death. But for us these days, beer is basically something that can be as weak as 2% alcohol and as strong as 20. Legally right now, my license allows me to make beer that's no stronger than 12%.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Do you make Guinness?
[Heinegg]: In terms of Irish, that would be a dry Irish stout. I do have one on tap right now that I made. Guinness is basically a beer that's a little bit bitter and it's actually surprisingly low in alcohol and it's also low in calories.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, I like the last part there. I just was out Saturday night, you know, to hear some Irish music, and of course had a Guinness, a boiled dinner. Yeah, so I'm glad to know the calories. I'm always trying to watch my calories.
[Heinegg]: And what makes Guinness Guinness is also, there's a little bit of acidity to the finish, so that it makes puckery, so you want another sip, and they will serve it with a little bit of nitrogen, which is what makes it creamy.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Nitric, oh that's what makes it, oh.
[Heinegg]: A little bit of it, yeah. So most places you get a beer, serve the beer, pushed it out with carbon dioxide, but there'll also be some nitrogen in the gas mix. But again, we can be as technical or as not technical about beer as you want.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I can see you know a lot about this. OK. I did meet your partner when you were being installed as the Poet Laureate. Yeah. I sat next to him. I just happened to sit next to him.
[Heinegg]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, Nick.
[Heinegg]: Belytho.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Belytho, yeah. He's quite a character.
[Heinegg]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I enjoy talking to him.
[Heinegg]: He was originally from England and now he's an American citizen. It was his idea that we take the beers that I was making and go for it. And I was like, I don't know if it's gonna work. And he was like, it'll work. And so it's worked.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you're right.
[Heinegg]: I think it's right. Being negative is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I completely agree with you on that. Well, let's have one of the images. I think I have a picture inside your place. I'll bring it up here in a minute. Oh, there we go.
[Heinegg]: So that's the side closest to the fire station. And that's people coming in and there's the bar that kind of goes around in like an L. And what you can't see right there is how the sausage is made.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, yeah. You have sausages? You make
[Heinegg]: No, I'm just making a joke. You can't see how we make the beer. But we have a capacity of 100 people inside. And we have, when it's warmer out, we have an outside seating area that holds 50. So on a wonderful summer night, you could see about 150 people there.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Sounds like a party, huh?
[Heinegg]: It is, it's a community, we really try to be community oriented. We close every night by 10, so we don't make the neighbors too angry.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Okay.
[Heinegg]: And no complaints yet. And we do a lot of local charity. We do Run Medford with Dave McGilvery. We've done all sorts of, you know, events raising money for cancer. We have poetry readings, we have monthly open... Of course, I would expect you to have poetry readings. But mainly we do like trivia, we have darts, and we have a monthly open mic for music, and we have bands. So like this Saturday night we have a band coming in.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I haven't been able to go over there quite yet, but I do want to check this out.
[Heinegg]: We try to do all sorts of stuff for the different kinds of folks in Medford. So we have book fairs from bookends in Winchester, it's a bookstore. And whatever month it is, if you go to our website or check us out on Facebook or Instagram, there's a list of the activities we do. We're just basically trying to bring people into, I guess, what my wife calls a third space.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: A third space.
[Heinegg]: That's good. Yeah, a place for people to congregate and to see each other in a different light and to be neighborly in a friendly environment where everything is basically handmade.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Sounds wonderful. Let's see the next image here. We have someone pouring some beer out, I believe. Right? Yep. Oh, there we are.
[Heinegg]: That's our bartender, David.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That's David. OK. Yeah. So how many bartenders do you have?
[Heinegg]: We have different ones on different nights. David works on Sundays. During the week, he works for WBUR. Oh. And so we have people who are sort of kind of doing it as like an extra fun gig, as opposed to like, you know, because a lot of us, we have other gigs. That's right. But he shows up on Sundays, and he has like his own sort of fun people he likes to hang out with. And so, I think the answer is that during the winter, when we're not as busy, we probably have like six or seven bartenders. And I brew there with another English teacher from the high school, Mr. Esner. So, there's two of us who make the beer. So, about nine people are working. And then, in the summer, when we also do events, so we do the Medford Farmers Market, and we'll be doing events at the, In Oak Grove Cemetery, it's called, is it not called the Shepherds? It's the, what do you call the person who takes care of one of the houses in the cemetery? But anyway, it's called Shepherd Brooks. But there's basically, we're going to be doing events there this summer where they'll have music. And when we do that, we need.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: In a cemetery?
[Heinegg]: It's the house in it. It's not like, it won't be like a party in the cemetery.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I'm trying to imagine this.
[Heinegg]: There's a big, almost like a mansion-sized house in Oak Grove.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: In Oak Grove, okay.
[Heinegg]: More details to follow.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, I know what you mean. It's the Brooks house. Yeah. Yeah, I know because I've been there a lot of times.
[Heinegg]: It's tucked in the back there.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yes.
[Heinegg]: We'll be there this summer for a couple.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They restored it. It's a fantastic restoration they did.
[Heinegg]: So we'll be there a couple times. But in general, we do the farmer's market. And summer, we might have up to like 30.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Let me know when you're at that and doing a gig there. Let me know because I like to go there.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, we'll have music too. And we also do stuff in the square. You bring beer? Yes. We have a beer trailer. A beer trailer? Yeah, we attach a trailer to the back of our SUVs or trucks. And we have taps in the side of it. So we roll up and then we pour like four or six different beers out of the side of the trailer.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Couldn't people hire you if they're having a party?
[Heinegg]: We're a little bit bigger than that in general, but we do do big events.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I mean, a big event.
[Heinegg]: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure they could.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That's sort of a spin-off from it.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, we do this thing in Medford Square on Riverside Ave across from the old folks' homes near the Hyatt or whatever. And so we have that space there. And we have concerts there in the summer during the day. So that's another thing we do. Basically, we're really busy when it's warm.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You're really doing so many different things. Let's see the next picture here.
[Heinegg]: I think it's... Okay, that's Mr. Esner. Okay. So he's been teaching at the high school for about 20 years.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That's the other beer brewer.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, we're both from Schenectady, New York.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: How did that happen?
[Heinegg]: I have no idea. It was really, you know, serendipity.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Was that on the application for teachers? Must make beer, be from New York, Schenectady, New York?
[Heinegg]: The story goes that he was once a student teacher. We overheard him talking about beer, and I roped him into teaching me, and the rest is history.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, he started you on the beer making.
[Heinegg]: None of this would have happened without him. And he's a really expert. We're both award-winning brewers. We've won tons of medals locally and in the States around here. And he won the Boston homebrew competition IPA category. I won it a bunch of times for Belgian beers. But basically, we work together. And during the week, we teach, get kids ready for MCAS. And then on the weekends, we make award-winning beer.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think, let's see another picture here.
[Heinegg]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think this is a lady that is enjoying.
[Heinegg]: That's my wife.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, that's your wife.
[Heinegg]: Yes.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Okay.
[Heinegg]: Yes. She has an incredible palate and she put up with my bad beer making for many years and offered lots of valuable criticism. Okay. And if she's smiling, that means that that beer passed muster. Okay, you gotta get that smile, otherwise you have to forget. She teaches in the Concord Public Schools, where she is the department head at one of the middle schools for history. What subject? For history? History and geography. Oh, history and geography. She used to be an English teacher, and she's the author of The Fell's Fairies. So she wrote a children's book about the fells.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, I have to check that out.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, I'll send you a copy.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Another talented lady. Yes. Yeah, well, of course, I could see you. Two talented people find themselves. Let's see the next one. This is like a screen with fire. Tell me about that.
[Heinegg]: So we have a special television that's a fancy TV called a frame TV. And it's a smart TV. And so what we're doing is we're projecting a fireplace from YouTube. behind people from the senior center who were on that night reading their poetry. So we're hosting them. They had published a book of poems by some of the seniors, and they had put together a little book. So we celebrated that that night, and then they were reading in front of a fake fireplace. It just makes people feel cozy.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think so. I love that sense. That's great. What a great thing to do. And then next one, you got another person that's entertaining. The next picture here. Oh, who's this?
[Heinegg]: That's another one of the readers from that night. From that night? So it's another one of the members of the group.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK. Yeah.
[Heinegg]: They were looking for a place to host it, and I said, you bet.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, wow.
[Heinegg]: When I started being the Poet Laureate of Medford, I went to the senior center and gave a reading. And then they approached me and said, how about we read at your place? And I said, of course.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So that's wonderful how that kind of worked. Yeah.
[Heinegg]: It's nice, and it's really great to do the outreach and to be able to communicate and connect with the different parts of Medford.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And then we have someone playing the guitar, next image here.
[Heinegg]: Who's that? That's Boston Music Award winner Will Daly. Will Daly? Yeah. So Will is a guy who plays at Farm Aid with like John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson. And he and I go back in the Boston music scene about 27 years. So he played an unannounced show there.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: He just walked in with his guitar?
[Heinegg]: We planned it, but we didn't tell anybody he was coming. His management likes it when he just plays big places, but occasionally we'll be lucky enough to have more established performers. And he got carried away and he was climbing on a table.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: He was climbing on a table.
[Heinegg]: I'm sure he'll be thrilled to see this.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Did he try all your beers that night?
[Heinegg]: I think he only had one or two, but I will admit that it does look like he's having fun in that picture.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah. So you have a good time at your place. And let's see the next image here.
[Heinegg]: What's this? So I don't have canning facility at my place. So everything I make goes directly into a keg and is served on draft. And so it's all very fresh. But if I want to have a beer made to go into a store, then I will go to another local brewery that has the infrastructure, in this case, Idlehands in Malden, and they will make my beer and put it into cans so that I can sell it to local stores. That's a delivery day where they drop off about 50 cases. And so you can tell by that we do very small batches, which means our stuff is very fresh.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And that's a big thing I learned is fresh beer is best.
[Heinegg]: It's best for certain things. If you have things that smell hoppy, you want that because those smells go away after a couple of months. So if you have somebody in your life who likes an IPA, they want it to be really fresh. If something's really malty, it's harder to tell.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK. And then we have, is that the last picture? Oh, there's one. Yeah.
[Heinegg]: That's a good one to finish on. Yes. That is from the very beginning. So that's an image that's playing around with the idea that my partner and I are, you know, riding a pumpkin and maybe turning it into a, you know, stagecoach. Basically, it's how we met. So I was having parties to meet the parents of the kids, as we were saying. And I was making pumpkin beer, which is something I make once a year. And I was taking real pumpkins and roasting sugar pumpkins.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You make it out of real pumpkins, then, huh?
[Heinegg]: It's mostly made out of grain, but we accent it with the flavors that we get at Penzi Spices, where we get their pumpkin pie mix. And then we take sugar. A pie mix? So Penzi Spices in Arlington Heights sells mixes of spices, and they're delicious. And so basically, we roast some sugar pumpkins, to caramelize them, you add it to the mash, which is malted barley and some other things, and then a little bit of brown sugar, and then you add cinnamon, and that blend of cinnamon, allspice, you know, all the classic things that make you feel like it's pumpkin pie.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You only make that in, like, in October?
[Heinegg]: We make it once a year. We make it in the summer, in late August, so that it's ready just as it turns to fall.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Let me know when you're making that, because I'd like to try that.
[Heinegg]: Yeah, we had Billy Costa, if you know Billy Costa, the guy locally who does all the Visits people making in restaurants and we had him throw the spices in a long story short is that it's a special Time once a year when the pumpkin beer is ready.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well again, give me a call Shoot me a text. Okay. I want to know when you're making that. Yeah, that sounds interesting.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Now, Max, for being on my show, you get a gift. I know you give me books, but I give you something here. You can open it up and take a look and see what this is. Everybody always loves the bag, by the way. I think this will go well with your beer.
[Heinegg]: I think I'm going to be able to figure it out.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, I think you will. Once I think we're there.
[Heinegg]: It's a looking back at history mug.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, there you go.
[Heinegg]: And so if they think I'm drinking coffee out of it.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, you can just say I'm drinking coffee, you know. They don't need to know what's in it.
[Heinegg]: If this mug is at work, it's coffee.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, this has been really great talking to you.
[Heinegg]: Thank you so much. It was wonderful to be here.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I don't know if you know it, but this is my 75th show.
[Heinegg]: Happy anniversary. Thank you very much.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You want to bring in the cake? We'll show you the cake. But it's, I've been doing this for four years, five years, four and a half years or something like that. And it's been fun meeting people like yourself and learning, getting their story and learning about what they do. That's been a real plus show here. look at that and here comes look at this we're gonna give you a yeah there's a yeah that's awesome it's not off and of course it's from modern pastry you know it and it's a rum cake right on Medford right there if they had a beer cake I would have got it they're wonderful here anyway so it's been super duper I just want to do one little ad though I want to mention that If you ever want to do a fundraiser for us, too, let me know for the statue, because we are putting up the statue on Patriots Day, April 20th, at Medford City Hall at 10 o'clock. So do come down there, and you'll meet the sculptor. We're going to have the big unveiling. So if you drive by the City Hall, in the next several weeks, hopefully you're going to see a statue being put in there. And who was Sarah? She was Medford's revolutionary heroine. Was Fulton Street named after her? Yes. You probably didn't know that. Fulton Heights, Sarah Bradley Fulton? Yes, again. And Fulton Spring Road, named after her. And she acted as the spy for General Washington. And he was so grateful for what she did that when he came to Medford, did you know Washington came to Medford?
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yes, he did. And he came here and he came to see two people. One was Governor Brooks, who had a mansion where the credit union is in Medford Square. And the second person, Sarah. She went up to her house. She had a farmhouse on about 260 Fulton Street. She went there. Yeah, but she had another house she was renting earlier by the Craddock Bridge. If you see like a boulder saying that she lived there, that was a rental house. But when she got enough money, she got the farmhouse.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's awesome.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: But anyways, tell and encourage people to come. Patriots day there. And then after you do that, you go down to Medford Square to the Isaac Hall house.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And who is Isaac Hall? the captain of the Medford Minutemen, of course, and on April, yes, on the 20th, you're going to have Paul Revere riding in on horseback. You'll be stopping there. Medford was his first stop. People don't know that. He picked up the horse in Charlestown. He, after he got Roto, he had two men who rode him across, and he picked up the horse, and he was going to go through, it was called Monotony at the time, Arlington, but there was two Brits, two lobster backs who tried to grab him. So he detoured through Medford, and he stopped at Captain Isaac, and that was the beginning of him alerting the militias to march to Lexington and Concord.
[Heinegg]: He stopped for a dram.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah. Well, there is talk that he got some. I mean, if your place is around, he probably would have stopped there, here in West. He didn't stop in West Medford. Maybe he was looking for your place.
[Heinegg]: He was looking for a dram.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: He was looking for a dram. You heard it here. OK. Anyway, so now it's time to say goodbye. And this is Laura Duggan, your hostess, hoping to see you again at Looking Back at Medford History.
[Unidentified]: To Grandmother's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the wood, oh, how the wind does blow. It stings the toes and bites the nose as over the ground we go.