Valley Forge   June 25

On the morning of June 25^th, we packed all nine of us--Mary and I, six children, and one of our employees, Krystal Bender--into the hard-won van.    Our luggage had a kind of presence all its own that required a lot of apologizing to bell boys and desk clerks.   It gained book weight as the trip went on, and the black mass of it, the nylon and canvas, would explode across two hotel rooms with each new stop, only to be re-assembled through Mary’s steady administration.    She was the only one who knew the secret maze of zipper pockets and hidden compartments, the only one who could tell me where the light gray USB cord had been stowed.    Without Mary on this trip, I shudder to think what might have become of us.  

Driving from Philadelphia to Valley Forge—if you are from California—requires at least two middle age people who have driven vehicles under normal conditions for at least twenty years.     It’s something like getting instrument rated on a small airplane.    The signs are very large and comforting at a distance of ten miles, but get smaller and more obscure as you get closer and closer, until they disappear entirely shortly before you reach the destination itself.    Perhaps they do this to keep Californians at home, or to support a secret guild of tour guides, but we found ourselves circling the Valley Forge convention center longer than we thought necessary.    The words “this can’t be it” were heard several times, from adults and children alike.

Finally, we found our way into the park and visited our first bona fide National Park Service bookstore.    I have a weakness for museum book stores and this one didn’t disappoint.   Sitting on the desk to me, as I write this, is “John Peebles’s American War:  The Diary of a Scottish Grenadier, 1776-1782.”    The average American bookstore has more biographies of Marilyn Monroe than it does of Sam Adams, let alone primary journals of British soldiers during the American Revolution.    Huzzah for the Park Service!  

The Valley Forge grounds can be driven, because of the size of the encampment, and the location of the different brigades are marked along the roadside.     The scale of the encampment is what struck me at first.   I had imagined the camp measured in yards, not miles, but I was quite wrong.    Washington’s headquarters was manned by a single  park service employee, and we were allowed to see the upper and lower rooms, set out in great order.     (The stone house and its kitchen are shown on the right.)

Unlike the 1777 inhabitants of Valley Forge,  we enjoyed a fair day of pleasantly cool weather for late June.    The serenity of the fields around the encampment, and our sons' wild run through the grass brought to mind an inscription we had just read in Philadelphia's Washington Square, at the tomb of the unknown Revolutionary War Soldier:

"Freedom is a light for which many men
have died in darkness."

The misery of those bunks on the right in a Pennsylvania winter can only be imagined.   The thought of enduring them--or worse, the open fields--without food is even more excruciating.    Joseph Martin, a teenager who survived this winter, noted that his Thanksgiving meal included a half a gill of rice (2 ounces) and a tablespoon of vinegar.

The size of that lower bunk on the right, though probably a re-creation of the original, hi-lights a notion that doesn't seem settled among living historians and museum curators:   were our ancestors physically smaller than we are?     Some of the Park Service employees spoke of our ancestors having smaller stature than today, but at least one of the interpreters at Williamsburg called that a myth.

I'm not sure what to believe, but I seem to have ducked through enough low doors, and bent over enough low ceilings, and wondered at enough small clothing to think there might be some truth to the notion they were at least  a bit smaller.    We didn't try it, but I think my eleven year old son, Nicholas, would have trouble sleeping in that lower bunk.

 

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