New Houses

Sometime around the end of my junior high years or early high school years, Bolingbrook, IL, took the initiative to designate part of the town as the Historic District. For those living there, the Historic District runs South of Rockhurst to the Highway, and West from around Pinecrest to the Library. The signs were changed from white to brown, markers were put up - Bolingbrook was taking pride in it's past.

The sign reads, as you turn into the Westbury subdivision: "Westbury Subdivision: Historic District of Bolingbrook. Established 1960."

That is no typo: Bolingbrook's first subdivision, complete with post office and site for the library, was finished settled in 1960. There are people living in Bolingbrook older than that subdivision, which lead to me to wonder if these people should be forced to wear brown shirts with their birthdate printed on it. This way the locals can pay the appropriate respect.

America has an odd sense of history. Depending on which stories you believe, 1492 is really the beginning of the time for this country as it looks now. Granted, the Native Americans crossed the land bridge years before, there are rumors that the Chinese and Vikings had made it here between the Native Americans and Columbus, but really (and in some ways unfortunately), these traces have all been wiped away. The Native Americans were a mostly transient civilization, meaning that there were hardly any ancient subdivisions we had to sweep away when the settlers began to clear the way for their subdivisions. This leaves the oldest buildings on the continent dated around the early 1500s, and there are not many of them.

Couple that with the American Revolutionary War. After that, America finally could set up it's own history, in the late 1770s. So really, America has a history of about 300 years or so.

You can imagine then what it is like to see a castle. I have seen castles before: drive north on I-90, and just past Ikea there stands Medieval Times. This castle serves meals three times daily, and comes with jousters.

In the middle of Aberystwyth sits the ruins of a castle that once stood watch over the coast. The castle is exactly that: ruined. There are no complete walls, and just bits and pieces strew the grassy hill. That said, it is one of the most impressive structures I have ever seen. Without the modern building technology we have today, these people put together a structure that still stands 800 years later. Some suggest that early fortifications might date back as far as 800 BC, but this particular ruins remain from a castle built in the 1200s AD.

This particular structure has stood on this particular spot for the entire length of the European settlements, and all of American History, plus an extra 200 years. Granted, it had fallen into disrepair as of late, but still, people did something, and part of it still remains. It was humbling to see a symbol of the enduring nature of mankind.

At least, I found it humbling. The Welsh civilians, I found, did not care so much for these ruins. First, there was trash everywhere. Cans of energy drinks, wrappers from sandwiches, Styrofoam containers and cigarette boxes littered the grounds. My mother and brother have both worked in various capacities for historic sites around the US, and I could imagine seeing their faces.

The people seemed to treat the ruins in a way I found surprisingly. I walked between the various wall parts with a hushed awe, lightly brushing the walls with soft fingertips. As I was examining a collapsed staircase, marveling that the stairs were still mostly intact, I noticed two kids using a piece smaller piece of the wall as a jungle gym, clamoring over the ruins, kicking ancient stones into the grass. It's not hard to see that the more use something receives, the more wear it suffers. These kids were doing irreparable damage to a piece of national history, national pride. Another group of teenagers stood smoking in a turret, scratching their names into the rock face. In some places, people had spray painted parts of the walls with band names, and phallic symbols.

I was stunned. As a child, my family toured hundreds (possibly thousands) of battlefields and historic encampments and settlements across the Eastern United States. We spent countless hours in the hot summer sun, boiling alive in these fields, imagining the history taking place. Young soldiers marching to certain death, new cities springing up with great anticipation for the future, people living their lives here perfectly preserved. My mother used to work for Naper Settlement, one of the oldest settlements in Northern Illinois. They have moved houses from around the area into one central location. There are places that people are not allowed to tour because the artifacts are too valuable. Most of the pieces at this place date back to the 19th century, roughly two hundred years old. Certainly, no one would be able to scamper up the walls and across the roof of the building, nor would anyone be allowed to carve their name into a house.

I wondered how these Welsh kids could not see this the way I saw it. This is really old! I screamed in my mind. Get your damn kids off the wall! Could the not see the history? Could they not understand what it means that something would still be standing on this exact spot for the better part of a millennium?

Probably because this site has stood for so long that the Welsh take it for granted. It has been there, and will always be there, as far as they can see. This has been part of the landscape for longer than anyone can remember. They no longer see it as a representation of their lineage, as a testament to human ingenuity. It's just an old bunch of rocks. There are others, better kept.

Its not unlike when moving into a new house. At first, you are careful of the walls, afraid to chip the new paint, or dent the drywall. After a few years, a scratch here, a ding here, and suddenly you are hammering nails into the wall without regard. The Welsh have lived in this house for a lot longer than Americans have lived in the house that is America. We still take our shoes off so as to not damage the pile of the carpet, but that is a concern long past for the Welsh.