A friend, Lincoln Easterbrooks, called the other day to ask if I could put my hands on a column I did in 1973, and I said, well, maybe at the library.

The column was about the 200th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, a column I didn’t even remember. After all, that was several mental lapses ago. But my wife had an idea.

“I bet Mother saved that column while we were away,” she said, and she went to check a box of clippings she’d rescued from her parents’ home.

There is was: the very column my friend wanted. I had written it while my family and I were living in Cambridge, Mass., where I enjoyed a nine-month-long free lunch known as a fellowship.

Lincoln and his brother, Henry, grew up in Massachusetts, but Lincoln, a veterinarian, later moved south and into our neighborhood. They were invited to the 200th anniversary celebration of the Boston Tea Party, because their grandmother, Emma Frances Davis Easterbrooks, had attended a similar ceremony 100 years earlier. My wife and I attended a Saturday dinner as guests of the Easterbrooks, but most of the fun came on Sunday at a reenactment of the first tea party.

Picture these scenes on Dec. 16, 1973, on the Back Bay of Boston, Mass.:

- Thousands of demonstrators called for the impeachment of President Nixon; some threw oil barrels into the harbor in what they called the “Boston Oil Party.”

- A large papier-mache effigy of the president, its crown bearing the names of oil companies, was rowed about in a small boat. One effigy was tarred and feathered and tossed into the harbor; another was hanged from mock gallows.

- The Boston Indian Council had protested using Indian disguises, as the original tea party protesters had used, because it said Indians were constantly portrayed as savage beasts.

Members of the Disabled American Veterans protested not being permitted to disguise themselves as Indians, so they were given time to do so before the official event.

- Three groups dumped either oil drums or tea boxes into the harbor, but because the Sierra Club objected to further polluting the harbor, empty boxes tied to ropes were used.

- Demonstrators carried banners and placards supporting grape strikers, Greek students, the Gay American Revolution, and denouncing the coup in Chile, the war in Vietnam, alleged profiteering of oil companies and, of course, Nixon.

- Members of the National Organization for Women marched in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Obviously, demonstrators stole the show. But I guess that’s what it was all about on Dec. 16, 1773: Folks were protesting the taxing of tea by the British. Fortunately, they weren’t protesting everything else, too. If they had been, the British still would be taxing us.

OK, I have a request: When Dec. 16, 2073, rolls around, will somebody write about the 300th anniversary of the tea party? And ask your mother-in-law to save a copy for posterity. I’ll be gone that day.

Phil Hudgins, a former community newspaper editor, can be reached at phudgins@cninewspapersinc.com.