History… what a life
I must admit I am a history buff. I don’t know when it started. Perhaps when I started reading all the "Little House" books. What a life. Wouldn’t it be odd to not see your neighbor for days, weeks or even months on end? To hear a wild cat scream in the night. Or mistakenly pet a bear thinking it was your milk cow. All those things excited my imagination and my love of history. Thanks Mrs. Wilder.
Perhaps it has to do with all the road trips across my home state. When you’re in a car for hours and Dad says "Hey there’s a historical marker ahead, want to stop?" "Sure, wonder what it says," you say. So you stop and for about 5 minutes soak in the chisled writing on a granite marker telling about a trail or a valley or whatever important historical event that happened there long before you were a glimmer on the horizon of time. So as you climb in the car and continue talking about it the event becomes filed in your brain for later. Then you imagine what it was like. No ribbon of endless white concert on which your metal horses are zooming by miles of prairie, no train tracks winding on their parallel journey beside the highway, no rest stops, truck stops, meal stops just prairie, sun, birds and wind. Thanks Dad for putting history in a daily practical sense. Thanks to my hubby who will stop at a historical marker all because of my whim to read it. I hope my kids get that history is real and alive.
Perhaps it is that I had fun history teachers. These women and men made studying ancient cultures, geography and all the events from the dawn of time it seemed to almost our current times interesting. Egyptian Pharaohs, Medeval knights, and immigrants all became real. (No I didn’t sit at home studying the globe like a later teacher teased. Though I could have done it and it would have been fun. My knowlege of that was thanks to Mrs. H. Thanks Mrs. H!) Amazing what a good teacher can do.
Perhaps it is that I can remember historical events. In high school I participated in a thing called Citizen Bee. To be involved I had to take a test 100 questions about U.S. history. I figured I did well since I was one of the 3-4 kids chosen to represent our school at the Bee. Oh and surprisingly 100 questions on U.S. history weren’t that hard. (Maybe there was a good reason why I was called the "Trivia Queen".) Anyway back to the Bee. So one evening in spring our little group would head to Fargo to take another test and then compete in a Bee. The test was to weed through the ones who really knew their stuff and those that didn’t. I think I only actually got to the Spelling Bee part once. I got weeded out after a question or two. So I must admit some of the specific details of history did elude me. Remember I didn’t say I could remember dates. (I am even worse at dates now. All seems to be set on a timeline pertaining to my childrens birth and ages now. Prior to that I had another system. Sort of like switching from Julian to Gregorian calendars.)
I do enjoy history. I get sucked into modern recreations of history. Old forts are very neat places. The Chateau de Mores is awesome. Even PBS does a good job. They have had various programs about living in a certian time period. The ones I have enjoyed are 1900’s House, a home set in 1900’s England, Pioneer House, pioneers settling on the prairie and Colonial house, one set with new colonists. the latest program has been Texas Ranch House. It has been fun for me to watch. Granted the people are from the 21st century and have all the ideas that come with being of this time. The challenge is to be true to that time. A difficult task. Yes I am insane enough to think that it would be fun. Hard, a test of ones moxie? Of course. Sometimes a time machine would be fun. These shows are sort of like that.
I do like history. I should read more about it. The people are fascinating. The mistakes we can learn from… I had heard that is why we study history… to learn from the mistakes.
I am glad I like history. I think I enjoy the places I visit more when I know something about how it came to be. Besides learning something new is fun. You never know when you just might need it for a boisterous game of Trivial Pursuit. ;) That is how I can pull some of those answers out of my…. Anyone want to play??
