You go to bed just like any other night…watching TV, next to your wife, SO, alone whatever…
You wake up in a strange bed…in a strange room…and to a strange smell, kind of like horse droppings and burlap. You look around and everything is different. You look out the blurry window and see horses, carriages, women in long dresses, men with guns on their hips.
You look around the room and see a chamber pot…an oil lamp that stinks to high heaven (because it’s whale oil), you see your clothes…(if you are a man you see) boots, black trousers, suspenders, a big hat, a gun! :eek:
Ok, so it’s the year the Donner party got rescued, the year Tom Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were born…The US was neck deep in the Mexican American War and sadly the year Johnny Appleseed (Chapman) died…
There you are…you wake up and there are no TV’s, no cars,no indoor plumbing, no lights! What do you do?
Let’s say you have money…let’s say you have $100 on your person (back then it would be like having $10,000) you are in an empty house…in 1847.
Assuming I’m in the USA. Since the US-Mexican War is going on, and I know that the US will win in the end, and I know where the oil fields are, I will wait for peace and then go into Texas, buy up all the land I know where there is oil, and wait.
I’d wake up, head to the toilet, only to find none. Head over to turn on the tv to catch up on some news, only to find it gone. Head over to my computer to find out what the hell is going on, but it’s not there. Promptly curl up in the corner of the room and weep like a little girl, while rocking my self to sleep.
At the risk of wiping myself out of existence I’d go look for my ancestors in Georgia and solve some mysteries the genealogist in me has been dieing to know. Wait, that’s not very fun, is it?
Ok, then. California here I come. Invest all my money to open a supply store. Have it all up and running in 2 years.
Then I’d trek to western Kentucky, find my great-great-great grandfather and find out how the hell he got over here to the US without showing up on any ship manifests and grill him for info about his parents in Ireland.
Seattle isn’t going to be settled for another 4 years, of course, I wouldn’t know that and would have no way of finding that out - all I’d know is that there are a whole lot more trees and much, much higher hills.
Assuming I somehow or other managed to make it 60 miles south without any navigational aids (and no directional skills), and without starving to death or dying of thirst, and not running into Native Americans (the Indian Wars are due to start this year), I’d make it to the settlement - where (a) they’re in the process of building the first saw mill and (b) there is one other black person. And at least someone there would be able to tell me where I was, and what year it was.
However, it’s at this time, illegal for me to own property in WA Territory and illegal for me to be in Oregon Territory at all - so, I guess I’d try to find my way to San Francisco… where there’s a chance that I might be able to do something that won’t mean extreme poverty and misery for the rest of my life.
What’s quite interesting here is that all the Americans are talking about 1847 as if it was a long time ago.
No European would consider anything from 1847 that old.
I would still be able to find my way around London with the knowledge that I have from today - ie all the same streets etc would still be there. Many of the buildings have changed (the Luftwaffe and local planners have done terrible things to London’s architectural history)
The tube was still 40 years off though.
Other things I’d do: Try to find an ex soldier to tell me what waterloo was really like. Ditto Trafalgar.
Tell Robert Peel that the Corn Law kerfuffle would become merely a footnote in history. Also tell all politicians that there really is NO answer to the “Irish Question”.
Go to Clerkenwell and punch Karl Marx.
Go down the East End, wait 41 years to find out who Jack The Ripper really was.
Get mullered on gin and laudenum
send a small boy up a chimney (I have one particularly vexatious nine year old in mind - mine)
. I’m from Connecticut, and as for other Americans I can not say, but I would be just fine in my town of Stonington. All of downtown would be there, library, municiple buildings etc…etc… and the Whaling Industry would make New London (about 5 miles away) a bustling metropolis.
As for your other writings regarding London - Good Show! Very fun to read:)
To paraphrase something that I believe was originally written by Diana Gabaldon–Brits think 200 miles is a long way … and Americans think 200 years is a long time.
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I’m not entirely sure if my town would be here, were I to wake up in 1847, but the town next to mine is the birthplace of Edison, so I’m sure I could find somebody there. I can’t even begin to think of what I would do with my life. I’d probably get stoned as a witch or something for not being able to keep my big fat mouth shut about things that were going to happen.
But by the physical standards of 1847, I’d be one hot chick, so I’d have that going for me.
Were I in Ireland in 1847, I’d travel to the west and point at the sea, and say “Look: fish! Seaweed! Crustaceans! Molluscs! They’re edible! You can dry the surplus and send them inland!”
Then I’d forge some documents, find my fellow countrymen, and in my poshest accent tell them that the King had decreed their wheat and barley crops were for the feeding of the peasants, not for export.
I’d also source a different breed of potato and introduce that.
Unfortunately this would probably mean that the US would never have Kennedy as prez, so Nixon might have been in charge during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we might not be reading this today…
Were I in Ireland in 1847, I’d travel to the west and point at the sea, and say “Look: fish! Seaweed! Crustaceans! Molluscs! They’re edible! You can dry the surplus and send them inland!”
Then I’d forge some documents, find my fellow countrymen, and in my poshest accent tell them that the King had decreed their wheat and barley crops were for the feeding of the peasants, not for export.
I’d also source a different breed of potato and introduce that.
Unfortunately this would probably mean that the US would never have Kennedy as prez, so Nixon might have been in charge during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we might not be reading this today…
