I hail from Virginia and grew up in the shadow of Thomas Jeffersons' Monticello outside of Charlottesville in a little hamlet called Fork Union. There's so much history there. I spent summers on a bike I took through everything as a kid and I'd find all kinds of cool stuff. Old slave graveyards. Abandoned fountains from the Daughters of Temperance. Old musket balls from long forgotten small skirmishes not listed in any history book. Lafayette maintained a manor and hunting lodge I cut the grass for as my first job as an early teenager in Bremo Bluff. All of this was before the internet and there was such a sense of magic to it all. Looking through various books and asking around to find out who might know what something was. Honestly a part of me misses the days before wiki. Books are undervalued today I think.
As a kid I took all of this for granted, that discovering all this cool stuff was what every kid does. I know what a blessing that kind of childhood was is in hindsight. Part of me wonders if feeling guilty for the lack of gratitude I had as a child for all the things I was given is part of what makes the adult grown child/parent relationship so awkward for me sometimes. You can tell them and you can pick up the bill when you go out with them and get them nice gifts for holidays but theres always the feeling you'll never be able to repay the amount of love a parent gives a child and all the things you took for granted.
Anyway all the previously mentioned stuff gave me a fascination with all things that came before. I always love strolling the downtown areas and historic districts of any old city. They all have their personal history that gives it its unique soul. The sense of morning in the air as your feet strike the cobblestones at 3 am in Richmond and you can feel the sadness of the confederate dead in the air around you. The residual dawning energy of the industrial age I feel walking around Chicago walking underneath metro rail lines for some reason. The way wrought iron balcony railings in the French Quarter ooze a kind of lazy sensuality that pools in the streets and comes up through your feet. The stark kind of utilitarian beauty you find roaming in port districts. All this probably sounds romantic. Being a guy I'm kind of lucky in that I don't have to worry like women have to about where they are as much. Looking half crazed and broke probably helps alot too. But these moments are the magic of history for me and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Its kinda like the sound of tugboats sounding off always reminds me of infinite possibilities for some reason I can't explain. But I fucking love it.
Anyway the cool thing is, years ago when I first started doing cabinets and furniture I was installing a library for some UN guy in DC. Between trips to the truck for tools and whatnot I stopped to smoke and found this cool looking coin in the parking lot. It looked like this and was a complete mystery to me. But it was an empty condo parking lot so I stuck it in my pocket and forgot about it until it was rattling around in the dryer. It was a Spanish piece of eight. Its probably a reproduction but I've never been able to part with it for some reason and it looks like this only mine is from 1745
The same crest on the obverse side of the coin can be found as flourishes on the old cannonades that line the walls of the Castillo San Marcos in St Augustine. You can see the compare and contrast picture on my flickr page ( if you scroll to the bottom of this page there should be a link) because I'm writing this with a passport drive and the picture isn't on this drive. Anyway I thought that was completely awesome. Time travel to and from random moments in your own lifetime is possible if you have the keys to it. Whether its an object, a photo, a song, a smell, a drink, anything can take you back. Its beautiful when it finds you and you aren't searching for it when your doing something new. Anyway this was all over the place and if you read it to the end the deserve a medal. Or at least a stiff mojito.
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