The uses of social history
Every spring for the last 39 years, I have fluctuated wildly from hope to despair in this seaside town sticking out into the ocean. Hope is represented by the seductively mild temperatures that prevail from about 8 a.m. until noon, when the temperature often gets well up into the 60s. Despair takes over when the sea breeze sets in, soon after noon in the spring, and plunges the temperatures down to the lower 50s or worse.
From my spouse's perspective, this was once a blessing. Each spring, in a triumph of hope over experience, my late mother would trek down from central New Hampshire for a few days under the illusion that it was going to be warm here. Between the sea breeze and the ice that prevailed between the two women, it was never warm.
We wonders, yes we does, why the 19th century Yankees pitched upon these rocky outcroppings, uninviting ten months of the year, as places to build summer retreats. The chief answer, evidently, is equus urbanicus.
In the 19th century, when there were neither electric trolleys, motorcars, nor air conditioned houses, the daily scrapings of horse manure from Boston streets alone measured in the many tons. Do a little math to figure what New York was like. If you're city raised, you may not appreciate the olfactory effect that happens when one raises even a ton or two of animal manure to 90 degrees F. for a few hours, every day, for a couple of months. Cities, then, were literally full of shit. Worse, abuse of draught animals was widespread (that's why the SPCA got started, duh!) and it wasn't uncommon for horses to die in harness. Their socially unconscious owners would simply unhitch the carcass, shove it to the gutter (or not), and leave it to decay and to carrion feeders. Oh, add to that the odour of the Great Unwashed when they really were unwashed. No, cities were not places the gently raised preferred to spend their summers.
Against that backdrop, freezing ocean water, sea breezes that are pure cheats in every month but July and August, and "beaches" comprised of tennis ball sized rocks probably seemed like a garden of earthly delights.
From my spouse's perspective, this was once a blessing. Each spring, in a triumph of hope over experience, my late mother would trek down from central New Hampshire for a few days under the illusion that it was going to be warm here. Between the sea breeze and the ice that prevailed between the two women, it was never warm.
We wonders, yes we does, why the 19th century Yankees pitched upon these rocky outcroppings, uninviting ten months of the year, as places to build summer retreats. The chief answer, evidently, is equus urbanicus.
In the 19th century, when there were neither electric trolleys, motorcars, nor air conditioned houses, the daily scrapings of horse manure from Boston streets alone measured in the many tons. Do a little math to figure what New York was like. If you're city raised, you may not appreciate the olfactory effect that happens when one raises even a ton or two of animal manure to 90 degrees F. for a few hours, every day, for a couple of months. Cities, then, were literally full of shit. Worse, abuse of draught animals was widespread (that's why the SPCA got started, duh!) and it wasn't uncommon for horses to die in harness. Their socially unconscious owners would simply unhitch the carcass, shove it to the gutter (or not), and leave it to decay and to carrion feeders. Oh, add to that the odour of the Great Unwashed when they really were unwashed. No, cities were not places the gently raised preferred to spend their summers.
Against that backdrop, freezing ocean water, sea breezes that are pure cheats in every month but July and August, and "beaches" comprised of tennis ball sized rocks probably seemed like a garden of earthly delights.
posted by Uncle | 23:58
3 Comments:
Hey, I like your rocky beach! It's pretty and I can buy sandwiches there and the restrooms are convenient. :-) *Our* beach actually does smell like shit at low tide. (You'd think they'd have fixed the algae problem by now, but no.)
(Ms. M-A left this comment last night. I published it this morning, and Blogger.com promptly swept it out to sea. So here it is again.
malevolent andrea has left a new comment on your post "The uses of social history":
Hey, I like your rocky beach! It's pretty and I can buy sandwiches there and the restrooms are convenient. :-) *Our* beach actually does smell like shit at low tide. (You'd think they'd have fixed the algae problem by now, but no.)
Now of course it shows up. Go figure.
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