1910	2010

We had a pleasant evening in the park across from the Hooverville courthouse. The little square has beautiful flowers – also cannon. The cannon are there because it's a veterans' memorial park. It's right downtown, situated at the busiest intersection of Fifth Avenue (which turns back into highway 68 by the time you get to Walmart) and Main Street. The square is not only comfortable, but also historical: the buildings surrounding it on three sides were all built in the 1800s. The bank on the fourth side is constructed in modest neo-federal style just to fit in.

The crowd were sitting on self-supplied folding chairs. We do a lot of BYOC events in Hooverville. The band, as is fitting, was in the gazebo, and the sound was glorious. The music boomed out of the little structure and made pictures that floated among the trees on the summer air. The audience and the performers enjoy music that's full of action: we had pirates, dragons, cowboy heroes, and trains, all the theme songs. The traffic at the intersection didn't stand a chance against the brass and percussion.

The emcee set the mood for this one. 'Close your eyes,' he invited. 'Imagine these streets some hundred years ago.'

I imagine. Flappers and straw hats. (I can do that much math.)

'They need to deliver the mail. How do they do it?'

My imagination conjures up a silent movie. An automobile with a front-crank handle is involved. Also Keystone Kops and a dog named Petey.

'The Pony Express!'

I snap out of my mental movie. That's what I get for being too literal. The Pony Express ran from 1860 to 1861. But hey, close enough – what was he supposed to say, '163 years ago'? That would be awkward and involve way too much arithmetic for a summer evening. The composition – called 'The Last Ride of the Pony Express' – is a bravura piece for a band to display its talents. Besides, in the 1860s nearby Knox, Pennsylvania, was the horsethief capital of North America. It is easy to imagine wild riders on these roads before they were paved.

But it made me think, again, about the way in which we appreciate our living spaces. It doesn't matter whether you live far out in the country, or in a small town, or in a bustling city. The chances are good that wherever you walk, you walk on history. Somebody lived there before you. Maybe they even left some of the buildings behind. The building right across the street from where the band was playing has seen many uses in the last 150+ years (see what I did there?) and is now an event venue for weddings and celebrations.

The photos at the top of the page were taken in Philadelphia, about 100 years apart. Elfreth's Alley is the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in the US. At least, that's the Association's story, and they're sticking to it. I know: I used to be a tour guide there. I've seen photos and drawings from various times, and had a chance to examine the architecture and artefacts up close, and that place has seen some changes.

In 1702, the street was part of the second-largest city in the British Empire. It was home to small tradespeople of the middling sort: Betsy Ross attended kindergarten there. One lady bottled ketchup, but it didn't have any tomatoes in it because, as everyone in Philly knew, love apples were poisonous. Oh, and that whole street only had one communal privy. It was at the end of the street closest to the river, next to the well. People kept cows in the back courtyards and grazed them on the common squares the city thoughtfully provided. The chickens clucked around on the little street. It was…picturesque.

In the late 19th Century the backyards of the Alley were full of tenements – wooden structures as tall as the houses themselves. And those tenements were full of recent immigrants – and kids. I have seen photographs from the 1890s of more children than you can imagine living in one place – and they all lived on this tiny street. The privy situation wasn't much better than in the 1700s, and there was still livestock around.

A visitor to the Alley one day told me his mother used to live there in the 1940s. It was considered a bad neighbourhood. The kids got her to sell up and move to the suburbs. They are very unhappy about this now: the real estate on that street is worth its weight in gold. Believe it or not, rich people pay enormous sums to live in the midst of history – even though one of those houses is about three meters wide.

Have you got any old photos of where you live? Does the local library or historical society? Do you know any old people like me who can tell you stories? Do you like to mentally undress…er, historicise your neighbourhood? Wonder what it was like in the '40s, or last century, or in the Middle Ages, or back in the Pleistocene?

Thinking about it might help us get over our sense of isolation in time. It also might make us act more responsibly toward the future. Don't you want your great-great-grandkids to be walking around thinking, 'I wonder who planted that great grove of trees?' rather than 'I wonder what idiot it was that caused that toxic cleanup site?'

Anyway, here's the band. Sorry about the goofy camera work.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

03.07.23 Front Page

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