Thirty-seven now. The years certainly creep up on you, don’t they? How about a birthday writeup?
I was browsing reddit this morning and ran across a picture of Plymouth Rock. While I’ve never spent much time thinking about the venerable stone, I’d always imagined it as enormous; some sort of fixture of the shoreline, rather than a boulder. Indeed, if I wanted to see larger rocks, I only need to take a fifteen minute walk toward the mountains where there is a boulder field of fallen stones, some being maybe seven hundred BookReaders heavy if not more so.
Given my ignorance on the subject of famous rocks, I decided to read a bit about the old Plymouth Rock. Nothing too extensive; a quick Wikipedia adventure and a glance at our own writeups on the subject.
First, it’s a very common type of stone. Granite is not special and is one of the most common types of rocks there are. The rocks in the boulder field I mentioned are granite from the Sandia Mountains, so if I want to stare at a good Plymouth Rock analogy, all I have to do is find a medium sized rock outside my front door.
Second, there is some debate on whether the Plymouth Rock is actually the landing spot of the Pilgrims. This is its claim to fame, but the claim was made 121 years after the landing itself. A 94 year old “church elder” named Faunce according to Wikipedia made a big deal about the rock being the landing site to protest a wharf being built over it. It’s hard to guess at the motivations for this claim. Faunce’s father might have once pointed out the rock as the landing site to him when he was young, or it might have been made up whole cloth, but either way, Faunce was in a position to give a possible landing site.
Possible being the key word here. Basically, we have no idea if the rock ever touched puritan buckle-up shoes. This illustrates to me that we need to be very careful taking historical “knowledge,” since so much of history is murky. There were Pilgrims, they did land at Plymouth. Did they land at Plymouth Rock? Who knows? If they did, the rock wasn’t given any importance by anyone until an old guy drew attention to it.
On the Wiki page it mentions that something like a third of the rock remains. This is due to tourists chipping bits of it off as souvenirs. The article quotes French writer Alexis de Tocqueville:
“This Rock is become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns of the Union. Does not this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant, and this stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation, its very dust is shared as a relic.”
Which is a nifty bit of optimism for what I would call vandalism. Mankind is a curious creature that destroys what he worships: his wife, his morals, his nation, nature itself. To selfishly steal a bit of history thereby diminishing the future viewer’s enjoyment of it is the tourist’s chief occupation. And to what end? To say, “Look, here’s a piece of a Famous Stone,” when guests view your curiosity cabinet? “Yes, this is a Famous Stone I’ve placed next to this dead bird and this book I found in a thrift shop. And here is a picture of my family in Cancun.” And a generation later, somebody going through the attic says, “Huh, a bit of rock. Wonder why they kept it? Well. better throw it out.” So, now a piece of Plymouth Rock sits in a lawn somewhere in Ashville, Indiana, where its noble properties and dubious claim to history vanish as soon as it gets mixed up with the other rocks.
All those relics that people took from the churches and temples over the long history of venerations are the same. A bone fragment claimed to be from Saint Paul? Gone. The stolen clothes of the blessèd martyrs? Rotted away. Anything sacred a pilgrim or tourist has is lost. I would suggest the only thing to do, is to leave artifacts where you found them, and let the designated sacred rock alone.
"Since the Puritans got the shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock
If today Any shock they should try to stem
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock would land on them.
-Anything Goes, Cole Porter
birthday past/ birthday future