Driving into the sepia-toned world of Old Sturbridge Village, I was first confronted with the fact that bright colors were clearly not invented by the 1830s. All buildings, fences, frocks, sheep, and cheese were the same charming woodsy light brown. My eyes adjusted, as they do through ski goggles, and I soon forgot about things like purple. My friend and I started quoting appropriate lines from “The Crucible” (in which we both starred in tenth grade), until she got distracted by the baby sheep. She cooed at them while I consulted the map.
Our first stop was the “Fenno House” where a lady spinner fielded questions and attempted to spin wool. Unfortunately for her, she repeatedly broke the thread (“Oops I pulled it too hard”) and referred to parts of the machine as “metal metallic combs” which made us doubt her authenticity. Cruising through other parts of the house, we found a bureau of children’s dress-up clothes that my friend and I dug into—we stuffed ourselves into fragile pinafores and boys’ vests until we heard voices approaching from the other room and frantically put them back. We also spent a fruitless five minutes daring one another to taste the loaf of unattended cheese in the kitchen area.
At the “Towne House,” a fashionable family’s abode, we saw fancy stoves, hearths, baskets aplenty, creepy wallpaper, and many, many lumpy beds. Most surprisingly, there was a plasma screen TV in the basement showing a program on olden-day farming and dairy production. On the way out, we overheard a sullen teenager telling his younger siblings that Old Sturbridge Village was “totally gay.”
We made our way to the tin shop, and then the wool-carding house, where the young employee gave us a friendly and in-depth explanation of the process, which was completely nonsensical. He may have been flustered because we were flirting with him, but he repeated the phrase: “Your kid could card wool for 10 hours or this machine could do it in 10 minutes,” to which my friend replied, “I don’t have a kid.” While he blushed, another family came in, and the father demanded: “Are you going to turn it on or what?” Our young man said quietly, “Okay, but promise not to be disappointed.” I should make an important distinction here between the actors at Sturbridge Village, who confess to living in 2004, and those at other historical re-enactment places like Plimouth Plantation (near old Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts), where you have to try to trick them into admitting they’ve ever seen TV and stuff like that.
After bidding our new friend adieu, we tried “Rising Up a Bucket” at the Cooper Shop, which meant putting the staves of a bucket inside its metal ring. Unfortunately that ended in accusations, frustration, and the setting off of several motion detectors. To add insult to injury, we realized that we had just missed the “Garden Gossip Tour,” probably our only opportunity to hear about who’s been sleeping with whom (and when/where Goody Nurse was caught with the Devil). Our mood improved only slightly upon seeing two little boys eating ye olde rocke candye and singing “Brass Monkey” in the pottery kiln.
The General Store was a definite must-see—it was manned by a mutton-chopped elderly gentleman who told us all the fashionable things for young ladies these days, including combs, brooches, fancy soap, bolts of fine cloth, and snuff. We gave him some sass regarding the snuff but were really quite impressed with the stock. At this point my friend cried out, “Modern day nuns!” because there was a group of three nuns strolling past, one of whom looked pregnant, and all of whom were laden with gift shop bags.
The Village’s visitors were generally parents and their under-12 children, some awkward teenagers, and a few European couples on exciting American dates. There were also a bunch of childless middle-aged folk, and us. Near the exit, children chanted, “Gift shop! Gift shop!” and one kid cried, “Can we go to the bookstore?!… I love to read!!” In the gift shop, we tried on bonnets of all colors (white, off-white, ecru, eggshell, beige), and saw the nuns buying even more stuff, which bothered my friend. Our visit ended, ironically/appropriately, with me rushing out of the gift shop to answer my cell phone.
I recommend Old Sturbridge Village, only 40 minutes away from Wes, as fun for the whole family, fun for nervous first dates, and fun for the entire convent. There’s a lot of unintentional comedy, and it’s actually really historically interesting. What I most strongly recommend is paying a youth admission, which entails convincing them you are 17, as I did, thus reducing the fare from $20 to $5. If you don’t bring lunch, there’s a charming Tavern, or you could just fill up on ye olde rocke candye.
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