250 years after the British invaded my hometown

History is always a little more complex than a child knows. When I was a boy, my father would rouse my brothers and me — plus the dog — just after sunrise on Patriots Day. We’d walk to the bottom of our street to catch a glimpse of the men and boys marching down Strawberry Hill Road, bound for the Old North Bridge in Concord. There were never more than a few dozen from Acton, but we heard the drums long before they appeared through the tall, thick trees that line the roads of our Massachusetts town. Now and then,...