Heritage Church

While walking around in my new hood of Zilker, I came across a stark block building in the middle of a huge lot.  It's an odd sight in a part of town where every square inch of land is at a premium and new mcmansions occupy entire footprints of land, interspersed among the modest 1940s bungalows that came before. 

This desirable and expensive zipcode (04) was once "nothing," according to a middle aged native Austinite I flew home from Phoenix next to recently.  "We liked it, but it was a poor area."

It's beautiful, though.  The neighborhood abuts Zilker Park, the Central Park of Austin, and is filled with old, old oak trees and big shading magnolias.  Vines and weeds and flowering plants tangle all over each other here, in the Austinian style.  All of the old, gracious parts of the city are full of overgrowth - plants spill onto the sidewalks and streets and grow big and wild.  Pastel paint peels from old houses and fences lean on properties that, as values have skyrocketed, you'd never imagine are worth high six figures.  You cannot tell a home value by its appearance around here.  This is nothing like Phoenix, where properties are pathologically groomed and clipped and repainted and edged, and leafblowers rage at all hours of the day.

But the church.  This is what the sign said:

I have some comments about the sign.  1. Is it that noteworthy that some of the people buried here beginning in 1866 were born before 1840?  26 was that notable an age?  Or is 1840 a reference to Austin's early days that I didn't catch?  Does it simply mean to point out that they were born in the antebellum slavery period?  2. "In the 1940s, the wooden church burned."  Because this was Dixie once, I feel suspicious at the assumedly intentional ambiguity.  Why did it burn?  It's wet here.

Sealed tightly forever.  Why?  Why not a museum to early black culture and churches of this era?  Why not a space to share this completely ignored aspect of early Austin?  This city's interpretation of its own history is so whitewashed.  This building is not only significant because it's still here and the land is still safe, but it's a touchstone for a huge group of people who don't get their story told here almost ever.

Big, beautiful treeish lot.

But as the sign says, it's a church and cemetery.  Underneath the weeds in the green lot are headstones.  Incomplete headstones.  Stumps and chunks, leaning shards, mounds of local lime melding, very slowly, into the grass and networks of vines.

Someone mows it sometimes.  It's rained so much lately that it's impossible to keep the greenery down, and it shoots up in uneven patches.  I stepped gingerly in the grass, deep into the shady back area to look at the stones, praying against snakes and cursing that the foliage was so dense and moist that the big black Texas mosquitos, who normally pass on me, lighted on my bare skin with glee.  I don't know how to hike or walk in backcountry, and although this is in the middle of a dense city, it feels distinctly lonely and untrodden.  I watched the ground for those snakes.

Age 87.

Worn down stone looking like a natural occurrence and not a grave marker.

There were a lot of spots, much bigger than this, where the grass wouldn't grow.  Some of the spots were...grave-sized?  Multiple feet by multiple feet.  Why?  Why would this enthusiastic foliage not grow in certain patches?

Condos to the left, apartments to the right, encroaching right up to the edge of the protected space.  No doubt tens of developers have cruised the big empty space, populated only by that lonely box just one step above a shed, and cursed the city for setting it aside.  A lot like that?  DREAM CONDOS! With a stupid fucking name, like Zilker Commons, or Greenview, or Barton Heights.

I searched for clues about the church and cemetery and came up with little more than what's contained on that historical marker sign.  There's an inventory of the remaining stones, or what remained of them ten years ago.  I couldn't find as many as the website had.  It takes a jaded, weird fucking person, weird beyond any measure I can imagine, to steal a fucking headstone.  When I was a kid, I thought to linger too long by any old grave would tempt the spirit belonging to it to follow me home, and I worried in the car that an illicit tour of the Pioneer's Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona (it was pre-renovation and closed to the public in the 90s) might have caused some old ghost to follow us home and scare me in my bed at night.  Needless to say, even this morbid ass would not remove a memento like that from a cemetery, not to mention the fact that it's vandalism and ruins historic spaces for the rest of us.  I did take ball moss home from the Texas National Cemetery once (yep, Texas still thinks it's a country), but it died.

I mean, seriously.  Where the fuck do headstone thieves put their prizes?  In their herb gardens?  WTAF

I'll continue my researches, but this might require IRL reading in an archive.  I must say it was easier to find the dirt I wanted in Phoenix, even about the most obscure of historic properties.

I will say that Austin in this early steamy summer is pretty and charming south of the river.  The big tangle of green paired with two years of inordinate rainfall has the lightning bugs out in force, and they're at their densest in unmanaged green spaces.  Apparently the eggs lay in the earth for about a year before hatching upon us, and in heavy rainfall, they germinate wildly.  They float and twinkle in the dusk all over this area, they flow into my house when I open the door sometimes, they're so thick.  Ugly bugs in the light, but neverendingly charming outside.

From the Personal Archive

Here's another one.  I found this in the pages of an old book at Qcumberz (seriously, that fucking name, I'm going to start calling it something else) a few years ago and was so amused by it, I kept it.

It's a packing list for a vacation, or camp or something.  The notepaper the list is written on is brittle and deeply yellowed at the edges where it peeked out of the pages of the book.  I instantly assumed it was at least 40 years old from the condition and the terminology used, but I could be wrong.  Things keep well when trapped in books.  It could be older, but I don't think it's newer.

ITEMS NEEDED BY YOUNG GIRLS ON VACATION IN THE 60S:

curlers
bible
makeup
perfume
money
stockings
church dress
shoes (shoe subcategory: 1. sandal  2. tennis  3. loafers  4. church  5. thongs)
everyday dresses
sweater
coat (1. raincoat  2. umbrella)
skirt and sweater
underwear
bra
b. c. (!!)
bathing suit
pajamas
purse
pants (1. long wool  2. couch (illegible)  3. shorts)
shirts
deodorant
shaver
toothbrushes
mouthwashes
shampoo (1. rinse)
brush
comb
slips
girdle
pillows
lotion (1. suntan)
first aid kit
hairdryer
stationery (sp)
candy
sunflower
bubblegum - 100 pieces
radio
batteries
camera
shower cap
pizza mix
books
eye drops
fingernail polish (1. file)
knee socks
hairspray
robe
magazines

Obviously, items like stockings, girdles, skirt/sweater sets and everyday dresses indicate that this is pre-70s.

What cracks me up is the "b.c." which covers a line that had been erased in which it appears that she began to write "birth control," but then thought better of it.  This list could have fallen into the hands of a man, or a parent, or the Pope!

I assume this is a young person due to the need to put candy, sunflower seeds and gum on an important list of things to remember, as well as the awkward, flouncy cursive.  I also enjoy the order of the items, with curlers, the bible and makeup as the first things she thought of.

I wish I could remember what book I found this in.  Whatever it was, it was unremarkable, and I didn't buy it.  Yeah, I stole this letter too.

I have a rosy, incorrect view of girlhood in the 50s and 60s, mostly because I watched a lot of movies with heroines named Gidget or Tammy when I was a kid.  Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap was my fashion inspiration in ~1994.  Obviously, life as a female at this time was not quite as adorable as it looked in "Tammy and the Bachelor" (1957), but in my mind, when I'm not thinking clearly, it was.

For me, it felt kind of easy to relate to those times when I was 10, 11, 12 years old because we lived in a house built in the 50s and my bedroom was largely unchanged from the way it had looked then, with the same furniture that had been chosen for some other family's daughter 40 years before.  As I have mentioned, our house came with all of its original 50s & 60s furniture, mostly unused as it had been a summer home, and we moved in and left it pretty much as it had always been, down to the glass grapes on the coffee table.  This is weird, right?  I think it's weird.  My bedroom had a custom built blond wood vanity, dresser and desk built into the wall, with a little stool covered in pink velvet.  I used the 50s jewelry box to store my own stuff, and the old ceramic cocker spaniel coin bank that had been the other little girl's is in my bedroom right now.

So anyway, I imagine this list was written by some everyday Sandra Dee.  What would she think if she knew someone had her list, and that something of such bland utility then could seem so interesting now?

 

Aerogramme

I've collected a number of letters and bits of paper over the years that have held some historic significance to me.

This is from a series of pen pal letters written between two young girls in the late 60s, a Miss Delfina Sapien of Phoenix, AZ, and Miss Stella Hardacre of Lancashire, England.

The set of letters was donated to the Children's Museum, assumedly by Delfina's family, because the museum is housed in what used to be the Monroe School, a monolithic 1914 classical revival in downtown Phoenix.  Delfina would have been a student at Monroe.

To my knowledge, the pack of letters still sits unknown, un-transcribed and generally uncared for in a filing cabinet in the development office of the museum, which is not really a museum, but rather a giant Wonka factory of installations meant to encourage children to learn through play.  So far, the Children's Museum has failed to realize its duty as the steward of its building's history, but we don't get too snippy about it; 15ish years ago, a demo permit had been issued for the building when the Children's Museum chose it for its space, saving the perfectly sound yet uniquely unwieldy building from destruction.  The building has been largely renovated since, but there are still entire rooms left in disrepair, with rotten wood floors too scary to walk on and discarded furniture covered in a furry coverlet of decades of dust.  Neat!

When Delfina attended the school in the 1960s, it would have been old, outdated, and mostly attended by poor children from the neighborhood.  It was closed in 1972 due to low enrollment, as people filtered out of the downtown area and entire neighborhoods were razed for commercial buildings.  When it was built, the Monroe School was one of the most modern and progressive public schools in the country, filled with such cutting-edge technology as flushing toilets, early intercom systems, and a teacher's lounge, the latter two being unheard of at the time.

The letters are written on tissuey, pale blue air letter paper, pre-printed with ninepence postage featuring the profile of young Elizabeth II.  We only have Stella's letters, naturally, one of which I inadvertently stole.  I took it home to read it, and, woops, I still have it!

This one is postmarked 22 July 1967, in Burnley, Lancashire.  Delfina's address is listed as 114 S. 8th Street in downtown Phoenix. Her house would have been a little bungalow built between the teens and the 30s.  Not only is the house long gone, the street is too, having been swallowed by the widening of Jefferson St.  The house's foundation is probably now in the middle of Jefferson's westbound lanes, a stone's throw from Mrs. White's Golden Rule Cafe.

In the letter, Stella shares the details (all of the details) of a family trip to Spain, then refers disapprovingly to the arrest of Mick Jagger & Keef Richards on a drug bust earlier that year.

"Dear Delfina,

I am writing this letter the day after we arrived back in England.  We have had an unforgettable, wonderful holiday in Spain and come back with a sun tan.  Early Wednesday morning July 5th we got up, had our breakfast, and at 6-40 am we set off in our car for London.  It took us about 6 hours to get there and we waited for about 1 hour til our flight was due. We had our passports checked and then we got into a coach which took us out onto the airfield where our plane was waiting.  We were shown to our seats and after about 10 minutes, we took off.

It is lovely looking down from 17,000 feet onto the ground!  You can see all the fields and tiny dots of houses.  Soon we were over the English Channel and we passed many boats.  We crossed the coast of France and I noticed that this part of France was nearly all country, but my dad said that southern France nearly all was.  Then the captain came on the loudspeaker and he told us that we were climbing to 19,000 feet to fly over the Pyrenees.  I felt a bit air sick when we started to climb.  Soon we were above the clouds (you couldn't see the mountains, just clouds) and it looks like you are floating through a sea of cotton wool.

Then the stewardesses came round with snacks.  This was: ham sandwiches, piece of cake, cup of tea and an apple.  We landed at Barcelona airport where we went through the customs and then we got on a coach which was taking us to our hotel.  We went through Barcelona city.  I am glad I don't live there.  Just one road was 8 miles long.  There were 4 lanes of traffic on either side of the road and they were overtaking on the right, left and centre.  After about one hour we came to a small town and our coach went up a street and stopped outside a hotel called Mar Blau.  We realized it was ours and our luggage was carried in and we entered the lounge.  Unfortunately we found that no one could speak English in our hotel and we just had a representative man who spoke English coming over once a day to see everything was all right.

We went on two excursions: one to Montserrat, and one to a night club in a nearby town.  All the rest of the days we went on to the beach and sunbathed or did some shopping.  We did not like the food very much.  It was a bit sickly sometimes.  The meat was not good as well.  We are hoping to go to Spain again next year so we are all saving like mad.

I agree with you about the Rolling Stones.  It is awful.  I don't think they should let them go out on bail.
This is all for now.

Love, Stella

P.S., Did you get the postcard?  Also if the friend of yours is not going to write to Marlene, could you find someone else please?"

Stella - you can't please her!

It is very hard to feel patriotic about a country with so much potential, yet which has always been half spoiled by various unforgivable offenses, most of which have been unthinkable to our developed, western peers.  America seems to take so much longer than its sister countries to rise above its crimes against nature.  This is, of course, due to ignorance, arrogance, and religion: the trinity of American disgrace.

Not to get too heavy-handed - it is my favorite federal holiday, because it's the only time we, as a country, would ever engage in a wide discourse about stars of the Enlightenment period.

Even if you are suspicious and resentful of the current charade, there are writings from the Revolutionary period and after that can touch even the most offish of disaffected hearts.  Reading these documents is the only time I have felt legitimately, personally proud of the concept of America.  There have been other times, stories of bravery and humanity under duress by soldiers or nurses or civilians, positive Supreme Court rulings, certain elections, but these stories always seem to be marred with a rotten underside, an unexpected or hitherto unknown terrible repercussion, something.  Anyway.

The most important things you can read this summer:

The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, 1791.  Before this, the concept of individual human and civil rights was almost completely undiscussed, unconsidered.  How terrifying and telling that we have been focused on this type of human cultivation for such a short time.

The Virginia Act of 1786 by Thomas Jefferson.  Introducing!  Freedom from religion.

George Washington's Farewell Address of 1796.  Sweet, articulate and inspiring.

Read while listening to this on repeat for max effect.



and this



Past 4th of July posts:

J.A. says N-O

Percival

My relatives are putting together a family reunion.  One of those giant outdoor picnics of heredity that I have only seen in comedies.  By popular request, it is being held at the old farmhouse where my grandmother was born, in Iowa. 

It's weird to me that over 50 people will be attending this and that many of them requested meeting at the house instead of the original proposal somewhere else in the Midwest.  Weird because that's my house.  It's mine, and I will always entertain illusions of living there someday.

Up until recently, the house was owned by my great-aunt, whose frostiness was tempered only by her antiquated sense of hospitality when we went to visit a decade ago.  She was nice because she had to be, but that didn't stop her from bitching about things her brothers in law had done to her 60 years ago.  After she married my great-uncle Chick, it was decided that she would move into his family home while he was overseas during WWII.  What I thought sounded like a charming prank still stuck in her craw: the night she was to arrive for the first time to her new home was a late one, and after long hours of driving, they pulled up in the middle of the night and trudged carefully up the dark stairs to their bedroom.  On the upper ledge of the door had been balanced an open box of shot pellets.  Instead of slipping into a quiet bedroom for some long-anticipated sleep, they got a cacophony of hundreds of little metal balls clacking onto the wood floors and bouncing down the stairs, accompanied by the belligerent male laughter of many new brothers-in-law.  One got the feeling she had hated them ever since.

When we chuckled at the story, my dad particularly as he remembered fondly his uncles, she shot us a poison-tipped glance.  "Well it was certainly not funny at the time."  I remember that she seemed to be bragging about being from Ohio, a place that she thought was considerably more refined than Iowa.  Being from Ohio, she said, it took some time to adjust to the country ways of Percival.  I recall marveling that someone would speak of being "from Ohio" with the level of righteous pretension usually reserved for New York natives.

She was kind of charming, though.  We were initially wary because my grandmother hated her, hated her fucking guts, because she had thrown out a bunch of family heirlooms when she and her husband took over the house in the 1960s.  Allegedly.  She never visited and we had never met her, only thought of her as an evil witch living in my grandma's house somewhere towards the middle of the country.  We only met her after my grandmother died.  She was cute and old, with a 1960s tv set and a wall-mounted kitchen phone as her only windows to the outside world.  And an old radio, of course.  She asked me if I wanted to see "the Monaghan family library," and opened a linen closet to reveal stacks and stacks of Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey paperbacks.  Lots of phrases began with "The Monaghans..." in which she would illustrate what they do and don't do.  The Monaghans love barbecue.  The Monaghans have lived in this town for 100 years.  The Monaghans were the first Catholics in Fremont County.  The Monaghans fly planes and write copy for Chevrolet!

The Monaghans also had a cross burned in the yard of that farmhouse by the Klan in the nineteen-teens,  because of the Catholic thing.  My grandmother's sister told us stories of going to class in the one-room school and being teased and pinched by all the little Protestant children, who called them "cat-lickers".

After the great aunt's death, I was terrified for the house's fate, but all is well in that it conveyed to her genial son, a lay historian and riverboat card dealer.  That means I still have a chance to someday acquire the house.  In fairness, they have been careful stewards of the building's integrity, and apart from various stumbles, they have preserved it admirably.  When they diverge, though, they really mean it.  There is an upstairs back bedroom that, when I saw it, had 4" rainbow shag carpeting.  I don't know if that's period correct.

In spite of the occasional dashes of gingerbread and scallops, it is a practical, sturdy example of rural Victorian architecture.   It's not as flouncy or dark as I like them, but it is charming in its farmy way.

I like the glossy, polished dark wood thing and hallways so dark you want to put your hand out.  The first thing I would do in this house is strip the paint on the walls and find the original wallpaper pattern.  SUCH EXCITE!  Then I would, of course, remove all carpet to reveal the original wood floors, but I might just leave that rainbow shag in the back bedroom, because fuck the police, right?

So from the second photo, it appears to me that the house was not white originally.  I seem to recall an ancient conversation with my grandmother in which she said it was a garish color to begin with, something that sounded ugly to me at the time.  Perhaps yellow?  We'd do some archaeological peeling on that as well, just to see.




Circa 1913.  Not much changed.  My great-grandma in the middle holding a baby.

This guy has carefully documented his family's extensive photo history.  I love the Edwardian photos the best.  I love this era in fashion so much.  Cream and white cotton dresses, lace and giant bows on everything.  Dark, glossy hair was fashionable then.  Simple, trim lines.  I'm into it.

Baby on a pedestal

I think these are earlier.  Big, puffy blouses, tinier waists, crazy hats.  Also, is that Tina Fey's great-grandmother?

ಠ_ಠ

Beautifully austere

Her giant fur collar!  Oh my god.  Is that wild poodle?

My grandmother's mom.

I'm convinced that modern civilization has overcorrected when it comes to time-saving improvements.  People are so idle now that even the un-introspective can fall into dark, existential quagmires and have mental disturbances that would never afflict someone who simply didn't have the time for it.

Something tells me that Ms. Rose Emma M. didn't have this problem.

Best History Podcasts

With Mean Observations About Each.

I have culled the entire internet for good history podcasts, and have been shocked at the lack of them.  My only explanation for this is the way that historians often come to modernity only when forced, and often with tears and gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, etc.  Conduct an experiment: go to any children's museum in the world, and observe the technology.  Then go to any history museum.  At the children's museum, you will probably enter a room where you can test out an app that allows you to levitate while mentally texting your bff.  At the history museum, they'll hand you a walkman with foam-covered headphones that plays Wanda Landowska playing Dixie on her harpsichord.

I went to the Phoenix Art Museum with my grandma yesterday and asked if she remembered taking me to the massive exhibit of Egyptian art back in the mid 90s.  It might've been the highlight of my year, because I was still going to be an Egyptologist then.  I studied every item closely and read every line of text.  I still have the Eye of Horus pendant I bought at the gift shop.

Her memory of that day: "Remember when you wouldn't put on the headphones?"
Me: "No?"
Her: "You thought you'd get lice."

BEST HISTORY PODCASTS ON THE INTERNET

1. Backstory with the American History Guys

Covers topics in a conceptual way instead of event by event, with topics like how America came to standardize the concept of time, or how we arrived at our opinions about children.  Each of the three hosts specializes on a century: 18th, 19th or 20th.  Each has bonafide history credentials, and I think one is on the board at Monticello or something.  They are almost never annoying, which is amazing, and when their guests attempt to speak untruths, they are slapped down instantly and with vigor.  In the Civil War episode, some old Confederate enthusiast tries to explain that flying the Confederate flag is ok in contemporary times because freed slaves enlisted to fight for the south.  It's already a stupid fucking connection to make, but the guy implied that MANY freed black men did this when in reality, it was just a few, and this was made clear to him in a quietly ferocious and punctilious way.  In your face, idiot.

2. Civil War Series with Dr. James Robertson

Dr. Robertson tells short stories about the war in a familiar and sensitive way which is only made more adorable by his slight lisp.  He seems to have let the project lapse, but there are plenty of old episodes to listen to.  He covers little known topics in a way that is both brief and very interesting.  My mental image of him is a little more stylized than the reality - no muttonchops, no vest!  No replica "US" belt buckle.  Well, we like him anyway.

3. History Extra by BBC History Magazine

THEY ARE ALWAYS SELF-PROMOTING.  IT IS SO DISTRACTING.  Did you know the BBC History magazine is the best-selling history magazine in the UK and maybe the universe?  Did you know you can get it for $5?  Did you know you could learn more at the website, and buy a shirt, and subscribe, and make a donation?  Well you can.  That said, the topics and guests are very good and I have learned all sorts of interesting things that I didn't know, about things like the black plague, and Henry VIII's mom, and peasant casualwear of the 18th century.

4.  Lapham's Quarterly Podcast

I don't know.  One of the editors narrates this podcast and he has the most incredibly horrible, annoying voice.  I listened to one in which Dick Cavett was interviewed by Lewis Lapham himself, so that one was fine, but I don't know if I can listen to the others if that hideous guy is on all of them.  Lapham's is a pretty good magazine, though, so I am keeping the hope alive.  Why doesn't someone tell him his voice is so bad?  Dealbreaker material.

5. The Bowery Boys

NYC history.  These guys aren't annoying at all.  Topics are interesting and well-researched.  They make me want to go back and tour "George Washington's New York," which is something I think I made up, but is probably an actual tour.  I'm currently reading a book about GW, and all of the talk about Manhattan spots that are still there, and what a hideous little shithole he thought it was, makes me want to go stand in the same places and pretend to be a 6'7 gentle giant who can't have any fun because everyone admires him too much.

6. BBC In Our Time: History

Pretty entertaining because the host/guests are all very invested in their comments and ready to get into a heated match of words at any time.  The problem is that they do, constantly, and it starts to sound like the Jerry Springer version of a history podcast as they bicker away unintelligibly.  The topics are very intense and they get into them instantly, leaving no time for laypeople to catch up.  If you are not at least semi-familiar with the incident they'll be discussing, then forget it.

Downton Abbey always reminds me of the Channel 4 reality shows in which modern people are made to live for a few months in a perfect replication of some other period of time.

My favorite is 1900 House.  A family moves into a Victorian rowhouse which has been impeccably restored to its original era.  There is not a trace of modern convenience except a secret room which contains a phone, in case of emergencies.  Otherwise, the house is arranged and decorated in strict compliance with the day.  My favorite was one of the set historians who admitted (resentfully?) that they used modern paint for the walls and adhesive for the wallpaper, because he supposed it wouldn't be appropriate to use materials containing lead and arsenic.  Ugh!  The patronizing society we live in.

The family also has to dress in strictly Victorian attire and use only products that would have been available at the time.  Incidentally, the Victorians didn't have shampoo as we know it now, which was of greatest concern to the women of the family.  I don't exactly blame them.  There's a reason hair often looks so limp and waxen in historic portraiture.  Not only was there no shampoo, there was hardly any proper soap at all that you could use on your body, because the only soap in the house was the lye for the laundry.  Unless you were a rich French woman, for whom fancy soaps were made as a cosmetic, but this was generally seen as a ridiculous frivolity of the rich.  So it was recommended to just rinse the shit out every few weeks, or maybe put an egg yolk on it, or to use a little castile soap if you had it.  Too dreadful.  Eventually (spoiler alert) the mother and daughter steal into a modern shop and buy some Suave, but they feel like cheaters about it and go back to using the hideous period concoction they probably found in Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861) to be good sports.

Another incredible hardship is keeping the coal stove on.  This house had upstairs plumbing, but to get any hot water in the bathroom, someone had to be stoking the coals all the bloody time, including through the night.  If you don't have servants, this pretty much sucks, and you can begin to imagine why people were so economical with the bathing.

Come to think of it, everything you do is harder when you're a Victorian, and if you're a woman, just give up now.  It's hard to cook, because the stove doesn't heat evenly.  The recipes are very complicated and some of the terminology is different, so you don't know what the hell the ingredients even are.  If you're a fancy or even an upper middle class lady, you have to change your clothes and re-do your hair several times a day, and the rest of the time you just spend sitting around, looking out a window and wondering what your neighbors are wearing.  If you're poor or a servant, you have to go grocery shopping every damned day, because you don't have an icebox, or if you do, it's very small.  Cleaning is hard because the house is very dark and you have no Swiffer.  Some people had those roller vacuums, which only function by way of slavish, vigorous rolling motions done over the carpet.  There are no paper towels, so you have to do the laundry all the time too, which takes the entire day and is exhausting and terrible even with your crew of forced labor (children), and you can be burned by the soap.  This helps us to understand why standards of household cleanliness back then were considerably lower than ours are now.  It was just too hard.  Also, no trash pickup.  If you live in the hood, then the streets are actually comprised of compacted horse manure mixed with the trash that people just throw on the street and sidewalk.  Old school and poor people still use chamber pots, which they just empty any old place.  The hems of your skirts are quite foul.

And, of course, the women were doing all of this in corsets and tight, unsupportive leather shoes.  And the corsets weren't those stupid decorative things that goth kids wear to prom.  They were reinforced with steel, to keep you utterly in place.  I've read news clippings from the 1890s talking about women who died after falling off a horse or something, because they were impaled on their own corsets.  Also, the clothes were very heavy.  Dresses weighed many pounds, and your undergarments were voluminous to say the least.  And don't wear makeup unless you want people to think you are a prostitute.

God, even leisure time is potentially awful.  You have to sit in a room with your family and listen to someone read aloud.  If you're lucky, they're reading the latest novel, as long as it's not pornographic or written by a lady.  If you're unlucky, which you probably are, they are reading the bible.  There may be some piano playing or embroidering to get you through.  Perhaps you sing, or study at dancing a reel for a semi-annual dance.  Perhaps you are collecting your own hair to boil, wax, and form into small rosettes that you will frame or have set into a brooch for a loved one.  Oh, and you are supposed to have a whole raft of children, half of which will die as infants.  You just keep cranking them out (this is easy, because there is no reliable birth control other than non-compliance, which your husband can divorce you for which will then get you excommunicated and sent to hell) until a few stick it out through babyhood.  Or worse, they all live and you find yourself having to feed 14 unwashed people every day.  I'm just saying.  It was probably hard.

So anyway.  We don't envy our great-great-grandmothers much, even if they did have better furniture.  I would, however, definitely partake in an experiment like 1900 House, and I very much resent that doing so isn't available as some kind of themed vacation for historians, nerds and escapists.

Researches

I miss this.  I tend to pick topics that are hard and ultimately probably unrewarding, but are nevertheless things that I MUST KNOW.

Current topic: What (if anything) stood on the land that now hosts my office building?  We are in a residential area that has a really curious mix of housing, age-wise.  We are just a couple of miles outside of the original Phoenix city limits, so it's reasonably likely that there was something there in the 19th century or around the turn of the century.  It could have been orchards, farmland, perhaps a mix of the three with a dwelling, etc.  We are close the the state hospital (formerly: The Insane Asylum of Arizona), too, which was located on a sprawling acreage that included orchards, grain crops and vineyards, but I have no real concept of how large 160 acres is, so I can't tell if we are close enough to have been part of that, or if the hospital ever even got rid of any of that land.  I haven't found a map of the hospital from that time.  Sidebar, the hospital also has its own cemetery with graves dating back to 1888.  Want to see!  It seems pretty securified there, though, and like many places, probably won't let me in.

Obviously, the reason I want to know is because of THE GHOST.  I mean, the alleged ghost.  I haven't seen shit and that is fine.  But continued conversations with someone who claims to have seen it indicate that it wears a giant, oddly-shaped hat the likes of which your great-great grandmother was probably into.

There are precious few early Phoenix maps that are of any use for this.  The Assessor's office doesn't seem to have any historic property info.  Do parcel numbers change, ever?  How can we keep track if they change them?  I can't seem to find anything about the previous zoning or address situation of any given parcel.  The current residential developments around us cannot be original - they're inexpensive 40s and 50s builds, some of which appear to have been built to house airport personnel.  And one street over, we have much earlier homes.

Because we are so close to the original city center, and not far off the path people used to get to Tempe, and because we are right smack in between the downtown area and the hospital (which was pretty impressive at the time and therefore a bit of a landmark), it seems likely to me that there could have been a few scattered homes in the vicinity of our office building.  Perhaps more than a few.  I'll find out eventually.

1890s hospital administration enjoying their "lake" hole

Westward

I just love that Robrt Pela at the New Times.  He is an outspoken and prolific preservationist who has gotten inside many of Phoenix's shuttered historic buildings downtown.  He expresses adequately the outrage that I feel about beautiful things being torn down and replaced by repugnant mundanity.

Last weekend, my dad, brother and I were thrown out of the Westward Ho after trying to sneak in to explore.  I thought we had made it after one of the residents negotiated the front buzzer for us, but a security guard quickly intervened.  He wouldn't even let us check out the lobby in which we were standing, and no amount of polite explanation (my dad) or angry-child outbursts (me) would change his mind.  He wouldn't even let me take photos.  Outrageous.

Robrt Pela made it in as described in this descriptive but photo-short article.  

This site has photos that seem recent.

This crappy site has some interesting pictures of the "tunnels" and a short video including some interior shots.

I'm just excited that so much of it has been preserved.  Unfortunately, there is no touring of the building due to "liability," which - fine.  But whose stupid idea was it to turn that building into a home for the old and disabled, thus closing it to the outside world forever?  Was there not a more appropriate, public use for such a building?

I'm not really aware of interesting WH trivia, and I've rarely heard it discussed among the old, native or history crowds.

Anne Boleyn's Body

Sometimes I write posts for this blog, then become disgusted with them and never post them.  Then I read them a year later and decide to post them because the world really needs to know how I feel about everything, even if it is poorly executed.  That will become a pun if you read on! 

Someone asked me what I could possibly be writing about so often in this thing (sometimes blogging comes up in conversation and because I never have the presence of mind to lie, I cryptically mention this, then refuse to give the address. The last person said, What do you like talk about private girl stuff there?  If by "girl stuff" you mean Anne Boleyn then...yeah).  Get ready!

After their beheadings, Anne Boleyn and her brother George were tossed into some graves under the floor of St. Peter ad Vincula.  I am not really sure about the status of that kind of burial.  It wasn't total dishonor (like having your head left on a bridge for your spiteful ex to sneer at from his window), but a queen in good favor naturally wouldn't have been put there. 

As they do, the church fell into some disrepair in the centuries following Anne's death.  A restoration effort was taken during the 19th century, at which time the graves beneath the floors were opened.  It had always been known that Anne and her...family were in there (not only brother George but cousin Catherine as well), so I am not exactly sure why they were disinterred and can only attribute this to Victorian morbid curiosity.  The opening of the floor led to the realization that a bunch of regular  townspeople had been placed there along with the Boleyns and various other nobles over the years. 

It was at this point that they realized they really didn't know which of the skeletons belonged to Anne, having only a 16th century map and a jumble of corpses to go by.  Since a lot of bodies had been shifted around as they added new ones (apparently they would bash up old coffins and shove bones to the side to get new ones in), it was anyone's guess whether the female skeleton in the general area of Anne's X on the map was really her.  Hm, no sixth fingers or tails in here.  Get out the Victorian forensics!  Victorian forensics: "Eh...thiiis one."  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was just a kid when this happened, so he wasn't around to help.

Couldn't they have looked for trauma to the vertebra?  Not that beheaded skeletons were in short supply at St. Peter's.  Anyway, they picked the most likely female skeleton, slapped a tag on it reading AB 1536 :/ (jk, I don't know what the tag says), put her in a nice box, and back under the floor she went.

It seems like they could settle this situation with a little DNA testing.  Anne's sister Mary had children, and surely some of their descendents are living today.  Then again, would anyone care about this other than myself and Suzannah Lipscomb?  Of course they would!  This is important.

"Now that damn cowboy is President." 1901

A bar room memory from Theodore Roosevelt's "An Autobiography," 1919:

"The only time I ever had serious trouble was at an even more primitive little hotel than the one in question. It was also on an occasion when I was out after lost horses. Below the hotel had merely a bar-room, a dining-room, and a lean-to kitchen; above was a loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it. It was late in the evening when I reached the place. I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don't like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face.	52
He was not a "bad man" of the really dangerous type, the true man-killer type, but he was an objectionable creature, a would-be bad man, a bully who for the moment was having things all his own way. As soon as he saw me he hailed me as "Four eyes," in reference to my spectacles, and said, "Four eyes is going to treat." I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language. He was foolish to stand so near, and, moreover, his heels were close together, so that his position was unstable. Accordingly, in response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," and rose, looking past him.	53
As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head. It was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees; but he was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in a shed. I got dinner as soon as possible, sitting in a corner of the dining-room away from the windows, and then went upstairs to bed where it was dark so that there would be no chance of any one shooting at me from the outside. However, nothing happened. When my assailant came to, he went down to the station and left on a freight."

So it basically went like THIS.

I love the stories of the tenderfoot nerd who flings himself into a wild west lifestyle after his civilized life falls apart.  It's what everyone wants to do, right?  I was surprised in one of my 19th century West classes when so many students said "oh hell no" when asked if they would have considered moving out in the 1860s, or whenever.  The myths of the West are so powerful and ridiculous, singing cowboys and conquering American gods and all.  They all seemed to wish to hang onto those whitewashed interpretations of history, yet still wouldn't go there themselves if they had the chance.  Contradictory and stupid, like much popular memory of the topic.

You can read TR's autobio online!  HERE.

JA says No

There are lots of days to choose from that could be representative of American Independence,  but John Adams (who really knows best, I would think) was planning on our celebrating the day on July 2, not 4.  The 2nd makes more sense as a momentous day, as it was when the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia to vote on a resolution of independence from Britain.

July 4 is when the Congress adopted Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, but it wasn't signed then.  There was no grand convention of guys applying their signature all at once; they just trickled in whenever, and most didn't sign until around August 2.

Right away, Adams had ideas about how the day should be celebrated, and naturally he told his wife all about it, writing two letters in one day.

___
July 3, 1776, AM:
     "Yesterday the greatest question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, and as such they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce, and to do all the other acts and things which other states may rightfully do." You will see in a few days a declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God and man. A plan of confederation will be taken up in a few days."

July 3, 1776, PM:
     "The second day of July, 1776, will be memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever."
___

John; would you settle for hot dogs and blackouts?

Nevertheless, the 4th is the day that was adopted, because celebrating the Declaration apparently seemed like it had more gravity than the day on which the Congress was together and cast a unanimous vote to throw off their parent country.  I disagree, obviously.  But then, 50 years later, former and recently reconciled bffs John Adams and Thomas Jefferson managed to die on the same day, within hours of each other on July 4, 1826.  The coincidence is so strong that it seems quite relevant.  July 4 it is.

See here for the Massachusetts Historical Society's massive collection of Adams letters. 

And here is some exciting and appropriate music for the holiday.

SJP in America

So, "Who Do You Think You Are?" is a recent program that showcases the ancestry of various celebrities.  Obviously you can't get something like this off the ground unless famous persons are featured.  With the use of historians, librarians and genealogists, the show traces through various family trees until something remarkable turns up.

I like Sarah Jessica Parker.  Contrary to whatever people think of her due to her roles, it's immediately evident upon hearing her speak that she's an intelligent woman with a reader's vocabulary, oh, and a child named after eminent Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins.  She's not what you think. 

Anyway, she knew almost nothing about her pre-20th century ancestors and assumed her family to be fairly recent emigrants from Europe.  Throughout the program, she finds out that half of her family has been in America since the early 17th century.  One of her female ancestors lived in Salem, MA and was actually accused of witchcraft during the final months of the Salem witchcraft craze.  The only reason this woman was not executed was because the witch-finding court had literally just been disbanded.  Unbelievable to have an ancestor who survived this situation, as the court had executed all of the accused up until its end.  Draw your own conclusions about what would have happened with Sex & the City had this happened...I know it's what you're thinking.  Also, this lends extra gravitas to Sarah's role in the excellent movie "Hocus Pocus".

eh, I can't resist.

Wouldn't it be nice if the people who survived ignorance against all odds developed a resistance to it in future generations, the way survivors of the Bubonic Plague passed to their descendants new immunities to use against similar diseases? 

Anyway, I love this show.  It showcases the unique discoveries you begin making the second you start to scratch the surface of history, whether it's about your own family or not.  And it's extra interesting and special to know that one of your ancestors may have witnessed some significant moment in time, such as when my great-grandmother was on the set of Far and Away, eh, I mean when she participated in a land race in South Dakota in 1904 or so.  Tom Cruise wasn't there.

More people should care about these things, and not just because they want to locate a famous ancestor, although I'm sure that's the motivation for many.  People don't care about history until it's made interestingly or alarmingly relevant to them.  I am sure the recent encroachments on women's health care, contraception and abortion are causing plenty of previously wide-eyed 19 year old girls to realize that the control they have over their own lives is something women have possessed for approximately one half nanosecond, historically-speaking, which may lead them to give a shit about what's been going down with women activists for the last 100 years.  JUST SAYING.  HISTORY IS SERIOUS BUSINESS, DO NOT FORGET IT.

Party like it's 1899 Forever

I made the beginnings of a rag rug for an upcoming event at the museum.  The point is to highlight examples of bygone home handicrafts as well as to show kids that there are many ways to recycle.  Scrap fabric from worn out textiles or clothes is braided and then stitched together.  It is, as they say in California, hella easy.  Examples on flickr.

Rag rugs seem to have been the dominion of rural women just trying to make do until the Arts & Crafts movement (1860 - 1910) popularized them as an art form. Old ones are fairly pricey (and awesome) on Ebay. 

I totally love them, but this is going to have to go to the back of my "free time shit to do" pile because I don't have scrap fabric, and I need to embroider pictures of Ray Smuckles saying rude shit first.  Stay tuned for an Anita+Brittany clothing line consisting of silk-screened and embroidered hoodies and shirts with pictures of Ray saying WE DOIN THIS! and Roast Beef saying "I am the guy who sucks. Plus I got depression." 

Questions, see Achewood.  Start in 2005 or prior.

Happy Birthday, Bitch

Yes, today is Arizona's 100th anniversary of statehood. It's also Selma Goldberg's 100 year wedding anniversary as the first bride of statehood. Repeat readers might remember a post a while back in which I found her circa-1900 signature scrawled inside a closet in her childhood home - cute.

But wait, is there another anniversary today?

Heck yeah there is! Arizona proudly celebrates its 150th anniversary of being admitted to the Confederacy as a territory. HEYO. Unfortunately, the state never really left.

Doesn't Arizona know that it's tacky to set special events on holidays? Joining the Klan, getting married, and becoming a state all on Valentine's Day? Christ, you guys.

See the Maddow Blog for some enjoyably bitchy felicitations. I like "Putting the 'AZ' back in 'crazy'."

Anyway. The museum put together a giant birthday card for the centennial for which weekend visitors were able to inscribe 3x5 index cards (and a merry recession to you) with their birthday wishes, which were then affixed to the giant card. Here are my favorites:

A sneering zombie, flying hearts, and a rainbow over a cactus? This kid is awesome.

Ooooh, in your face Jan Brewer! You got dissed on a birthday card. I pointed this out all day.

For my card, I drew a picture of a cow, a cotton boll, an orange, a chunk of copper, and the sun. It was the only card in hundreds to depict the 5 C's. That's how you know who attended 4th grade in Arizona and who didn't.

Speaking of the Confederacy, did you know that Arizona was the site of the westernmost battle (skirmish) of the Civil War? You probably did, but listen to the way I tell it! It happened at Picacho (Peak) Peak. The Union won. There are two ways to look at it: irrelevant, or hell of relevant. I don't care about Civil War battles, but my understanding is thus: had the south managed to get to the west coast and have access to ports, they would have been a lot harder to beat, since they would have had more, like, stuff. This was in 1862, when I assume it was still anyone's game. With southern Arizona having a decent amount of Confederate sympathizers, a patrol was put together to head to southern California and see about making a path to the ocean, but the patrol was slapped down by a Union cavalry at Peak Peak, with the Confederacy never to rise again here or in the southwest in general. The end. Oh wait, not really, because you can see reenactments of this event annually at Picacho.

What is MOST important about Picacho Peak is that the Arizona poppy proliferates at its base every spring. They only grow in certain areas, so it's special.

I went exploring in the gardens around Tovrea Castle today, viewing the propagation beds where baby cacti are born, and a dump site of indeterminate (to me) age where I found an interesting button, which I took home. The first rule of historic sites is that you don't remove things from historic sites, but shit, I'll put it back. When I'm done with it. The dump sites mostly consist of old metal cans, broken glass and, ironically, pottery shards.



Saguaros generally don't like living very close to each other. In the garden, they can be up to twice as close as the ones above. In spite of this, many of the original saguaros have survived from the late 1920s, making the gardens a curious example of a semi-successful bad move.

This thing was originally built in 1928 or 29 as living quarters for the man who built the castle. It's been unoccupied for...a while. Probably 1968.



Scraps of some highly questionable wallpaper. This is the first time I had no desire to enter an abandoned, derelict building.