I like to read historic road markers, or at least try to read them as I drive by. One that I have read countless times is VA-E2, Intermediate Defenses, at the corner of Chamberlayne and Laburnum, where the red light allows me to savor the text:
Here ran, east and west, the intermediate line of Richmond defenses during the Civil War. Near this spot on 1 March 1864 Union Brig. Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick halted his raid that was intended to free Union prisoners and lower morale in the Confederate capital. A detachment led by Col. Ulric Dahlgren was defeated to the west of the city. On 2 March Dahlgren was killed; Southern morale soared.
Of course, it is the last, succinct phrase that is so compelling. Another favorite is the heading on the marker at Cedar Lane and Ashcake Road: Stuart Turns North. Both would be excellent titles for short story collections, I think. The roads are filled with markers, most of them about the Civil War, given how much action this part of the world saw in the 1860s.
Growing up in Manhattan, I got the usual bullet-point version of the war from the Northern perspective. Add to this Catholic school Manichaeism and you have a fairly straightforward story of good triumphing over evil. In the eighth grade I did a history report called “The Civil War in Song” and it was quite clever. The report was bound in burlap-covered cardboard and each section opened with a stanza from a different song of the era, ending up, I think, with the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
The South was a very different, kind of scary place to me. I did not really know anyone from below the Mason-Dixon line until grad school. My friend Gerald, from Winston-Salem, was Baptist to boot, and altogether a new breed for me in a city whose immigrants, when not Dominican, seemed to be mostly from Ohio.
But despite my utter ignorance of things Southern, I had always felt a direct connection to the Civil War. My great-grandfather fought in an upstate New York regiment and did time at Andersonville. Later he was part of a prisoner exchange and was transferred to a hospital in North Carolina before being sent home. We know this because we have a wonderful letter he wrote to the U.S. Pension Office in the 1880s asking where the hell his veteran's pension was. The letter is filled with details of his service: where he was inducted, his commanding officers, the names of comrades and battles, and his time as a prisoner and invalid. I do not know if he ever got his pension. I certainly hope so.
In my late thirties I started drifting south, first to Baltimore, then to the DC area, and now Richmond for the past six years. I have tried to educate myself, and road markers are just a small part of this. They cluster in some areas, two or three in a row, lending depth and meaning to the land. Blood was spilled here. Exhaustion, hunger, homesickness. Even victories – “Southern morale soared” – can be heartbreaking.
It is hard to scrape away almost forty years of prejudice and stereotype, but I feel I owe it to Richmond and to the South in general. Plus, battles took place on the ground I live on, the roads I drive over every day. It is a confusing, tragic history, one many people still debate. I am not about to mourn the Lost Cause or ignore the misery that sustained the South’s economy and way of life. Recent scholarship has shown how much the slave trade sustained New York’s economy as well. I just know that I am part of this history, and that I cannot live in a place without trying to understand its people and its past.
Showing posts with label history is fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history is fun. Show all posts
Clippings
I lent an old book to a friend the other day and mentioned when I handed it to her that there was a newspaper clipping folded up in the back, an obituary for someone described in the book. I know it is not good to keep such things in books – they stain and erode the pages, put pressure on the binding, and eventually result in yellow newsprint confetti. But the obituary added another dimension to the story: vertical time – this person’s long life – at a right angle to the horizontal time – the here and now, circa 1922 – of the book’s subject.
The newspaper clipping used to be an important way of saving and sharing information, and I have not gotten out of the habit in the age of the internet. True, these days I do the “esheehan has sent you an article” routine much of the time, although I dislike the third party intervention and the barrel of ads and cookies such “clippings” deliver to my friends’ computers. And the emailed or linked article does allow the recipient to print clean copies or forward to others, or, more likely, store the email until a respectful period of time has passed and she can delete it, unread. I am okay with that. An emailed article is always a potential intrusion, possibly even critique.
But I come from a long line of newspaper clippers and I still like to send and get the real thing, sometimes cut into ziggurats of odd column lengths and origami-ed into an envelope. In the old days, if an article was too outrageously formatted, I would spend considerable time at the office copier trying to getting the whole thing down to one or two pages, the first a 94% reduction, the second maybe 86%. Of course, access to a copier used to be a major justification for working, aside from paying the rent and eating. I would use the copies for teaching, or burden friends and colleagues with them if I thought they were of interest. One of my supervisors actually noted in a letter of reference for me how she would miss the little bundles of articles I would leave in her office mailbox. Perhaps.
There are different kinds of clippings: the cut direct, the paste-up job, the Xerox special. And different sources: the handover, which includes mailed articles, the anonymous insert (especially rewarding while browsing in a used book store), the legacies found in family papers. My Irish-born grandmother cut from her upstate New York newspaper a photo of Irish independence being celebrated in 1949 in front of Dublin’s General Post Office, scene of bloody fighting during the 1916 Easter Uprising. My grandmother left Ireland as a teenager in the first years of the twentieth century and never returned. But clearly the founding of the Republic meant something to her. I hardly knew her, but I know this.
And then there is the closely related category of whole newspapers saved for their significance. I have been carrying a box of these with me for decades, building on my mother’s collection. JFK’s assassination, then MLK’s and RFK’s. (A sharp high school memory: seeing the New York Daily News’ front page, with the blurred image of Bobby’s head on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel, scuffed and torn on the platform of the 14th street subway station.) Nixon resigns. Ford to City: Drop Dead. The Statue of Liberty Centennial. Clinton’s first election, and then the Starr Report. And 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. How long will I save each year’s anniversary issue of the New York Times? I think of the Civil War veterans meeting a half century later at Gettysburg and imagine those who remember 9/11 someday being like them, a frail, dwindling brotherhood.
The whole newspaper, of course, creates the mise en scène -- movie ads and white sales at Gimbel’s, the racing results and op-eds by dead wise men. Many years ago my friend Steve ripped up generations of linoleum in his New York tenement kitchen and found a Pearl Harbor-era newspaper used as lining for the 1941 stratum. He gathered it up and went to the local coffee shop and read it at the counter over his eggs and bagel. No one commented, but then most of the habitués had been at that counter since the second FDR administration. I have a 1967 copy of the Village Voice that takes me back to the days of be-ins and head shops on Eighth Street. I am Curious (Yellow).
But the random clipping is a very intimate form of communication, especially when the message is unintentional. I have my father’s handwriting on things he saved. He died more than thirty years ago but his notations, his obsessions really, show how his mind worked and where his interests overlapped with mine. They extend the reach into the past: an article from the 1960s about events that happened in the 1930s stuck in a book about the 1890s, and all connected.
People worry if newspapers will exist in years to come. If they disappear, clippings will go with them. These days we have the “most popular” list of emailed and searched articles on newspaper websites, a form of literary ranking unknown fifteen years ago but vulnerable to the whims of hard drives and servers. I’d rather cut the article out, save it, or send it along: I saw this and thought of you.
The newspaper clipping used to be an important way of saving and sharing information, and I have not gotten out of the habit in the age of the internet. True, these days I do the “esheehan has sent you an article” routine much of the time, although I dislike the third party intervention and the barrel of ads and cookies such “clippings” deliver to my friends’ computers. And the emailed or linked article does allow the recipient to print clean copies or forward to others, or, more likely, store the email until a respectful period of time has passed and she can delete it, unread. I am okay with that. An emailed article is always a potential intrusion, possibly even critique.
But I come from a long line of newspaper clippers and I still like to send and get the real thing, sometimes cut into ziggurats of odd column lengths and origami-ed into an envelope. In the old days, if an article was too outrageously formatted, I would spend considerable time at the office copier trying to getting the whole thing down to one or two pages, the first a 94% reduction, the second maybe 86%. Of course, access to a copier used to be a major justification for working, aside from paying the rent and eating. I would use the copies for teaching, or burden friends and colleagues with them if I thought they were of interest. One of my supervisors actually noted in a letter of reference for me how she would miss the little bundles of articles I would leave in her office mailbox. Perhaps.
There are different kinds of clippings: the cut direct, the paste-up job, the Xerox special. And different sources: the handover, which includes mailed articles, the anonymous insert (especially rewarding while browsing in a used book store), the legacies found in family papers. My Irish-born grandmother cut from her upstate New York newspaper a photo of Irish independence being celebrated in 1949 in front of Dublin’s General Post Office, scene of bloody fighting during the 1916 Easter Uprising. My grandmother left Ireland as a teenager in the first years of the twentieth century and never returned. But clearly the founding of the Republic meant something to her. I hardly knew her, but I know this.
And then there is the closely related category of whole newspapers saved for their significance. I have been carrying a box of these with me for decades, building on my mother’s collection. JFK’s assassination, then MLK’s and RFK’s. (A sharp high school memory: seeing the New York Daily News’ front page, with the blurred image of Bobby’s head on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel, scuffed and torn on the platform of the 14th street subway station.) Nixon resigns. Ford to City: Drop Dead. The Statue of Liberty Centennial. Clinton’s first election, and then the Starr Report. And 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. How long will I save each year’s anniversary issue of the New York Times? I think of the Civil War veterans meeting a half century later at Gettysburg and imagine those who remember 9/11 someday being like them, a frail, dwindling brotherhood.
The whole newspaper, of course, creates the mise en scène -- movie ads and white sales at Gimbel’s, the racing results and op-eds by dead wise men. Many years ago my friend Steve ripped up generations of linoleum in his New York tenement kitchen and found a Pearl Harbor-era newspaper used as lining for the 1941 stratum. He gathered it up and went to the local coffee shop and read it at the counter over his eggs and bagel. No one commented, but then most of the habitués had been at that counter since the second FDR administration. I have a 1967 copy of the Village Voice that takes me back to the days of be-ins and head shops on Eighth Street. I am Curious (Yellow).
But the random clipping is a very intimate form of communication, especially when the message is unintentional. I have my father’s handwriting on things he saved. He died more than thirty years ago but his notations, his obsessions really, show how his mind worked and where his interests overlapped with mine. They extend the reach into the past: an article from the 1960s about events that happened in the 1930s stuck in a book about the 1890s, and all connected.
People worry if newspapers will exist in years to come. If they disappear, clippings will go with them. These days we have the “most popular” list of emailed and searched articles on newspaper websites, a form of literary ranking unknown fifteen years ago but vulnerable to the whims of hard drives and servers. I’d rather cut the article out, save it, or send it along: I saw this and thought of you.
Mark Your Calendars
I managed to get through most of yesterday without realizing that it was Columbus Day, or as it has been renamed in South Dakota, Native American Day. So another benefit of not having a regular job is not caring a fig about so-called national holidays, what is open or closed, who’s having a long weekend and who is not. I may just declare my own holidays: National Family Pie Day, National Hopeful Baptist Day, National Bipedal Sinner Day, National When the Fuck is Bush Going to Stop Being President Day…
Junior
When Arthur Schlesinger Jr. died a while back, I found out from his obit (a full page in the New York Times) that he wasn’t a "junior" at all. He had changed his middle name as a young man to that of his father, a distinguished historian. Pursuing the history racket himself, young Arthur made sure he had a leg up, which he needed, because he had quite short legs.
I know this because I used to share an elevator with Junior from time to time, since he taught at the graduate school I attended. Although "taught" might be too strong a word. I was never aware of any course he actually offered. I imagined the school paid him a six-figure salary just to pad around, greet visiting dignitaries, and wander out in the afternoon for a few drinks at the Century Club, one block away. I could be wrong.
I did have one more intimate encounter with Junior, in the drug store right next to the school. It was a wonderfully cheesy place, more like a dollar store, although you could, if you were foolhardy, have a prescription filled there.
It was a few days before Christmas and Art was in the store buying gifts. Yes, at the drug store where the cat food tins were dented and the pharmacist actually smoked at the counter. Art was loading up on cheap perfume and body wash combos, on Old Spice and three bars of lavender soap for two bucks. And he was having them gift wrapped, in a sad drugstore paper with silver diagonal stripes.
You should know that my graduate school was located right off Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Lord and Taylor’s was nearby, as were any number of fine stores. I went back upstairs to my friends, starving doctoral students all, and said you won’t believe the shit I just saw Arthur Schlesinger buying. It must be Christmas gifts for the help at Hyannis Port. How pathetic.
And I was right. I left the building a few hours later, and there was Arthur, sitting out front like an elderly child in his topcoat, muffler and gloves, with a drugstore shopping bag of cheap gifts at his side. Waiting for the limo. And then it arrived.
I know this because I used to share an elevator with Junior from time to time, since he taught at the graduate school I attended. Although "taught" might be too strong a word. I was never aware of any course he actually offered. I imagined the school paid him a six-figure salary just to pad around, greet visiting dignitaries, and wander out in the afternoon for a few drinks at the Century Club, one block away. I could be wrong.
I did have one more intimate encounter with Junior, in the drug store right next to the school. It was a wonderfully cheesy place, more like a dollar store, although you could, if you were foolhardy, have a prescription filled there.
It was a few days before Christmas and Art was in the store buying gifts. Yes, at the drug store where the cat food tins were dented and the pharmacist actually smoked at the counter. Art was loading up on cheap perfume and body wash combos, on Old Spice and three bars of lavender soap for two bucks. And he was having them gift wrapped, in a sad drugstore paper with silver diagonal stripes.
You should know that my graduate school was located right off Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Lord and Taylor’s was nearby, as were any number of fine stores. I went back upstairs to my friends, starving doctoral students all, and said you won’t believe the shit I just saw Arthur Schlesinger buying. It must be Christmas gifts for the help at Hyannis Port. How pathetic.
And I was right. I left the building a few hours later, and there was Arthur, sitting out front like an elderly child in his topcoat, muffler and gloves, with a drugstore shopping bag of cheap gifts at his side. Waiting for the limo. And then it arrived.
Jamestown in My Living Room
So I went to Diversity’s new store, over behind the Diamond, and it was great. Diversity Thrift fills me with joy – I cannot walk in there without feeling a world of possibilities awaits me. I rarely pay attention to the clothes. I browse the housewares, but my life is filled with tchotchkes; I don’t need any more.
It’s the furniture I crave – the unexpected gem hidden behind the 1960s faux-maple bedroom set. By gem I mean something that most folks would consider a disaster. Something you’d be embarrassed to leave on the curb for pick-up in case the neighbors saw it. I don’t like smelly stuff – I avoid upholstery at all cost – or trendy retro furniture, although I do have an old push-button phone from the Holiday Inn in Tyson’s Corner, with buttons for housekeeping and room service. Sometimes I press them.
No, what I really like is wood, old wood, wood that wears its nicks and stains proudly. I prefer things that are handmade and a little askew, and maybe not all made of the same kind of wood, but still it has to stand up straight and respect its right angles. These objects have integrity, I think, they won’t let me down. They’ve been let down themselves so many times.
So what was I doing at Diversity obsessing over a tacky veneer-covered end table, circa 1965? It was truly ugly. The legs jutted out coyly as though aiming directly at the floor would be in poor taste. It had one of those recessed shelves on the top where you are supposed to put a lamp, preferably one with a pebble-textured base.
The sales tag described it as “End Table with Native Design” and it was kind of accurate – that was its selling point. The main surface of the table had two inlaid, factory-produced tiles in attractive shades of aqua and peachy brown. One tile depicted a wagon train about to be attacked by a band of braves. The other tile was really sick, the pièce de résistance: an image of John Smith, trussed and lying on the ground, while over him Pocahontas and Powhatan debate whether he should live or die.
What is this, I thought? Who in their right mind would put this on an end table, clearly manufactured for a motel chain, unless it was the Manifest Destiny Inn? I walked away from the table and then circled back. It was appalling, but it was no good. I had to have it.
The two Goth kids who helped me load it into my car said they were sorry to see it go. They had wondered who would buy it. They had wanted it themselves. How fucked up is that? they said.
I love Diversity. I love a place where I can buy neglected furniture and have the proceeds go to a good cause. I love finding an old spool of thread in a drawer after I’ve brought a piece home. I love seeing the crayon marks made by a child forty years ago. Most of all, I love the possibility that no one else in Powhatan’s kingdom, here on the James, has an end table like mine.
It’s the furniture I crave – the unexpected gem hidden behind the 1960s faux-maple bedroom set. By gem I mean something that most folks would consider a disaster. Something you’d be embarrassed to leave on the curb for pick-up in case the neighbors saw it. I don’t like smelly stuff – I avoid upholstery at all cost – or trendy retro furniture, although I do have an old push-button phone from the Holiday Inn in Tyson’s Corner, with buttons for housekeeping and room service. Sometimes I press them.
No, what I really like is wood, old wood, wood that wears its nicks and stains proudly. I prefer things that are handmade and a little askew, and maybe not all made of the same kind of wood, but still it has to stand up straight and respect its right angles. These objects have integrity, I think, they won’t let me down. They’ve been let down themselves so many times.
So what was I doing at Diversity obsessing over a tacky veneer-covered end table, circa 1965? It was truly ugly. The legs jutted out coyly as though aiming directly at the floor would be in poor taste. It had one of those recessed shelves on the top where you are supposed to put a lamp, preferably one with a pebble-textured base.
The sales tag described it as “End Table with Native Design” and it was kind of accurate – that was its selling point. The main surface of the table had two inlaid, factory-produced tiles in attractive shades of aqua and peachy brown. One tile depicted a wagon train about to be attacked by a band of braves. The other tile was really sick, the pièce de résistance: an image of John Smith, trussed and lying on the ground, while over him Pocahontas and Powhatan debate whether he should live or die.
What is this, I thought? Who in their right mind would put this on an end table, clearly manufactured for a motel chain, unless it was the Manifest Destiny Inn? I walked away from the table and then circled back. It was appalling, but it was no good. I had to have it.
The two Goth kids who helped me load it into my car said they were sorry to see it go. They had wondered who would buy it. They had wanted it themselves. How fucked up is that? they said.
I love Diversity. I love a place where I can buy neglected furniture and have the proceeds go to a good cause. I love finding an old spool of thread in a drawer after I’ve brought a piece home. I love seeing the crayon marks made by a child forty years ago. Most of all, I love the possibility that no one else in Powhatan’s kingdom, here on the James, has an end table like mine.
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