Monthly Archives: October 2018

Teddy Roosevelt in Buffalo: Mystery in History Solved

culture, tourism, travel, , ,

While in Buffalo recently for the annual American Folklore Society meetings, I had some free time to explore this fascinating city.  (Yes, it is much more than hot wings and Niagra Falls.)  I set off to explore why Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated in Buffalo in 1901.

I set off on a brisk (due to the 40sF temperature and wind) walk from downtown, admiring the architecture along the way, and soon arrived at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Historical Site

This stately mansion houses not only the library where Roosevelt was inaugurated, but an impressive array of interactive displays for deeper dives.  While you wait for your guided tour through the house, you are immersed in an exhibit on the 1901 Pan Am Exposition,  a sort of world’s fair designed to showcase everything progressive and superior about America.  Considering that electricity, and even ice cream, were new things back then, there was a lot to ooh and aah over at this fantastic city of the future for the people of the day, and putting yourself in their place via the displays was fun.

Things get decidedly darker when the tour guide puts on a video that explains how, after a rousing speech about the wonders of the exposition and of America, President McKinley is shot while greeting well wishers.  (Obviously at least one person, Leon Czolgosz, did not wish him well at all.)  TR was the Vice President, and when poor McKinley finally succumbed to his wounds (unfortunately he did not die instantly but suffered in the hands of inferior medical practices of the day), Roosevelt was summoned to Buffalo to pay his respects and get sworn in.

The next area imagines the many pressing issues of the day that must have been going through Roosevelt’s mind as he prepared to take over the presidency.  Many of them sounded disturbingly familiar to those of us reading the news in 2018:  immigrants flooding the country; poor race relations; and rampant devastation of natural resources in some of the country’s most spectacular wild landscapes, among others.

Poor old Teddy had his hands full, in other words.  As those of us who know a little something about his personal history (or find out more through a visit to one of the many TR historical sites around the country), he was not exactly perfect.  (Let’s not get into such things as the eminent domain of the Philippines, destructive safaris in Africa, etc.)

In any case, the tour through the house, standing in the library were the inauguration took place, seeing a pile of facsimiles of telegrams (the email – or even Twitter – of the day) that he needed to address, and then diving into more history in the upstairs rooms of the mansion where you can pose with a larger-than-life cut out, pretend to be president, and contemplate further how far, but then again how close, we still are to issues of 1901, was all very interesting and powerful experience.  Thanks to our tour guide and the staff of the site for an enlightening couple of hours.

 

Encountering the Ghosts of the Past

childhood; stuff; family, Hilton Head Island, memories, ,

Last week, my sister and I embarked on the task of cleaning out my mom’s condo.  Mom is now in assisted living, and has everything she needs in her one large room.  (“Needs” and “wants” might be different things… let’s say, she has everything that could possible fit there and then some.)  So, the accumulated remaining possessions that were left in the closets, under the beds, in the cabinets, on the shelves, in the drawers, on the walls, were left to be dealt with.

This is not our childhood home, but the retirement home of my mom.  Still, some of the items dating back to our childhoods made it to this location, in a couple of enormous boxes in the corners of the spare bedroom closets.  These brought back memories, mostly fond and but some not-so-fond.   From my old report cards (which recorded your height and weight back then along with your academic achievements) I was reminded what a fat little kid I was.  Our old slightly beat up Madame Alexander dolls reminded me how I once shamelessly abused my sister’s doll by cramming corn flakes into its eyes.  A tiny set of metal pots and pans reminded me that, as children, we had a functional small electric stovetop – how many times did we come close to burning down the house with that beast?

We kept a few of the items that we just couldn’t part with – my sister took, among other things, the pancake pitcher and griddle, and we vowed to make pancakes served with sausages, maple syrup and applesauce at Christmastime like our Dad used to for dinner sometimes.  I took the family photos in various media – slides, loose snapshots, arranged in albums, framed.  We brought more small knick-knacks and mementos to my mom. But many of the items will find new homes via the many boxes we donated to a charity shop, or, if they were too far gone, have been deep-sixed in the dump.  It’s just the way of things.

It was sad, and exhausting, and frustrating, but we got through it, with the help of some friends and our husbands.  Ghosts have been encountered, dispatched, and banished along with about a ton of stuff.  The memories remain.