I climbed the steps leading away from the light-rail station onto the street above it; a woman bounded up the steps behind me and at the top, asked for directions to a street. I pointed her in the right direction and she startled me by asking, “Do you want to go with me?” This encounter was astonishing to me for two reasons. A white woman, a stranger to me, was inviting me to go with her to the home of Scott Joplin, a place I had never visited in all my years in St. Louis.
I sat in wonder at a recent book signing and listened to Al Hunter — a fellow columnist at the Weekly View — tell visitors of his travels to historic sites. One of his stories (to which his bride Rhonda added rich detail) involved a historic site that none of the “locals” were aware of. That describes me, in St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh. I have stomped in the great footsteps of history and am largely unaware of the significance of the hallowed ground I trod. Had the stranger from the St. Louis Metro asked me for directions to “Scott Joplin’s home” instead of the street it was on, I would have been embarrassed to say, “I dunno.”
When I was traveling to Maryland to visit my sister and dying mother, I told my sister (having been shamed by Al’s multiple visits) that I had never visited Gettysburg. I lived in Pennsylvania for 23 years, and had never visited one of the country’s most hallowed historic sites. “We can go,” she said. “It’s not far from here.” I did not.
My eldest daughter, who lives near Morristown, New Jersey, and who spent some time with her mother in residence at a place called Headquarters Hotel, once asked me if I wanted to see some of the historic sites of Morristown. We finally got to do that this past August, when we visited the home that was General George Washington’s first Revolutionary War headquarters. Which explained to me why so many businesses in Morristown were named “Headquarters.” Of course, every school child in America knows that Morristown was Washington’s first headquarters, right? When my daughter asked about the historic sites, she did so because she knew that I liked to write about stuff; she may not know of my failings in the history department, as I managed to bluff my way through her high school years. I bleed history as if I were a hemophiliac, a “histophiliac”: it won’t stay in me. My feelings are readily available to me, but the facts of history are in books and notes and covered in dust in the remotest corners of my brain. I am a proud citizen of the United States who could not pass the citizenship test if it were administered to me today.
On a recent “Ghost Tour” with Al, I listened as he extolled the virtues of “Historic Irvington,” and was once again shamed. I do not know why Irvington is “historic.” I know some of its historic sites; I have walked them the last two Octobers of my life. But the greater mystery of its history is still just outside of my understanding.
I have passed a lot of historic markers in my life; some I have recorded (one being “The Old Courthouse” in St. Louis, where the Dred Scott decision was rendered). Some, I have merely noted by nodding. Had I accepted the invitation proffered by the stranger from the Metro in St. Louis, I might have enjoyed a richly rewarding experience.
Or, have been murdered.