The kids and I piled in the car yesterday, heading to the Pioneer Museum here in Colorado Springs. We yanked on the handle to operate their 105-year-old cash register; tried on derbys, bonnets, top hats, and vests for the photo booth; fingered the tanned hides donned by Native Americans. Because the museum is housed in an old courthouse, we also sauntered into the old courtroom. I recalled that my husband’s great uncle was appointed by Eisenhower to the District Court in Colorado and then the U.S. Court of Appeals, and wondered if years ago, he’d visited that exact room. He’d likely never pictured my children wandering through this room, hushed and agape. I wondered how many people had shivered on those wooden seats awaiting their fates, and the spectrum of emotions those walls had witnessed. It still fascinates me to imagine ancestors of mine alive in the times and places I watch in movies, or devour in books. What was it like, say, for my great-grandfather as he watched out the window on his journey from Switzerland, never to see his homeland again or the people he loved?
There and Back Again: Our Help in Ages Past
There and Back Again: Our Help in Ages Past
There and Back Again: Our Help in Ages Past
The kids and I piled in the car yesterday, heading to the Pioneer Museum here in Colorado Springs. We yanked on the handle to operate their 105-year-old cash register; tried on derbys, bonnets, top hats, and vests for the photo booth; fingered the tanned hides donned by Native Americans. Because the museum is housed in an old courthouse, we also sauntered into the old courtroom. I recalled that my husband’s great uncle was appointed by Eisenhower to the District Court in Colorado and then the U.S. Court of Appeals, and wondered if years ago, he’d visited that exact room. He’d likely never pictured my children wandering through this room, hushed and agape. I wondered how many people had shivered on those wooden seats awaiting their fates, and the spectrum of emotions those walls had witnessed. It still fascinates me to imagine ancestors of mine alive in the times and places I watch in movies, or devour in books. What was it like, say, for my great-grandfather as he watched out the window on his journey from Switzerland, never to see his homeland again or the people he loved?