That's me, running in the wilds of Rhode Island
In my house, we obey the No Book Goes Unread Act. This summer, Mark sent me to B&N to get a couple of books required for his U.S. History course in the Fall. One of the them, "Mayflower" by Nathaniel Philbrick has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust ever since. I decided to rescue the book. Flashback to elementary school when we dressed up as pilgrims and natives and learned the watered-down cleaned-up version of what happened in this early New England settlement. Plymouth Rock loomed large in our imaginations.
Plymouth, Massachusetts is only 70 miles from where we live in Rhode Island so on a cold but sunny day, we decided to take a road trip to steep ourselves in some ancient American history. It was a bit of a letdown. The iconic Plymouth Rock is actually pretty puny (we have much bigger rocks lining our driveway) and it's encased in an canopy structure over-designed by McKim, Mead & White. Apparently, the rock has been carelessly dropped and cracked more than once. Pieces have been chipped off and preserved as relics. Now it sits in rock jail, surrounded by bits of paper, many coins and the stray Red Bull can.
The Mayflower II must be in drydock because it wasn't at its usual mooring. We walked around and saw various statues and then had some chowda. We did see many interesting old houses, both in Plymouth and along Route 44. Route 44 was like one long deja vu experience. It felt like so many places I'd been before, a little slice of back roads Americana where the quaint and the depressing exist side by side. Is anything sadder than an ice cream stand closed up for winter?
Now I have a visual for the events I'll be reading about in "Mayflower." Too bad about the poor pathetic rock, if it's even real.
1 comment:
The Plymouth Village is much more interesting, although I am sure it is not open at this time of year and you most likely couldn't go there at this point? Or maybe you can because most of the exhibits are outdoors...
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