MUSEUM IN THE STREETS

By Laurie Meunier Graves, for the Wolf Moon Journal

In the United States, we are too often accused of not having enough history, as though it were a commodity that was paradoxically in short supply in this land of abundance. We are constantly reminded that Asia and, especially, Europe have a history that stretches back through the centuries. Indeed, there are many beautiful old buildings, walls, streets, and statues that prove this is the case. What do we have? Ranch-style houses and strip development.

What can we say? We certainly have these things. Unfortunately, our oldest cultures lived so lightly that there are few traces of them left. We, as well as the Europeans and Asians, could learn more than a few environmental lessons from the native peoples who once lived in the United States, but that is a subject best left for another time. In the end, we wind up agreeing with the critics. We shake our heads and bemoan our lack of history.

In fact, we know better. History may stretch back through the centuries, but it need not stretch back that far to qualify as history. Within a span of one hundred years, houses, artifacts, and ways of life disappear to become the past, a distant memory in the minds of our elders. Go back a little further, say, 150 years, and even the memories have disappeared. And between the two, history steps in.

On a hazy day in September, with remnants of Tropical Storm Isidore coming toward Maine, my husband and I drove to Thomaston for the grand opening of Museum in the Streets and found that history is very much alive in the United States. Museum in the Streets is the creation of Patrick Cardon of Cushing, Maine. It is a walking tour, complete with signs with historic photos and texts that highlight some of Thomaston’s older homes. There are also signs on sites that feature businesses and people, now gone, that were once part of the town. The signs are in French as well as English, to honor Maine’s Franco-Americans, who constitute about 40 percent of the state’s population.

We went to the ribbon cutting, heard the usual speeches, and even learned a few things. We discovered that “approximately eighty-five percent [of the homes in Thomaston] are more than one hundred years of age.” Luthera Dawson, author of Saltwater Farm and board member of the Thomaston Public Library and the Thomaston Historical Society, told us that “the photographs and the texts [for the signs] provide an image of an older Thomaston. Walk through the streets and see the town that was yesterday.”

That is just what we did. There were about one hundred of us, including one boy on a bike, three young girls on roller blades, and various dogs. It was a fine procession. Renny Stackpole, “historian and recently retired director of the Searsport Marine Museum,” lead the tour. Mr. Stackpole was eloquent, articulate, funny, and brief. In short, he was everything a tour guide should be. He told of how the roads were originally dirt, and that when it rained the “streets were a river of mud.” He explained how Thomaston was a town of ship builders and ship captains. He spoke of a ghost street—Caroline Street—a street that was planned but never built. By having a name, this ghost street somehow acquired a heft, a presence, unseen but felt.

As Mr. Stackpole led us on the tour, trucks roared by on Main Street, and they were a reminder of the present, which we can never truly escape. However, as we walked down the street and looked at the lovely old houses, the past began to nudge its place alongside the present. Some of the houses were white and simple with clean lines; others were fancier with gingerbread trim and front porches. There were even a few Victorian homes with all the usual frills. One house, perfectly symmetrical in the front but rambling in the back, was painted a rich red. In my mind’s eye I could see the progression from Greek Revivals to Italianates to Victorians to Ranches and finally to McMansions. It was a march of houses, and it made me a little dizzy.

It also made me sad to think of how what was, no longer is. In Death of a Hornet, Robert Finch writes, “Our history is a history of choices…We can ignore the complexity and enjoy the clear resolve…from seeing the world in simplistic dualities, of human will against passive nature, of progress without loss. Or we can embrace the world for what it is, a place where action is possible but never without cost.”

One of history’s jobs is to remind of us this, to show us what has been lost, and, to be fair, what has also been gained. (Would we really want our streets to go back to being “rivers of mud”?) But we don’t need centuries to accomplish this. A hundred years or so will do, and Thomaston, with its Museum in the Streets, has done this in the finest kind of way.