Staunton,
Virginia is a small old-fashioned country town, where to the visitor
at least, it seems like a lazy Sunday in years gone by .... hardly
anyone about on the main street, and very little traffic. There are
no grocery shops, but several antique shops, and some shops which
seem very specialist; a music store with a polished silver cello in
the window, an art gallery, and a shop selling beautiful oriental
rugs, to name a few.
We
still have our hire car, so we decide to visit the Frontier Cultural
Museum, not far from Staunton. The write up in the Rough Guide
to the USA says it "brings to
light how the various immigrants who settled here melded their
traditions to develop a joint American culture." The
guide continues, "Most of
the exhibits are about farming techniques and other somewhat mundane
activities, but it's all engagingly presented and well worth a look."
Dan,
our host at our Thai inn, tells us to ask for a discount at the
ticket office.
"Is
there any discount for Seniors?" I
venture, giving what I hope is a winning smile.
"Sure,
that's $19 for both of you," the
ticket-booth lady replies.
There
are advantages in being “older”. We were also able to buy all
our Amtrak (American rail network) tickets at the “Seniors”
price, as we are both over 62.
We
love the Frontiers Cultural Museum, and spend 3½
hours there. It's all in the open-air countryside; it consists of
early (1700's and 1800's) English, German, Irish (from Ulster,
orginally), African (Nigerian), and Native American
(Indian) homesteads and farms, faithfully and authentically
reconstructed, many of them being farmsteads from those “home”
countries, brought to America and reconstructed brick by brick,
timber by timber, to show what the early settlers left behind in
their home countries when they came in search for the “American
dream”.
There's
an 8 minute video to start with, to explain what the museum is about;
then you are free to wander in your own time, from farmstead to
farmstead, to see for yourself what these farms and country dwellings
would have been like. The reconstructed farms are working farms,
with crops being tilled and animals kept, being looked after by
employees and volunteers of the Frontier Museum, who are dressed in
period clothes. At each farm there is someone, again dressed in the
clothes of the time, to explain what life was like in those days. In
the English farmstead, the farmer's wife is making spinach pie; she
is actually rolling the pastry out as we enter dabbing in spots of
butter to make puff pastry, and tells us she will shortly be cooking
it on the open fire. She tells us that the housewife did the “3
second test” to judge whether the fire was hot enough to cook the
pie – when she could only leave her hand above the fire for 3
seconds, the fire was hot enough for cooking.
All
the rooms of the homesteads are furnished authentically (or, in the
case of the African “Igbo” farmstead, and in the case of the
Native American (Indian) farmstead – there is little or no
furniture at all. The Africans were of course brought as slaves,
mostly from west Africa, or what is now Nigeria. As the years
progressed, and trading routes opened up, the settlers acquired more
and more furniture and possessions, and more labour-saving farm
implements and devices.
A
tour around this museum is like going back in time, and we learn so
much about the life of the early settlers, why they came to America,
and what their difficult journey was like crossing the Atlantic. It
was a long time before African-Americans gained their freedom and had the same rights as the white settlers; who over time inter-married.
These peoples, together with the African-Americans, who also of
course sometimes intermarry, meld together to produce the American
population of today. Even the Germans, the largest group of
non-English speaking white settlers to come from Europe, who
originally kept themselves to themselves and maintained their own
language, eventually lost their language, except for small pockets of
people, mainly the Amish, who now, we understand, have a dialect of
their own. The Amish peoples also maintain a simple way of life and
dress in a modest fashion to this day.
As
stated by the USA rough guide, this outdoor museum is indeed
“engaging”. We love it. The only drawbacks: the museum “store”
sells cold drinks and icecreams (we enjoy our choc ices at the end of
our tour) – but a cafe selling tea and coffee would have been a
real bonus, and to my mind, a moneyspinner.
Also,
I forgot to take my suncream and hat and have caught the sun today.
Reg is lucky because he just goes brown.
Tomorrow
we are starting our long, overnight journey from Staunton, via
Charlottesville again, to New Orleans; we won't arrive there until
Thursday evening, so there may not be a blog for a couple of days!
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