Here and Now

I visited Old Sturbridge Village this summer and, as much as I enjoyed being transported back to colonial New England, it was the shabbiness of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, 2006, that stuck in my mind as we drove away.
When it was first opened to visitors in 1946, OSV, as they call it, was only a few generations removed from the era that it sought to preserve and celebrate.
And in 1946 the area around Sturbridge –and down old Stagecoach Road (Route 20), still retained a great deal of its colonial past.
You didn’t have to go into OSV to find little villages built around a ‘common’, working blacksmiths, or Quaker meeting houses.
Why pay a $1 admission fee (the cost in 1946) when most of what OSV seemed to offer, was free to anyone with a car and an adventurous spirit.
Today though – surrounded by fast food restaurants, cheap motels, and a variety of other tourist-based businesses that seem to be barely hanging on to their patch of crumbling concrete and tar, Old Sturbridge Village itself is now an oasis of organized history in a desert of decrepit modernity.

When I first moved to Plymouth in 1984 I had a little ‘routine’ that I experimented with in conversation at parties, or over a beer at the local pub: I would passionately argue the theoretical benefits of the Disney Corporation acquiring the entire downtown area of Plymouth – perhaps by eminent domain.
I meant to provoke friends and acquaintances, but I fully believed that drastic measures were needed to improve the appeal of the downtown area.
The simple idea was that Plymouth’s historical impact –especially for tourists, would be greatly enhanced by a single owner that could, if they wished, decree that everything from Court Street, east to Water Street must be historically accurate, at least in terms of its architecture.
For a town with Plymouth’s historical significance it seemed a shame that so little of its historic structures had survived, and that in their place so many modern monstrosities had been constructed.
In my routine I would cite the charm of Duxbury’s Washington Street, the mixture of hip and history in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and its ‘Strawberry Banke’, or the total commitment of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.
Compared to any of these historic communities, I argued –in terms of overall aesthetic appeal, Plymouth came up short.
I recognized that there was an element of snobbery in this opinion, and that I was placing an inherent value on the ancient occupants of the community - whatever their occupations or behavior, while at the same time belittling the small businesses that had succeeded them – however hard they struggled for profitability.
It could be the case I would admit, somewhat facetiously, that in 100 years or so there could be an Olde Plimoth Strip Mall where visitors would gladly pay to experience the drive-thru fast food experience, or to sit in molded plastic chairs, or to sift through tubs of 99 cent historic kitsch.
Perhaps the most glaring examples of the waterfronts’ decay - the pseudo-colonial hotels on Water Street, the plaster of Paris head of John Alden that sat on the roof of one waterfront business, and the decaying row boat and yellow slickered fishermen that looked over the town pier from another building, perhaps they would become historic landmarks, like Boston’s flashing CITGO sign.
But I doubted it.
But things have changed, a bit, since then.
John Alden’s plaster head has disappeared, and I have changed my mind about the obvious benefits of Disnefication.
I have come to realize, or perhaps remember that – as much as I shudder at the faux colonialism and “Ye Olde Five and Dime”, I am equally opposed to the Disney or even the Williamsburg version of the past.
I have come to believe that where we go wrong is not in our urge to preserve – but in the effort to forget, or disguise. Faux colonial architecture is a poor lie, but so is Art Deco, in Plymouth.
What I look for now, is not architectural consistency or unblemished uniformity - but instead, a certain native vitality: that is what I think is often missing from the museum experience, and also what is conspicuously absent from construction and commerce which does not reflect, in some manner, the history that lies within, or beneath.
Even though the Old Sturbridge Village that lies within the fences is a marvel of historical re-creation, the experience could be vastly improved if the real town in which the ‘park’ is located embraced the past and the present.

I remember the apartment where my wife and I lived, when were first married –on First Street (just off Washington) in Quincy.
Though not particular notable for its design, the setting was deliberately fantastical: a small, pristine, six unit brick structure built by a sister and brother who lived in a little brick bungalow on the other side of our private parking lot.
That particular area of Quincy was a bit tawdry, in those days, and so to justify the rental price the owners wanted I believe, they hid it away.
From the back windows of the building you looked out at a new fence.
From the front and side windows, you looked out on a private parking lot, and the indifferent rear ends of other structures.
Everything was new and clean –from the glassed-in entrance foyer, to the grout in the tiles in our shower: quite a contrast from the odd assortment of structures that surrounded.
In the morning I would take a half-mile jog, literally around the block – and leaving our isolated unit I would pass a jumble of structures and scenery that seemed notable, at first, only for their differences.
For several weeks I jogged passed those structures and scenery without taking any real notice.
But one crisp fall evening Mary and I decided to take a walk – in the ‘gloaming’ as they used to say, and in that wonderful time between day and night I was suddenly struck by the vibrancy of this awkward mixture of businesses, residences, agriculture and abandoned lots.
It seemed a kind of living archaeology.
Rising above the remnants of the old orchard was the neon sign for Wonderbowl, the bowling alley. Alongside the bowling alley was a restaurant named for a famous Italian tower, with its own giant, hollow faux tower. Steps away from our modern apartment was a river where the foundation of what I took to be an ancient grist mill could still be seen.
It was hardly a pretty scene, in the conventional sense, but the area around our first apartment contained that peculiarly appealing American mix of the old and the new, the ruin and the restoration, the crassly commercial and poetically pastoral.
It was as if I had discovered a collection of old photographs, showing several generations of one family: each face different, and yet each easily identifiable as ‘kin’. Each sure of their own individuality, and yet each excited to see the thread that led backward, ever backward.

In much of the central and western portions of America it is far easier to ‘dispose’ of the past, to bulldoze it under, or level the uneven parts.
In much of this country abundant space allows for developments that emphasize conformity and a kind of permanent ahistoricity.
But in New England it is more difficult to escape what came – five, ten, or even a hundred years, before – because it is still all here: either just beneath the surface, or sticking out like broken glass in the weeds.
When we were looking for our first home in the Plymouth area, I remarked to my wife that it seemed like every lot or home the realtors showed us was either next to a graveyard or under a power line.
What am I saying?
Maybe I am simply saying that I now see a certain beauty in both the well preserved past, and the confused, untidy present – and a special power in the places that seem – like a stop-animation creature rising out of the dust, to remake themselves right before our eyes.
I’d still like to see the Plymouth waterfront display a little more respect for its historic and aesthetic heritage. But I’m starting to see - however raw and unfinished that it may be, the eloquence and energy of the American here and now.