How I bring the past into the present
Harold Pockriss of Freeport relaxes at the Old Bethpage Village Restoration, where he is a volunteer docent. Credit: Eric Lohse
'Do you live here?" asks a second-grader.
"No, I just work here," I explain.
I get asked the same question several times a year when I work as a docent in the historic houses at Old Bethpage Village Restoration. It's been a retirement career as well as a hobby for 17 years. It's fun because I have a captive audience, and it keeps me dipping into history.
Kids often ask, "Are there ghosts here?"
"I've never seen or heard one," I say, "but to find out more, you should visit us at our Halloween events and go on a ghost tour." As a sop to their thirst for the preternatural, I point to a spirit ball hanging over a staircase. It's a glass orb smaller than a baseball. People hung them in the 17th and 18th centuries to ward off evil spirits.
At the 1853 Conklin House, the most frequent adult comment is: "People were much shorter in those days, weren't they?" Not quite. What prompts this belief is the low ceilings, which are a few inches below 7 feet. Men sometimes bend to avoid hitting their heads; kids jump up to touch the ceiling. I explain that low ceilings retain room heat, cutting costs and time for chopping wood. Some people are skeptical. Perhaps the NBA makes them dubious.
But I've been wrong, too. For years, I said the expression "Sleep tight or the bedbugs will bite" came from the use of tighteners for rope beds. But I could find no documentation to back this up. I'm more careful now.
To engage visitors, I ask them to identify the big bone over a window in the Conklin mudroom. During Christmas night openings, two men nailed it immediately: a whale rib. One worked at the whaling museum in Sag Harbor, the other was an orthopedic surgeon.
July 4 resonates. It's my wedding anniversary. Old Bethpage unknowingly helps us celebrate each year with a parade of Union soldiers and civilians to hear a 19th-century politico speechify about the Civil War.
Visitors from other countries sometimes excitedly point to objects that are familiar to them. In the general store, a sugar loaf reminds a man of his childhood in Morocco. A woman spots a heavy clothes iron like the ones used in Ireland. Older Americans recognize artifacts similar to what they saw in their grandparents' houses. Living history brings us closer together.
Amazingly, kids who today love their cellphones also love to sweep a porch with one of our handmade brooms, or to chase and slap toy hoops. All is not lost to technology.
I'm a realist. When a visitor's eyes glaze over, I speed my spiel along. When a wise guy points to a smoke alarm and asks, "Did they have those then?" I bite my tongue. Patience and fortitude.
Insecurity makes me worry that when I tell visitors that people bathed once a week as a family with a hat bathtub -- it looks like an upside down hat with a wide brim, big enough to put only your feet into -- they will think everyone performed ablutions this way and this often, so I pepper my interpretations with qualifiers like sometimes, often and usually.
When adults tell me with pride and nostalgia, "I used to come here with my class as a kid," I smile understandingly.
"Do they still have root beer, pretzels and candy sticks?" they ask, unashamed to sound like their kids.
I say yes and point to the inn and general store, where they can buy them.
Welcome back to the past. It still has a future.
Reader Harold Pockriss lives in Freeport.
