Ditto. I tell American friends that I have plumbing older than their country You also just get used to being surrounded by old bits (although as others here have mentioned, tourists can be aggravating – the worst were when I was at UVa, as Charlottesville, including the university, was a big tourist haven.)
I’ve just come back from a conference in New Orleans, in the French Quarter; I went with a pal and we had a few days just to wander around and see the sights, but we wondered what it must be like actually to live there and deal with the tourists every day (as well as the obnoxious spring breakers who were there when we were).
I avoid central London as much as possible in the summer unless I absolutely have to do a talk or conference (combination of the heat and the tourists); same for the week between Christmas and New Years.
I currently work in a small city that was founded by the Romans, although it’s more closely identified and identifies with its early medieval past; you just get used to the antiquity.
I have a similar anecdote. I was living in Houston and a colleague from the UK was going to a conference in Los Angeles. He looked at a map and saw that I-10 goes from one to the other so suggested I drive over for the weekend. I said “Dude, that’s 2000 miles and for half of that I’m still in fucking Texas!”
With historic preservation, we try to preserve context. The NPS, for example, will try to maintain Civil War battlefields so that they look as much as possible like they did in the 1860’s. And that’s good.
Once in a while, though, it’s fun to see this process go awry. Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga was the site of one of the most dramatic and important Union charges of the war, one of the few times when an infantry charge against high ground succeeded. The city of Chattanooga engulfed it after the war, so a lot of the battle markers are in front yards on residential streets.
I wonder what it’s like when one of these houses goes on the market. “It has the right number of bathrooms, and we’d have a Confederate flank marker on our lawn.” Is that good or bad?
Another example: The site of William McKinley’s assassination is a quiet street of bungalows in Buffalo, with a monument in the median strip.
There’s an article in today’s New York Times about a guy in a small city in Italy who bought a building with the intention of starting a small restaurant (trattoria). There was a problem with the toilet, so he started to dig to expose the sewer pipe. He discovered centuries-old artifacts (a tomb from perhaps 500BC, a granary from Roman times, a Franciscan chapel and so on). The would-be trattoria is now a museum.
As an American, I can’t imagine that; you dig for a garden and Etruscan pottery turns up. (Where I grew up in New England, you dig and rocks turn up. Many, many rocks.)
Have you ever seen the British archeology show Time Team? It’s on YouTube. Many episodes have people in the UK digging up their back gardens to find Roman villas, Anglo-Saxon pottery, or Iron-Age burials. It makes me look upon my own little postage-stamp of a yard and think there’s nothing half that interesting under there–at best an arrowhead or two if you go deep enough.
I’ve heard that the difference between the British and Americans is that the British think 100 miles is a long way, and the Americans think 100 years is a long time.
Anyway, yeah, flint arrow heads were not an unusual find in our English garden. Also clay pipe bowls.
I once heard an American say ‘England, it’s like living in a museum.’ What rubbish I thought, shoving the horsehair back into the plaster of the walls of our 400-year-old-mind-your-head-they-were-smaller-then house.
I grew up around DC also, the stuff is everywhere, and Civil War battle sites are not far away either. Then my family moved to PA with Valley Forge in sight of our house. It’s common stuff on the east coast. Despite all that history on display the coolest stuff was find Native American artifacts that could be found yourself, mostly arrowheads but occasionally stone hatchets turned up…
This is a very interesting thread, but I feel that a few important questions are being overlooked.
First of all, a geographical inquiry, as pertains to the inhabitants of the British Isles, and their perception of distance: Would a British person find a distance of, let’s say, 100 miles to be inconveniently lengthy for casual travel?
Secondly, a temporal issue, concerning those fine fellows on the Western side of the Atlantic, the Americans: In the mind of an individual residing in what we commonly refer to as the United States, would a time frame of 100 years (that is, one century), best be described as “long” or “short”?
Finally, when the answers to the above questions are taken into account, can some pithy conclusions be drawn by way of a pseudo-chiasmic juxtaposition?
Even in the US, who doesn’t live “near some history”? I live in CA, and can think of half a dozen historical sites within an easy 10 minute walk from house. They’re just there except when people make a big deal about them.
You also just get used to being surrounded by old bits (although as others here have mentioned, tourists can be aggravating – the worst were when I was at UVa, as Charlottesville, including the university, was a big tourist haven.)