Today is the Fourth of July and America’s 250^th birthday. And a lot of us are just not feeling it. Oh, I get it. America is divided, we are torn and entrenched, and peanut butter is too expensive. Worse still, this division is seemingly encouraged and proliferated by Jabba the President sitting in the Oval Office. Not since Jack McCloskey chucked me a bang snap at the block party watermelon table in 1986 have I shed so many tears on a July 4^th.

But if there is a July 4 holiday lesson, it’s perseverance. America has faced tough times before and has fought through. Sure, we did so through rebellion, tenacity, and will. But we also did so through debate, discussion of ideas, communication, and working together. And that’s why today’s hammered history looks at the unsung hero of the American Revolution – taverns.

There’s no way to overestimate the importance of taverns in colonial America. First, you went there to drink your weight in rum. But they also served as post offices, courts, hotels, political meeting places, and local newspapers. Taverns in America served a similar purpose to that of coffee houses in London. They were petri dishes of society, throwing together a mix of people, opinions, and probably body odors. Since everyone shared tables, unlikely neighbors rubbed elbows. Literate drinkers read the news to illiterate table mates. It was a place to drink and talk.

It’s not hard to see a dark parallel to today. We no longer sit face to face and talk. We chat with people from behind keyboards and at the first whiff of disagreement we resort to sending complete strangers seething epithets whose lacking wit is made up for with CURSES IN ALL-CAPS. Dialogue has become a thing as mythic as Santa Claus, the Jersey Devil, or a republican politician with a spinal column. In our separate places, we are being pitted against one another by those in charge – whose greatest fear is open discussion amongst us who disagree. What we need is to talk. What we need is a drink face to face with someone we may not agree with.

What we the people need is a tavern.

In colonial America, it was not hard to find one. You could throw a rock backwards and hit a tavern door. Or, more likely, knock the tricorn hat off a drunk guy standing in a tavern doorway. In 1776 Philadelphia alone there were more than 120 taverns, inns, and ordinaries. Considering there were between 30,000–40,000 people living in the city, this makes about one place of drinking for every 250–300 Philadelphians. Because we the people apparently believed that democracy worked best within spitting distance of a tavern.