On this site, on August 14th, 1881, nothing happened. A brass plaque on my neighbor’s stone fireplace.
[Southern California] is the last stop for all those who come from somewhere else, for all those who drifted away from the cold and the past and the old ways. Here is where they are trying to find a new life style, trying to find it in the only places they know to look: the movies and the newspapers. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion.
Michele and I went to L.A. to go museum shopping last weekend; it was our first trip since we went back East last fall. While we were on our trip back East – as everyone called the East Coast while I was growing up – we drove through and around the Delmarva Peninsula, stayed with Tom and Linda Melton in Dickeyville (Baltimore), and visited Harper’s Ferry. Three places where the past is still alive.
That presence of the past is, to my mind, other than the topography and weather – which, OK, are big deals – is the biggest difference between the East Coast and the West Coast. Harriet Tubman performed her first act of resistance at the Bucktown General Store in 1835. A slave tried to escape, and the overseer yelled at Tubman to stop him, which she didn’t. The Bucktown General Store is still there.
We stayed with Tom and Linda in Dickeyville, and it was almost like being on a movie set. Some of the buildings date back to the late 1700s, although most are originally from the 1800s. I say originally because many of them were rebuilt in the early 20th Century.
On our drive from Washington DC to Pittsburgh, we passed by farms that were there when John Brown was still alive, farms he must have passed on the way to Harper’s Ferry, where he played his part in ending slavery. Everything feels the same. The past is still alive.
L. A., where the oldest building – downtown, at least, the Bradbury Building, is known for being the location of the ending of Blade Runner – is not like that.
Living in Dickeyville, I usually take my home for granted. Thanks for the reminder that I live in a living history museum. I’m glad you liked Harpers Ferry. It’s one of my favorite places.
I delight in your gift for evoking a history almost completely unknown to me. As you know, I have lived another life altogether so am familiar with many other histories–to me just as important and lively–but unknown to most people. Thank you for yours.
And I’m glad you liked the Eastern shore. The Tubman history is so alive there. Of course I had heard of her, but actually being in place where she made countless trips to free her people was very meaningful to me. That’s actually one of the reasons I travel. To see new places but also to put my feet in the place where things happened. I recently went to Seneca Falls NY where the issue of women voting was first addressed. I also appreciate your viewpoints that everything here in the East is old. I guess I like that.
I don’t think that everything in the East is old, still there are a lot of places that just reek of America’s history. There is no place in the west like that.