Living With the Past-A Eulogy

As a child and well into my thirties I spent almost every weekend at a large house on the Eastern Shore.  It was an enormous place with a supposed thirty six bedrooms (no one every really counted them, there were so many) and it faced a secluded creek on the bay.  It had a dock with a few sail boats moored there, a family graveyard on the crest of a hill overlooking the water and the remnants of formal gardens with ancient wisteria vines strong enough to climb on.  It had been, in it's heyday, a bustling hotel for the people who came over to the Eastern Shore from Annapolis and Baltimore to take a train to the ocean. This was before the advent of the Bay Bridge.  There were many ferry villages like this one- Betterton, Tolchester Beach, Rock Hall , and probably many"boarding houses" as they were called like this one.  The reason I am not naming the house (it has a name, like many estates on the Bay with Anglophile pretensions) is because it is in the process of being demolished this week.  It was bought by a lawyer from Richmond who decided that renovating it was too expensive and too problematic and the best thing to do was just raze it and build something new. 

The reason why I am writing about this on my PollySue's blog is because my dismay at the thought of the destruction of a place that I have loved since before I could walk (my parents discovered it in the early sixties before I was born)  has forced me to consider two very opposing views of the world- that of preservation of the old, and that of championing of the new.

 My beloved hotel would be considered a bit of Victorian brick a brack to an English person who has a local church that has stones over the door that read 1300, or who lives in a thatched roof cottage that is a mere middle aged 1750.  But in a relatively young country like America a house that was built in the 1860's is considered ancient, a bit of flyblown time preserved in amber.  To the majority of people the thought of taking on the project of preserving and maintaining such a house is as pleasant as being flogged with damp towels in a snowstorm while seeing your money being stolen by unscrupulous "contractors." Yes, there are Amercian historic preservation societies many of whom I contacted to try and save this house from the wrecking ball- but they put many restrictions on the owners , and the former owners of this house didn't want to be told what to do with their own property.  So the house , while listed as a "property of historic significance" was not designated historic, and eventually came to the point of no return it stands at now. 

All this said let me take you back to a weekend when I was about seven years old.  The excitement of getting in the family Ford Fairlane and going over the  Bay Bridge after hours waiting in the beach back up traffic. The stop at Holly's restaurant to have crab cakes on Kent Island.  The approach to the small town down the road from the hotel, slumbering in the humid July evening, seeing a racoon cross the road, it's eyes shining green in the headlights.  And then, down the dark country lane  to the house, rising above me magisterially , a circular drive and massive oak trees sheltering it, and blue neon bug zapper lights on sticks that formed a sort of whimsical signage complete with frizzing sounds of unfortunate mosquitos being drawn towards them.
Going in to the house, being warmly welcomed and shown to our rooms that did not have doors, only transoms and curtains that blew in the breeze of ancient steel fans that made clunking noises as they rotated.  Our food put in 1940's era refrigerators that looked like hot rod cars somehow, with lots of curves and chrome.  The furniture mostly Victorian Eastlake, with cut oak, marble top dressers.  Light fixtures dangling from the ceiling, made of painted frosted glass, white chenille bedspreads, cotton sheets that had been dried on a line in the sun and somehow smelled of light.  In the morning going down the creaky stairs and out into the lush canopy of a southern summer- swimming in the creek, lying in the grass, watching herons and snakes and minnows and crabs  seeing the rippled sand under the water, hearing the gentle clank of the boat rigging.  Napping in the hot part of the afternoon in the old house, wandering around the many rooms, going up staircases that appeared here and there to large unused rooms with fading floral wallpaper and half curtains, windows propped up with hardback books from Readers Digest.  Climbing into the attic on yet another hidden stairway and looking at yellowed letters with spidery writing, old photographs, trunks of ancient clothes. Becoming aware that what I thought of as time wasn't really just now, but was also the past shadowing me at every step, watching over me, comforting me in the knowlege that I wasn't alone here, that many other children had been happy here and left that happiness somehow in the very floor boards and plaster.

I know it is because of my love of this place that I instinctively loved anything old, anything that had a story, a history, a bit of depth and interest that a brand new object lacked.  The horrific pea soup and pumpkin coloration of the seventies apalled me, I wanted the deep burgundy and robins egg blues of the Chinese rugs,  the delicate pastels of the china lamps and the patina of 100 year old  mahogany.  I was aghast at the earth shoe pale blue levis pants and tee shirts of my classmates, I wanted a white eyelet dress that blew in the breeze, that was of a cotton so fine it seemed like a spiderweb.  I started liking vintage clothes because they connected me to the past that at this place seemed like such a better place to be than the Eagles listening kickball playing horror of seventh grade in 1977 urban Washington.

This is how I came to champion the old, to see the quality and charm in it, to feel that it was a crime to destroy something of beauty that was old just to have something that was new.

This house was to many eyes a delapidated wreck that got worse with time.  Ceilings fell in.  The foundation shifted and weakend.  Mold developed, birds took up residence, racoons and squirrels slept in the abandoned beds and ate out the filling leaving it on the dusty wood floors. To the practical eye of the lawyer from Richmond the house was a tear down.  Just shoring up the foundation so that the walls wouldn't buckle was a near million dollar prospect, and after that tearing out walls, replacing windows, leveling the floors that were so bumpy they looked like roller coasters rather than flat surfaces to walk on- money would evaporate into this house like water in the desert and it would just need more and more. A nice new house built with the latest design could maximize the gorgeous bay views and keep you nice and cool in summer, nice and warm in winter. Granite countertops and sub zero refrigerators, open floor plans and massive decks, all these things would be far superior to old cracked linoleum, antique refrigerators coated in rust, windows that opened and let in rain and screen doors that slapped closed instead of swinging on carefully calibrated magenitc hinges.  Plus, the resale value of a site this prime would be far more with a new house than with some old decaying pile that only a fool would consider saving.

Old things ask more from you but they give more.  They give the sense of continuity, of quality, of uniqueness, of depth.  I am sure that the house built on this site will be very comfortable, and to many people just what they always dreamed of in their long careers working to be the kind of person who could afford to tear down an old house and build a new one.  Many people want to be the first owner of something because the thought of those that came before them is somehow creepy, haunted, dirty, well....used.  But to me, it is precisely because of this  that an old place or object has a fascination, a beauty and a quality that far exceeds a Potomac worthy mansion with all the latest convieniences.  I wouldn't trade my old cracked claw foot tub by the open window for a million double sinked marble crusted bathrooms.  Living with the past is not living in the past.  And this is a distinction that I think is very important. 

My life will be my eulogy for this place that shaped who I am and helped me find a career that I love.  And someday I hope to save another, (perhaps slightly smaller,) old house and bring it back to the present with respect, love and tact so that others can experience what I knew as a child in this wonderful, lost place that I will always carry with me in my heart.