On History, Sanity and Hope
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
Edgar Allan Poe
I posted my story about the 1996 World Cup with the preamble that both My Much Better Half and my amazing therapist recommended to me to take a break from writing about the Nazis. They were right. It is good for my mental health. My chronic PTSD has been in a full blown overdrive over the past month1. The other day I took a power nap and woke up in cold sweat from a dream where I was faced with a group of MAGAists or as I call them, bloody Nazis. Most every day I wake up into a panic attic and can’t even enjoy coffee until I get myself centered. During the day, I catch myself licking the roof of my mouth to the point that by sundown it feels practically numb and the top of the gum starts to bleed.
So when Abandoned America posted pictures of the SS United States, the nostalgia hit me immediately and I spent the rest of the day wanting to write about it all.
I reposted the skeet saying that I was “feeling sad and reminiscing on the dozens of times I ate lunch in the Philadelphia IKEA looking over the ship and wishing I could buy it, restore it, and turn it into a museum/hotel/theatre.” I never had anywhere near enough money to actually do it, which My Much Better Half always reminded me of, but not in a “are you crazy” way, rather “if we win a lottery, let’s talk then” way.
We did not win a lottery. We never seriously considered the idea, although we both loved it. Watching Death and Other Details, we sipped our wine and talked how in a perfect world we’d have SS United States restored similar to the way it was done in the show. Without the murders of course.
We share a lot of things in common, but one of them is our deeply passionate love for everything old and antique; the desire to keep it, to restore it, to continue the history and legacy. Most likely this sounds quite silly but even in the early days of our life together, when we lived paycheck to paycheck we still went yardsale shopping almost every weekend because we could buy so many different pieces of history, often for a song. Among the greatest finds was the 1848 edition of a Quacker Bible published in Philadelphia that we purchased for $1. Even without restoration, it was worth over $500 a decade ago. We even considered buying an original Franklin stove from late 1800s for $25, but could not figure out where we would put it in our house, or how we’d even get it over to our house. In retrospect, if our friend Dan was not deployed to the Gulf, I am sure between the three of us we would have figured out a way. Dan shares our love for history and his house is full of eclectic marginalia, just like ours.
Speaking of our house. We did not know this at the time, but a quaint little duplex that we bought as our first family house, was, as we learned later, a historic house that used to be one of the dorms for the St. John’s military academy in Haddonfield, NJ2.
The house was completely gutted and received what we call a Home Depot Blue Light Special makeover, but we planned to slowly and gradually restore it to the former glory. We did uncover the original hardwood floors on the stairs, as well as the 2nd floor and hired experts to restore those. Sadly, we did not get to complete the restoration as we sort of gave up on the idea of becoming parents after years of trying unsuccessfully and purchased a small 2-bedroom condo to save up on paying outrageously high taxes in Haddonfield and to travel the world.
We did however, seriously consider buying an abandoned building in Old City Philadelphia that stood lonely in the middle of a cheap parking lot next to the Front Street, where we parked every time we attended the Philly Film Festival at one of the Ritz movie theatres in the area. The idea was to restore this incredibly thin and skinny building into a bar or a lounge with old movies being shown by projectors without sound and 1930’s swing and big band music crooning from the speakers. A speakeasy before those became a thing all over the world.
This particular idea mostly stayed as an idea to talk over drinks or coffee before and after the festival movies. We quickly realized that with the bureaucracy in Philly and the building being a historical one, we’d have to navigate through entirely too much red tape and oversight, that we did not want to deal with it.
We did very seriously consider buying and restoring Westmont Theatre in Haddon Township, NJ. The 1,600-seat Westmont Theatre designed by architect William Wrifford, opened on September 5, 1927 as a vaudeville theatre. Every Sunday a 120-piece orchestra performed along with what may have been the largest organ in New Jersey at the time. In 1948 it was remodeled in an Art Deco style to the plans of architect William Harold Lee and reopened in 1949 as a 1,200-seat first-run movie house. According to the Courier-News, “Steven Spielberg, who lived in Haddon Township and attended Edison Elementary School in Haddon Township when his father worked at RCA in Camden, credits seeing "The Greatest Show on Earth” at the Westmont Theatre in 1952 at age five as what inspired him to become a director." Spielberg went on to become an usher at the theatre once he was old enough and spoke about it on a few occasions.
The theatre was bought by the township in 2000 for $250,000. Haddon Township was looking for a new developer to reopen the Westmont Theatre. My Much Better Half and myself, approached this idea quite seriously. She sketched a ton of blueprints for an Art Deco styled restaurant with a stage and a large screen where only black and white movies would be playing while customers would enjoy listening to jazz and tasting something amazingly yummy3. I wrote a detailed business plan and everything else needed to apply for a business loan. We had plans to reach out to Spielberg and get him to come to the opening and to promote it (we believed the nostalgia will get him to do it). Unfortunately, our realtor informed us that the building had a few serious structural issues, which scared us off. We did not think that we’d be able to get approval for a loan amount that would cover addressing structural issues. Every time we drive by the building that is now a local chain of one of the cheap global gym brands we both sigh deeply…
Our next great idea was to buy a historical house in Southern Virginia. We spent months researching the properties4, as well as programs available for restoration of antique and/or historical properties. We drove down to Lynchburg and practically salivated as we walked through the Pink Lady on the northern side of the river. We knew next to nothing about the area except that it was a college town with eight different schools. What we did not realize was that it was schools like Liberty University.
The house we really wanted and were able to purchase was a 4 bedroom brick house at the top of the highest hill overlooking the entire town. In retrospect, the house was fairly small, but to us, at that time, it was a mansion. When we went in to see the building, we met the owner who immaculately restored the entire house. He told us that the outer walls were made of three layers of brick because that was enough back in those days to prevent a cannon ball from busting into your dinning room. The inner walls were all double-layer of brick. According to the owner, with the mild weather and the quality of craftmanship, one barely needed to either heat or cool the house throughout the year.
The house was listed for $250,000 and we thought we could probably get it a little under. At the time, the state of Virginia was offering ridiculously amazing incentives to people who wanted to buy and restore historic properties - between not needing to pay property tax for upwards of 25 years to getting up to $150,000 reimbursement for renovations approved by the Historical Society, we were sold on the idea.
What stopped us from pursing this house was the experience we had at dinner, where my accent and my wardrobe led to stares and comments from folks at an ostensibly college tavern! We weren’t anywhere white or Christian enough for Lynchburg, VA.
The next day we drove a few hours into the Deep South to look at a 5000 square foot house in a small village three hours south of Richmond. The house was the first building in that small village. Over time it was used as the post office, tavern, municipal building… and at some point in the late 1800s, then owner built a one-bedroom house by the lake in the back of the main house and none other than Mark Twain rented the one bedroom and spent a couple of years writing there while watching the apple orchard on the other side of the lake.
As an aspiring writer my entire life, a chance to not only own but sit down and write in the same room as Mark Twain???!!!! Where do I sign up????? The house was amazing. More bedrooms that we would ever need. Three zones of AC, one for each floor. Tin roof that was recently replaced. Original hardwood floors, including a Grand Hall with a 18th century baby grand and built-in bookshelves all over the house.
Oh my!
It was practically perfect.
Why did we not buy it for the listed $200,000? Well, there were a few reasons:
The realtor tried to shush me when I accidently said “shit” while hitting my head on a low ceiling, because, and I quote “we moved here from Richmond because people don’t cuss here no matter what.”
The same realtor told us that every one in the village is incredibly excited that in a few months there will be a Target store open 40 minutes down thata way, since right now the only shopping option is Walmart 35 minutes thisa way.
The entire county was excited that they would get dial-up next year. This was 2009.
We could not fathom living in such conditions. I don’t regret not buying Mark Twain’s house, but I do regret to this day not buying the two 17th century rocking chairs in an antique shoppe in Victoria5.
The next decade saw a whole lot less action since we moved twice and more importantly became parents and had to focus on much more important things than preserving some old property. Life went on, but our desire to keep preserving history continued to flourish. We may have bought an 80s house (that’s 1980s) because at the time it was practically in the middle of farmland and I wanted to avoid living in the suburbs but we kept collecting weird eclectic antiques. We did get a 150 year piano that we wanted to restore for our son to play on, but once we learned that the restoration would cost upwards to $15,000 and potentially $25,000 we gave up on that idea. The piano stood in the corner for almost 15 years as a reminder for us to figure out the next idea to restore and preserve a piece of history.
My Much Better Half has over a dozen of antique editions of Alice in Wonderland and I have about two dozen of antique editions of Dante’s Inferno. Thanks to my dad we have 150 year old Native American bow and arrows as well as 1700s katana handles made out of ivory with incredible art carved across the entire surface among many other relics of the past.
We did almost cheat on the antiquities and bought a different type of history to live in and preserve. I have always been a huge fan of artistry and simplicity of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. If we had $8,000,000 just laying around, I would have purchased one of FLW’s properties that was sold over the last decade. Alas, we don’t have even 10% of that amount. However, while we may not have enough to buy Frank Lloyd Wright’s house we did drive 4 hours to seriously consider buying this amazing house that was developed by one of his students. Just like Frank’s designs, The Cedar Bridge House is simple and perfectly integrates into the surrounding nature. Unfortunately, the house that was listed as a 3 bedroom one, in reality was a one bedroom house, which was not big enough for us.
During the pandemic I almost convinced My Much Better Half to figure out a way to buy an antique book shoppe in Paris, right around the corner from the Luxembourg Gardens6. The idea of owning an antique book shoppe has been a constant theme for me for the past 30 years. The Parisian one was not the first bookstore that I’ve thought of getting but it was by far the most serious. During the pandemic I’ve also developed a new distraction - looking up antique houses and castles across Europe and nagging My Much Better Half to buy one and turn it into… you can imagine the wide range of possibilities.
As we are starting to put our house back together after six weeks of construction, I hyper focused on the return to normalcy so much that I completely forgot to attend the Tesla Takedown event at the nearby dealership in Cherry Hill. Getting the house back to normal would definitely help with my emotional and mental state. Yet, as the world begins to crumble all around us, perhaps we should reconsider the ideas of the past and find a worthy project or building or a piece of history that needs to be restored and preserved.
Just like my sanity.
As a certain punk rocker recently wrote: “Last one goes the hope.”
Happy one month anniversary of the fascist takeover by the way! Sorry, I know it’s not a funny joke. I blame Irish whiskey.
St. John's Military Academy was built in the latter 1870's on Cottage Avenue, east of Centre Street. On October 30, 1886 the building was destroyed in a fire. Photo taken 1880:
It is critical to note that My Much Better Half cooking abilities truly would rival a number of well known chefs. There is not a single person who tried her fried cauliflower and did not agree that it was the best ever and they can no longer eat cauliflower anywhere else. Her cooking and my blatant desire to exploit her cooking talents deserve a separate story.
We talked about buying actual plantations but regardless of the cost we could not imagine ourselves living in a Candyland style house. Not even if we were getting paid for it. Mind you, one of the properties we researched was truly amazing until we read the part about the fucking torture barns in the back of the property that were used for slaves who “misbehaved.” I am so fucking sorry, but I can’t fathom living on a property like that.
As I am typing this, I am picturing My Much Better Half rolling her eyes and telling me that our car was not big enough for the two chairs and we did not have enough money to have the chairs shipped.
It is incredibly sad that the shoppe closed and is now gone forever.