The Castaway Hotel - 1 - 17. Chapter 17 - The Smithsonian

I had put in for another 6:00 a.m. wake up call, which rudely interrupted a very enjoyable slumber. After responding to it, I noticed the boys were hardly fazed by the loud ring of the telephone, so I went into the bathroom to shower. When I came back out, I woke the boys and got them moving, this time before I got dressed. They were still a little sluggish and it took them a while to get ready, but when I threw the lure of breakfast out to them, they all began to move a little faster. Once they were ready, we took off, only to stop at the first decent looking place we saw. After I filled their tummies and all of them were satisfied, we headed off to see the Smithsonian.

As we pulled in and parked, I heard Ricky groan, before he challenged me on my choice of destinations. “This is like another school outing,” he complained. “I thought we finished with all of that yesterday.”

“We finished touring the government buildings yesterday,” I replied, “but correct me if I’m wrong. I thought you enjoyed what we did.”

“Yeah, maybe a little,” he countered, half-heartedly, “since there was some interesting crap to see there.”

“That’s funny. I don’t remember seeing any crap around. Not even in the toilet,” I joked back. “Did one of you boys have an accident?”

“No, not that kind of crap,” Ricky shot back, barely able to hold back his disdain for my bad pun and sarcasm. “I meant, the White House was interesting, because the rooms were kind of cool and there were some neat paintings and junk, but I really liked the stuff at the place Lincoln got shot.”

“So why is this any different?” I challenged.

“Because this is just some dumb old museum,” he replied, as if that were enough to convince me we should go somewhere else.

“But the place you liked most yesterday was the Lincoln MUSEUM,” I emphasized.

“Yeah, but they had the gun that killed Lincoln, the knife he used to get away and even a picture of the bad guys getting hung.”

“Well, they might have things like that here too,” I informed him. “After all, this is the National Museum of American History.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” he muttered, knowing he wasn’t about to change my mind.

It was really a remarkable building, with three floors of exhibitions, so I felt there had to be something inside the boys would find fascinating – or this would turn out to be one long day. Fortunately, I was right in my assumption.

The first floor was devoted to ‘America on the Move’ and detailed the history of transportation in the U.S., from 1876 to the present.

“Hey, look at this old car,” Jay told the others. “There’s no roof on it and it doesn’t even have a steering wheel.”

“Well, in 1894 when that was developed, they hadn’t worked out all the details that are now agreed as standard items for cars,” I told them. “In fact, the seat looks like it might be one that would have been used in a fancy horse-drawn carriage.”

“Damn, they had cars back in the 1800’s?” Ricky asked. “I thought everyone still used horses back then.”

“They did,” I assured him. “Horses to be ridden, horses to pull farm implements, horses to pull carriages and wagons and the new-fangled horseless carriage. The early ones were much like this one.”

“Look at this one over here,” Brandon squealed. “It looks like it uses the same wheels they used on those old big wheeled bicycles, that I’ve seen in books.”

“You might be right,” I agreed. “They did borrow items from existing technologies, and bicycles were big at the end of the nineteenth century.”

“Man, can you imagine riding in something like that,” Ricky sneered. “Even go-carts are better than that.”

“Maybe now, but back then this was the cutting edge of technology, the best they had to offer,” I replied.

“It says this one was made by Karl Benz,” Danny noticed. “Did he have anything to do with Mercedes-Benz?”

“In fact he did,” I informed him, pleased by his observation. “He formed the Benz Company, which later became Mercedes-Benz, then Daimler-Benz and now Daimler-Chrysler.”

We continued to look around at the other classic cars, including a Ford Model T. This, in turn, led into a discussion about Henry Ford and his use of the assembly line. I explained how that innovation helped to keep the cost of the vehicles down, so almost anyone could afford to own one. The boys all agreed the assembly line concept was really important or “only the rich would be driving cars now,” Jay concluded.

They also had a Southern Railway Steam Engine there, but the boys quickly lost interest in that display, once they discovered the cars of the future.

“Wow, look what they’ve got over here,” Brandon gushed, eyeing a designers idea of what the future might bring. The boys were definitely into these vehicles, as opposed to the old classics. Well, I guess that’s only right, seeing they’ll probably live long enough to drive such things.

After I dragged them away from there, we hit the ‘TV Objects’ area, which probably meant more to me, than to them. The boys thought Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘Puffy Shirt’ was ‘ugly and they’d never wear anything like that,’ so I explained that it was precisely why it was designed that way. They didn’t understand, so I had to explain the joke part of that episode to them, that Jerry was conned into wearing a shirt no one else would have.

Moving on, I also ogled the ‘phaser’ from the original Star Trek series and the signpost from M*A*S*H, but my companions weren’t as enamored with these items as I was. Therefore, the boys quickly dragged me away from there and prevented me from languishing in the memories these items rekindled.

When we reached the second-floor, Jay became confused. “What do they got all those old dresses here for?” he wanted to know.

“Jay, those aren’t just old dresses, those are the First Ladies’ Inaugural gowns, from Martha Washington, right up to Hilary Clinton.” I guess that answer sufficed, but the boys weren’t much into women’s fashion, so we moved on.

“Man, that’s a big, but funny looking flag hanging there,” Ricky announced, while pointing at a well-worn version of Old Glory.

“Guys, that’s not just any flag,” I told them. “I’m pretty sure that’s the flag that was flying over Fort McHenry the night Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner. It was just a poem then, but it eventually turned into our National Anthem.”

“I understand the fifteen stars,” Danny told me, “because there were only fifteen states then, but why did it have more stripes.”

“That was during the War of 1812, and until 1818, when five new states were added to the Union, it had been expected that a star AND a stripe would be added for each new state. Once they reached twenty states, though, people began to feel the flag would have really looked strange with twenty stripes, so Congress passed the flag act, stating there would be one star for each state, but there would only be thirteen stripes, one for each of the original colonies.” The boys thought that made great sense and were pleased those early lawmakers were smart enough to come up with that idea.

When we came to the ‘Pop Culture’ area, I had a great time filling the boys in about my favorite displays. Although they recognized Michael Jordan’s game-worn jersey, and Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers from the ‘Wizard of Oz’, they were only vaguely familiar with Fonzie’s leather jacket, from ‘Happy Days’, and didn’t know who Archie Bunker was or why his chair would be here – until I told them about ‘All in the Family.’ They also didn’t know anything about the Lone Ranger, or why a good-guy would wear a mask. I also enjoyed seeing Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves, which started the boys shadow-boxing with each other.

After leaving that area, we hit the ‘History of Money and Medals’ area, which of course fascinated my crew. “Man, I didn’t know they had $100,000 bills,” Ricky announced, with his eyes bulging from their sockets.

“They don’t any longer,” I explained, while staring at the bill with Woodrow Wilson’s portrait on it. “They only made them for a short time and stopped in the 1930’s, when the Great Depression hit. It didn’t make much sense to have $100,000 bills in circulation, when most people found it hard to even come up with a dollar.” The boys shook their heads, while thinking about how hard life must have been then.

“I wonder how much I could get for that, if I stole it,” Jay mused, while staring at a gold nugget.

“Oh, probably ten to twenty years in prison,” I informed him, which got a glare from him and giggles from the others.

“No, I meant how much money,” he corrected me, although too late.

“I’m not sure, but the price of gold isn’t as high now as it has been in the past,” I advised him.

Over the next few minutes, we also saw many strange looking forms of money, including currency printed by banks, and not the government. That’s when I had to stop and answer their questions about why banks had been able to print their own money, before the federal government came up with a formal currency standard. Once that had been clarified, we came across a Nobel Prize Medal and then a US Civil War Colored Troops Medal, which piqued Danny’s interest.

“They had a medal for the black soldiers who fought in the Civil War?” he asked. I quickly read some background info, before giving him his answer.

“It says here that their commander, General Benjamin Butler, was so impressed with the fighting ability of his black troops that he commission this medal and had it made, specifically to honor their service. Unfortunately, the federal government would not authorize its use, so those men were never allowed to wear it on their uniforms.”

“That’s a shame,” Brandon shot back. “If they fought well enough that the guy in charge had it made for them, then they should have been able to wear it whenever they wanted, even on those dumb old uniforms.” We all agreed, but it was a moot point. They had all died a very long time ago.

Before we left, we also saw George Washington’s Revolutionary War uniform, Lincoln’s top hat and Alexander Graham Bell’s phone, along with numerous other items, and I thought it time to see if Ricky had finally changed his mind about the value of this stop.

“Well, Ricky, do you still think this was a waste of time,” I prodded him, as we were getting ready to leave.

“Nah, it was okay,” he conceded. “You know, history isn’t so bad when you can actually see things and not just read about them in some stupid book or hear some boring old teacher yak about it for hours and hours.”

“Some boring old guy, like me?” I asked, causing him to whip around in my direction.

“I didn’t mean you, Dad,” he announced, startled. “You aren’t boring, well, most of the time you’re not.” The other boys couldn’t help but snort and chuckle at his response.

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,” I teased him back, but he was correct. By actually being able to see some of these items, they suddenly had more meaning for them and made it easier to understand the importance of certain things. All in all, we had spent about an hour on each floor, so now we decided it was time to grab a quick lunch in the cafeteria, before moving on to our next stop.

During our meal, the boys talked about some of the things they’d seen and shared their impressions with the others, but they spent most of their time trying to find out where we were going next. Using every trick they’d ever learned, they continued to try to wheedle this information out of me, but their only flaw was that they hadn’t considered my resolve. I was able to remain tight-lipped and not ruin the surprise, although I did tell them our next destination would be another part of the Smithsonian.

After eating, I guided them to the National Museum of Natural History. This is where various natural science exhibits are housed, including the anthropological materials, which tell about the early people who inhabited this land. There were also botany displays, featuring various forms of plant life, entomological presentations, about the vast number of insect species, and geological displays, showing different gems, minerals and rocks, as well as information about meteorites and volcanoes. In addition to those things, the largest attraction is probably the zoological or animal materials, which would encompass various exhibits and replicas of numerous forms of animal life, including dinosaurs.

Not meaning any harm, I jokingly teased our redheaded friend. “Hey, Jay, please stay away from the skeletal displays and not touch any thing. I don’t want you to accidentally break or wreck anything.”

This elicited an immediate response from the other boys, as they laughed hysterically, thinking my comment was extremely funny. The problem was, I don’t think Jay saw it that way. He gave me a dirty look and I could tell I had hurt his feelings, so I immediately apologized and tried to defend myself by explaining I was just joking. Not totally buying in to it, he forced a weak smile and shrugged it off, but I took note that I had hit upon a major sore spot for him. I pulled him aside later, and apologized again, privately, telling him that I hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings or upset him. This time he told me it was all right, although I insisted it wasn’t, and I promised to do nothing more that might ridicule him, even as a joke.

The boys were totally blown away by the dinosaur exhibits and stood in awe of the size of these gigantic creatures. Even at their age, and having studied dinosaurs in school or seen television programs about these behemoths, they got a whole new perspective concerning the former ‘rulers’ of the world. It was nearly impossible NOT to be intimidated and feel dwarfed by the skeletal recreations of these monsters and this was enough to make all of us realize that, as far as pure physical stature was concerned, we were just insignificant slugs on the evolutionary ladder.

“Can you imagine getting chased by something like that?” Danny asked, while staring at one of the displays.

“It would be just like in ‘Jurassic Park,’ when the T-Rex and raptors were going after everyone,” Jay added, with a great deal of enthusiasm.

“Actually, man didn’t come along until long after the dinosaurs had disappeared,” I informed them. “I’m not sure if humans would have survived among those eating machines. They devoured even more than you boys, but not by much.”

“Hey, we don’t eat that much,” Brandon challenged.

“You certainly wouldn’t say that, if you had to pay the bills,” I teased.

“Okay, so maybe we do eat a lot,” Ricky conceded, “but there’s no way all of us together could come close to eating as much as just one of them could.”

“Okay, so I exaggerated a bit,” I admitted, with a grin, “but you boys are no slouches when it come to packing away chow.” The four of them let it go at that, or this debate might have lasted for the rest of the evening.

All of us had been so enthralled with the displays that we didn’t realize it was nearly closing time. However, that was quickly made evident when we began hearing the announcements. Reluctantly, we began to make our way toward the exit, even though the boys kept looking over their shoulders to see if they could discern anything we might have missed.