Today only confirmed how much I don’t know about US History. Unlike last week, when I was bouncing through World History exclaiming, “This is easy!”, I’m now faced with the reality that I really didn’t study or pay attention in class. I remember clearly NOT liking US History in High School (or more correctly, the US History teacher), and then showing up only three times for my US History class in college (first day, mid-term, and final – Hey, I got a B in the class). I have not taken a US History class since. The only recent exposure to US history classes/texts came last year when helping my daughter through 8th grade US History.
Recently, my dislike of US History, or rather my clear preference for European/World History has changed due to a few years of purposeful travel. For about 20 years, I spent most of my travel dollars on Europe, but starting in 2006, I started traveling domestically again. I had avoided US travel for so long because I had “seen it” growing up. As a kid, we lived in California, and my grandparents lived in New York so every year, we would drive across the country and back. I remember seeing lots of desert and lots of corn and nightly KOA campgrounds and not much else. To me, this was “America,” and America was boring. After discovering Europe as a historical playground, I thought that maybe America might have something to offer as well… except that it was such a “baby” nation, so there was little chance that anything interesting could have happened here that wasn’t trumped in some way by the really old history of Europe. Then I went to Washington DC.
At first, I went to DC because I didn’t have enough money for Europe or Peru. I was really stressed at work and travel relieves that stress so my loving wife allowed me to go someplace. I thought I had $5K in my travel budget, but I only had $500. My brother lived in DC, so I went there and stayed at his house. Washington DC was fantastic! After six days in the city, I had not run out of things to see or do; and it was all so wonderfully historic. It really turned me around. When I got home, Barb and I started visiting California Missions (later that year, I went to St. Louis, and as a family, we also went to NYC – all were fantastic and historic). We then went to Hearst Castle, a place I had absolutely loved as a kid. It was magnificent! In 2008, we visited DC again, along with Philadelphia and Mt. Vernon (Washington’s home); this time as a family. More wonderful history! That same year, during a family reunion, we went to Gettysburg, Harper’s Ferry and Antietam and learned about Civil War history. That was so cool that last year, we took a trip to Mystic, Plymouth, Quincy (John Adam’s’ house) and Boston. I began to understand how these different cities interrelated during colonial times. This year, we started in Florida and went up the coast just to see some of the Southern historic sites (St. Augustine, Charleston, Jamestown/Williamsburg & Monticello {Jefferson’s home}). With all this recent travel, I feel well-prepared for early US history, but not for anything past the Civil war. I have traveled in Europe and Asia, so I get WWII, Korea and Vietnam; the big hole in my historical knowledge is from the Civil War to WWII. This is the period I’m studying for the next couple of days.