I was minding my own business, acting like a tourist. While riding an open air train at the National Railroad Museum here in Green Bay. In the back side of the facility, there are things set up to look like an old Hobo village. I could not see who did it, but it sounded like a young man interrupted the tour guide, who was talking about the Depression era, specifically Hoovervilles that had popped up across the country. He challenged her use of that term. Our guide explained that many blamed Herbert Hoover for the economic collapse. The young man told her that was only her opinion and he did it quite belligerently. The train was packed and I'm sure that the young woman had been giving the tourists the same speech all summer. No one said a word to the young man about how rude he was being, or how he needed to just be quiet and learn something. Oddly, we seem to be raising a generation of people who want to practice revisionist history so badly that they seem to be offended at any turn of events, even if it took place decades ago.
Explain to people that Abraham Lincoln received slaves as a wedding gift, or that his orders led to the largest one-day massacre of native people and folks will just blink or fix their eyes on a faraway point and you can almost see their brains rejecting the information. I do not worry that this will lead to problems in the future, my concern is for the damage we are doing to our population with this rampant hostility right now, today. Those who cannot understand how we got where we are today, or process the reality that we all must deal with adequately will be willing to let others do their thinking for them in other areas as well. By many assessments, historians have put Herbert Hoover in a class with just a handful of other "bad" Presidents, but what do historians know?
This is like the current slate of Teathuglican candidates who were swept into Congress by groups of massive donors shielded from view by record-breaking donations given to Political Action Campaigns. Money talks and the government for, by and of the people have to grin and bear it. Being offended that the millionaire class has crashed the economy in the past may, in fact, be reasonable, but it was in the past. No amount of outrage, justifiable condemnation or anger will change our history. Certainly, rigorous questioning of the summer help at a tourist facility will not change the way anyone feels about Herbert Hoover. The indignant passenger was convinced that the term "Hoovervilles" was just the tour guide's opinion. Hoping that the truth would become evident to the questioner at some point seems almost as futile as trying to get them to let the tour guide do their job.
All in all, it was a great day, spent with family and a handful of good friends. Perhaps this is why the outburst was seen by me to be so contrarian. I have been on tours where the guide was obviously making things up, but that was half the fun, especially when the tourist trap was a hole in the side of a mountain near Central City, Colorado, but there it was a tour led by a bad actor who was actually making things up. That was the entertainment of the place. Back in the day, around 1973 or1974, Central City had not yet been ruined by legal gambling. The biggest tourist attraction they had at that point in time was the face painted on the barroom floor. The portrait cordoned off by a velvet rope was almost as cool as the old candy store, the fake mine tour and the $6 per night motel that only had room to walk on one side of the bed. Part of the charm was just looking around at things we had not seen before and learning a bit about the history of the area.
Even so, tourists came and after traveling so far to get there, the last thing they did is question the tour guides about things that made no difference in the long run. One interesting thing that I do remember from the old hotel tour in Central City back then is that in spite of their name, silver was king in Colorado. The tour guide mentioned that the locals paved the streets with silver ingots the only time a sitting President came to town. When the President came to town, he arrived passed out drunk, and he stayed drunk enough that he had to be put in his carriage to leave. For all the work the locals did to show their pride and commitment to silver mining and for all their desire to keep silver demand high, U.S. Grant didn't even see the silver street. True or not, it is a good story.
My mother always said, it is better to keep your mouth shut and let others think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and prove them right!
Explain to people that Abraham Lincoln received slaves as a wedding gift, or that his orders led to the largest one-day massacre of native people and folks will just blink or fix their eyes on a faraway point and you can almost see their brains rejecting the information. I do not worry that this will lead to problems in the future, my concern is for the damage we are doing to our population with this rampant hostility right now, today. Those who cannot understand how we got where we are today, or process the reality that we all must deal with adequately will be willing to let others do their thinking for them in other areas as well. By many assessments, historians have put Herbert Hoover in a class with just a handful of other "bad" Presidents, but what do historians know?
This is like the current slate of Teathuglican candidates who were swept into Congress by groups of massive donors shielded from view by record-breaking donations given to Political Action Campaigns. Money talks and the government for, by and of the people have to grin and bear it. Being offended that the millionaire class has crashed the economy in the past may, in fact, be reasonable, but it was in the past. No amount of outrage, justifiable condemnation or anger will change our history. Certainly, rigorous questioning of the summer help at a tourist facility will not change the way anyone feels about Herbert Hoover. The indignant passenger was convinced that the term "Hoovervilles" was just the tour guide's opinion. Hoping that the truth would become evident to the questioner at some point seems almost as futile as trying to get them to let the tour guide do their job.
All in all, it was a great day, spent with family and a handful of good friends. Perhaps this is why the outburst was seen by me to be so contrarian. I have been on tours where the guide was obviously making things up, but that was half the fun, especially when the tourist trap was a hole in the side of a mountain near Central City, Colorado, but there it was a tour led by a bad actor who was actually making things up. That was the entertainment of the place. Back in the day, around 1973 or1974, Central City had not yet been ruined by legal gambling. The biggest tourist attraction they had at that point in time was the face painted on the barroom floor. The portrait cordoned off by a velvet rope was almost as cool as the old candy store, the fake mine tour and the $6 per night motel that only had room to walk on one side of the bed. Part of the charm was just looking around at things we had not seen before and learning a bit about the history of the area.
Even so, tourists came and after traveling so far to get there, the last thing they did is question the tour guides about things that made no difference in the long run. One interesting thing that I do remember from the old hotel tour in Central City back then is that in spite of their name, silver was king in Colorado. The tour guide mentioned that the locals paved the streets with silver ingots the only time a sitting President came to town. When the President came to town, he arrived passed out drunk, and he stayed drunk enough that he had to be put in his carriage to leave. For all the work the locals did to show their pride and commitment to silver mining and for all their desire to keep silver demand high, U.S. Grant didn't even see the silver street. True or not, it is a good story.
My mother always said, it is better to keep your mouth shut and let others think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and prove them right!
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