So Goes the Nation
from chapter 5
So it came as nearly a surprise, down past Raven Rock and Lambertville and into Mercer County, to see a sign for Washington Crossing State Park. Back at the last demonstration they’d mentioned something of that, but what lay in front of him now was from another time altogether. The words loosened in his thoughts: Was Washington crossing a state park, like in a headline? Was he looking for a parking space and covering a considerable distance to do so? Or maybe the emphasis was all wrong, might the sign be announcing a Korean philanthropist who had admired American history or whose parents did? And how could they make a park out of an event that happened two hundred-plus years ago, an event that left no physical trace, what was there to see? A second sign announced the Washington Crossing Bridge up ahead. Of course, if Washington had had a bridge to cross, the birth of the nation might have been a whole lot easier. The river didn’t seem so far across. And halfway through autumn, it still appeared fairly calm. But this was the storied site, where all the boats crossed that icy Christmas night, even bringing the horses and maybe a few chestnuts.
Never mind the horses, he saw only a couple of old colonial houses, and those flew past. A mile beyond the bridge, up on a short rise, a rundown chapel or maybe it was a barn caught his attention. That couple in Frenchtown, what did they say about a museum? A small sign by the road offered that one word. You can’t miss it; except he almost did. He had to make a quick left up Jacobs Creek Road, then a sharp turn into the driveway. Weren’t but two cars in the lot.
On the white wall beside the closed double doors, crudely painted in bold black letters, the establishment announced itself:
Museum
of the
War for Independence.
Reliquary
and Depository
of the Nation’s
Past and Future
That was a big claim. Were museums like this even allowed to exist? Where was the institutional framework, the foundation, the board of directors, the corporate sponsorship? All the same, the building’s appearance—especially the sign—made him curious to see the collection.
A glow from the single front window, which might just have been a reflection of the afternoon sun, led him to hope the place might yet be open. He rang the bell, half-crusted with white paint. No discernible sound. Clambering up to peer in through the high window, he was able to glimpse a lamp in a corner and a pile of knitting on a side table. But no caretaker. He pressed the bell harder.
“You looking for someone?” a voice called out from behind him. At the other side of the parking lot, a woman of indeterminate age, though surely older than him, was standing between the two cars. She came limping across the lot, as Nicky explained self-consciously that he was only passing through and wanted to visit the museum.
“Oh, we’re open, all right,” said the woman who didn’t slow down on reaching the door but pushed it out of her way. “You got lucky today. Sunday’s funny like that, see. If one of us is here, then it’s open. Now where was I?” She took up her seat by the lamp and inspected her knitting.
Nicky stood before her, wondering if he should go in. “How much is the admission?”
“That’ll be two dollars and fifty cents, please. Had to raise our prices this summer, times being what they are. You want the headphones with that? A dollar more, it’s worth it. College professor gives you little history lectures on what you’re seeing. Don’t have to read the captions that way.”
He handed her the two-fifty.
“Suit yourself.” Seeing how he did not advance into the dark rooms, she got up and turned on the lights for him.
The first item of interest, before entering either to the right or left, was a large wooden bed that leaned on its carved legs. The dark wood held a muddy gleam, from too many layers of varnish. The mattress seemed thick enough, but its condition was obscured by all the covers on top. He peered at a small plaque on the wall.
“George Washington slept there,” said the woman. “Original mattress too.”
Nicky winced and took a step back. “George Washington slept here?”
“The bed, not the building. Folks all over the state say Washington slept here, slept there. Probably true, most times. They ought to make a tour. Ol’ George slept around a lot, you know. He was a busy man, coming and going across these lands.”
“But, if you’ll pardon my asking, how can you be sure? About the bed.”
“Was one of the first objects in my husband’s collection. I said, George—that’s his name too—where we gonna put that thing? We have papers for it, and a copy of a letter the general wrote thanking his hosts for their hospitality. Proof we’ve got, don’t you worry. But go on, there’s more of George—not my George—and a lot else to look at.”
Slowed momentarily, she resumed her knitting at full clip.
The first room to the right was taken up by a solemn series of display cases, beneath inadequate lighting and a mural that depicted the Battle of Trenton and other scenes from the American Revolution as if they might have decorated a pizzeria. He lingered by an assortment of antique eyeglasses, cufflinks, rings, and tattered undergarments, with captions that claimed ownership by Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, both James and Dolly. But a curious ensemble of glass jars in the large middle cabinet drew his attention. Prominent among these, on a shelf of its own, was a vial that contained some kind of spindly bone. Nicky gasped on reading the caption: George Washington, index finger.
The clickety clack of the knitting needles pursued their secret course.
Occupying another shelf, a larger vial held, according to the label, a splinter from the shin bone of Paul Revere. “What—?”
“Mind you, it was after his famous ride,” said the woman standing in the doorway behind him, her elbows rising and falling about the knitting. “That one we got in a trade, from a museum in Boston. We sent them a pair of Ben Franklin’s specs—he owned a pile of them, and we had several. Did you know he also wore a gold stud in his left ear? Not many people are aware of that. Was mostly while he was in France. What would you expect, right? We traded that too.”
At the far end of the case, he noticed a little dish that held a crusty old needle. He leaned over to read the tag.
“Betsy Ross,” the woman informed him. “That’s her blood. She had to work quickly, after all.”
And beside it, moving back toward Washington’s finger bone, were two jars. One contained a grey shriveled bean of dubious substance, a kernel of corn perhaps.
“John Chapman,” she announced before he had a chance to read the label. “A. k. a. Johnny Appleseed. His earlobe, evidently. I don’t know how it got separated from the rest of him.”
The other jar sported something like the nub of a pencil. A yellowish chip sat near the tip of it.
“Poor Alexander Hamilton,” clucked the woman measuring her progress. “After he lost that duel. Apparently he had unusual feet, and when they tried to fit him in his coffin, well, the undertaker had something of an accident, so the story goes. There was Hamilton’s little toe lying on the floor without him, like a still-born mouse without the tail. How it got to our collection, sir, I cannot say for certain.”
“That’s quite all right. What’s this over here?”
Peering across the room, she smacked her lips. “Why, that’s John Hancock’s glass eye. You didn’t know?”
“It looks bloodshot.”
“Needs a little polish, that’s all.”
In the next to last case he found three sets of false teeth, arranged in a semi-circle as if in conversation: George Washington, Abraham Clark of New Jersey, and John Adams. Constitutional Convention, said the general caption.
Over in the final case, lit like a scene from the theater, a similar arrangement had been mounted with locks of hair, each bunch held by a fine blue ribbon. This group featured the traces of five august personages: Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Stephen Hopkins, Martha Washington, and Sally Hemings.
“We got in a spot of trouble for that one.” She shrugged. “People don’t know nothing. That’s why a museum like this is important. Educational, you learn things. Anyway, it’s a free country, is it not?”
Watching her arms flapping, Nicky asked: “What are you knitting?”
“How’s that?”
He pointed.
“This one’s a sweater, for my little girl. Not so little anymore. She’s in high school. Don’t know if she’ll wear it.”
“And in there?” he gestured to the next room.
“Documents, maps, personal effects. That includes notes for the Declaration of Independence, a draft of the original New Jersey State Constitution, and the first marriage certificate issued by the state. Plus wallets, pipes, snuff boxes, ear plugs, lockets, even an engraved shoe horn that Aaron Burr gave as a gift. We used to have Washington’s Koran—he had two of them, printed in England, sold one to raise money. Beyond that, the room on the other side, we’ve got furniture and weaponry. Then the last room, it’s dress, hygiene, and pastimes—that’s the social element.”
Nicky was impressed. “How did you collect all this stuff? I mean, don’t you have to be like a national library or something?”
“There’s a lot of stuff out there. A lot of stuff. Where’s it all gonna go? You’d be surprised what’s available, and the prices ain’t half bad.”
“Well, I’ll bet the reliquary is popular.”
She glanced up at him with a satisfied smile, her hands keeping time all their own. “And you can bet the next one’s gonna be a doozie.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“The next revolution. We all know it’s on the way.”
What was in the water? Confused, and not wanting to belabor the discussion, he was wandering into the next room when the door to the museum burst open. In the slab of light two dozen boys noisily filed inside. They wore identical scout uniforms, as did the two men who followed in after them. To Nicky, the adults in such dress seemed funny, like they belonged to a strange club with secret practices that just might not bear close scrutiny. Maybe he’d been living in the city too long.
The lady greeted the men like she’d been expecting them, while they paid the admission for their group. She hobbled after them priming for the tour, still clutching her knitting as if it were an extension of her hands. The boys, dashing about in brief flurries, quickly coalesced in a cloud of excitement before the reliquary.
It was preferable to stay ahead of them through the other rooms. One or two boys wandered off from the rest, darting in and out of his path as if they were all just visiting a flea market in a dusty old barn. But more distracting were the voices from the reliquary room, especially the new enthusiasm of their tour guide regaling them with stories.
The arrival of the scouts had its own small benefit in reminding him not to linger. Much as he might have liked to observe their response to the collection, to see what effect so much detritus of history could have on these more innocent visitors, he had no time to waste. The museum was a detour, even if he didn’t quite know where he was going, nor what he would do there, nor the nature of his lodgings for the night.
While it wasn’t quite the end of the rainbow, he wanted to get to Trenton before the sky was completely dark. He had never been to the state capital, not even for a class trip as a child.
from chapter 5
So it came as nearly a surprise, down past Raven Rock and Lambertville and into Mercer County, to see a sign for Washington Crossing State Park. Back at the last demonstration they’d mentioned something of that, but what lay in front of him now was from another time altogether. The words loosened in his thoughts: Was Washington crossing a state park, like in a headline? Was he looking for a parking space and covering a considerable distance to do so? Or maybe the emphasis was all wrong, might the sign be announcing a Korean philanthropist who had admired American history or whose parents did? And how could they make a park out of an event that happened two hundred-plus years ago, an event that left no physical trace, what was there to see? A second sign announced the Washington Crossing Bridge up ahead. Of course, if Washington had had a bridge to cross, the birth of the nation might have been a whole lot easier. The river didn’t seem so far across. And halfway through autumn, it still appeared fairly calm. But this was the storied site, where all the boats crossed that icy Christmas night, even bringing the horses and maybe a few chestnuts.
Never mind the horses, he saw only a couple of old colonial houses, and those flew past. A mile beyond the bridge, up on a short rise, a rundown chapel or maybe it was a barn caught his attention. That couple in Frenchtown, what did they say about a museum? A small sign by the road offered that one word. You can’t miss it; except he almost did. He had to make a quick left up Jacobs Creek Road, then a sharp turn into the driveway. Weren’t but two cars in the lot.
On the white wall beside the closed double doors, crudely painted in bold black letters, the establishment announced itself:
Museum
of the
War for Independence.
Reliquary
and Depository
of the Nation’s
Past and Future
That was a big claim. Were museums like this even allowed to exist? Where was the institutional framework, the foundation, the board of directors, the corporate sponsorship? All the same, the building’s appearance—especially the sign—made him curious to see the collection.
A glow from the single front window, which might just have been a reflection of the afternoon sun, led him to hope the place might yet be open. He rang the bell, half-crusted with white paint. No discernible sound. Clambering up to peer in through the high window, he was able to glimpse a lamp in a corner and a pile of knitting on a side table. But no caretaker. He pressed the bell harder.
“You looking for someone?” a voice called out from behind him. At the other side of the parking lot, a woman of indeterminate age, though surely older than him, was standing between the two cars. She came limping across the lot, as Nicky explained self-consciously that he was only passing through and wanted to visit the museum.
“Oh, we’re open, all right,” said the woman who didn’t slow down on reaching the door but pushed it out of her way. “You got lucky today. Sunday’s funny like that, see. If one of us is here, then it’s open. Now where was I?” She took up her seat by the lamp and inspected her knitting.
Nicky stood before her, wondering if he should go in. “How much is the admission?”
“That’ll be two dollars and fifty cents, please. Had to raise our prices this summer, times being what they are. You want the headphones with that? A dollar more, it’s worth it. College professor gives you little history lectures on what you’re seeing. Don’t have to read the captions that way.”
He handed her the two-fifty.
“Suit yourself.” Seeing how he did not advance into the dark rooms, she got up and turned on the lights for him.
The first item of interest, before entering either to the right or left, was a large wooden bed that leaned on its carved legs. The dark wood held a muddy gleam, from too many layers of varnish. The mattress seemed thick enough, but its condition was obscured by all the covers on top. He peered at a small plaque on the wall.
“George Washington slept there,” said the woman. “Original mattress too.”
Nicky winced and took a step back. “George Washington slept here?”
“The bed, not the building. Folks all over the state say Washington slept here, slept there. Probably true, most times. They ought to make a tour. Ol’ George slept around a lot, you know. He was a busy man, coming and going across these lands.”
“But, if you’ll pardon my asking, how can you be sure? About the bed.”
“Was one of the first objects in my husband’s collection. I said, George—that’s his name too—where we gonna put that thing? We have papers for it, and a copy of a letter the general wrote thanking his hosts for their hospitality. Proof we’ve got, don’t you worry. But go on, there’s more of George—not my George—and a lot else to look at.”
Slowed momentarily, she resumed her knitting at full clip.
The first room to the right was taken up by a solemn series of display cases, beneath inadequate lighting and a mural that depicted the Battle of Trenton and other scenes from the American Revolution as if they might have decorated a pizzeria. He lingered by an assortment of antique eyeglasses, cufflinks, rings, and tattered undergarments, with captions that claimed ownership by Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, both James and Dolly. But a curious ensemble of glass jars in the large middle cabinet drew his attention. Prominent among these, on a shelf of its own, was a vial that contained some kind of spindly bone. Nicky gasped on reading the caption: George Washington, index finger.
The clickety clack of the knitting needles pursued their secret course.
Occupying another shelf, a larger vial held, according to the label, a splinter from the shin bone of Paul Revere. “What—?”
“Mind you, it was after his famous ride,” said the woman standing in the doorway behind him, her elbows rising and falling about the knitting. “That one we got in a trade, from a museum in Boston. We sent them a pair of Ben Franklin’s specs—he owned a pile of them, and we had several. Did you know he also wore a gold stud in his left ear? Not many people are aware of that. Was mostly while he was in France. What would you expect, right? We traded that too.”
At the far end of the case, he noticed a little dish that held a crusty old needle. He leaned over to read the tag.
“Betsy Ross,” the woman informed him. “That’s her blood. She had to work quickly, after all.”
And beside it, moving back toward Washington’s finger bone, were two jars. One contained a grey shriveled bean of dubious substance, a kernel of corn perhaps.
“John Chapman,” she announced before he had a chance to read the label. “A. k. a. Johnny Appleseed. His earlobe, evidently. I don’t know how it got separated from the rest of him.”
The other jar sported something like the nub of a pencil. A yellowish chip sat near the tip of it.
“Poor Alexander Hamilton,” clucked the woman measuring her progress. “After he lost that duel. Apparently he had unusual feet, and when they tried to fit him in his coffin, well, the undertaker had something of an accident, so the story goes. There was Hamilton’s little toe lying on the floor without him, like a still-born mouse without the tail. How it got to our collection, sir, I cannot say for certain.”
“That’s quite all right. What’s this over here?”
Peering across the room, she smacked her lips. “Why, that’s John Hancock’s glass eye. You didn’t know?”
“It looks bloodshot.”
“Needs a little polish, that’s all.”
In the next to last case he found three sets of false teeth, arranged in a semi-circle as if in conversation: George Washington, Abraham Clark of New Jersey, and John Adams. Constitutional Convention, said the general caption.
Over in the final case, lit like a scene from the theater, a similar arrangement had been mounted with locks of hair, each bunch held by a fine blue ribbon. This group featured the traces of five august personages: Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Stephen Hopkins, Martha Washington, and Sally Hemings.
“We got in a spot of trouble for that one.” She shrugged. “People don’t know nothing. That’s why a museum like this is important. Educational, you learn things. Anyway, it’s a free country, is it not?”
Watching her arms flapping, Nicky asked: “What are you knitting?”
“How’s that?”
He pointed.
“This one’s a sweater, for my little girl. Not so little anymore. She’s in high school. Don’t know if she’ll wear it.”
“And in there?” he gestured to the next room.
“Documents, maps, personal effects. That includes notes for the Declaration of Independence, a draft of the original New Jersey State Constitution, and the first marriage certificate issued by the state. Plus wallets, pipes, snuff boxes, ear plugs, lockets, even an engraved shoe horn that Aaron Burr gave as a gift. We used to have Washington’s Koran—he had two of them, printed in England, sold one to raise money. Beyond that, the room on the other side, we’ve got furniture and weaponry. Then the last room, it’s dress, hygiene, and pastimes—that’s the social element.”
Nicky was impressed. “How did you collect all this stuff? I mean, don’t you have to be like a national library or something?”
“There’s a lot of stuff out there. A lot of stuff. Where’s it all gonna go? You’d be surprised what’s available, and the prices ain’t half bad.”
“Well, I’ll bet the reliquary is popular.”
She glanced up at him with a satisfied smile, her hands keeping time all their own. “And you can bet the next one’s gonna be a doozie.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“The next revolution. We all know it’s on the way.”
What was in the water? Confused, and not wanting to belabor the discussion, he was wandering into the next room when the door to the museum burst open. In the slab of light two dozen boys noisily filed inside. They wore identical scout uniforms, as did the two men who followed in after them. To Nicky, the adults in such dress seemed funny, like they belonged to a strange club with secret practices that just might not bear close scrutiny. Maybe he’d been living in the city too long.
The lady greeted the men like she’d been expecting them, while they paid the admission for their group. She hobbled after them priming for the tour, still clutching her knitting as if it were an extension of her hands. The boys, dashing about in brief flurries, quickly coalesced in a cloud of excitement before the reliquary.
It was preferable to stay ahead of them through the other rooms. One or two boys wandered off from the rest, darting in and out of his path as if they were all just visiting a flea market in a dusty old barn. But more distracting were the voices from the reliquary room, especially the new enthusiasm of their tour guide regaling them with stories.
The arrival of the scouts had its own small benefit in reminding him not to linger. Much as he might have liked to observe their response to the collection, to see what effect so much detritus of history could have on these more innocent visitors, he had no time to waste. The museum was a detour, even if he didn’t quite know where he was going, nor what he would do there, nor the nature of his lodgings for the night.
While it wasn’t quite the end of the rainbow, he wanted to get to Trenton before the sky was completely dark. He had never been to the state capital, not even for a class trip as a child.