Visiting The Yorktown Victory
Center by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
When
the weekend rolled around, we all enjoyed sleeping in until 7 a.m. while mess
crank on the USS Austin still required us to get up at 4 a.m.
The
end of June was approaching. The even
hotter months of July and August were yet to come. We took long, cool showers that hardly
steamed up the bathroom they were so cold.
I
packed a picnic lunch full of goodies.
We headed out to the Yorktown Victory Center. The Center had picnic tables outside the
entrance, so we decided to eat our lunch first before our visit.
One
of the things that bothered me about picnics was ants and other insects that
crawl on the table.
I
solved this problem by putting a nice tablecloth on picnic tables whenever we
went on a picnic. I used an ironed
tablecloth that had pastel-colored flowers on it to set off our picnic basket.
New
and old fabric tablecloths can keep picnic area surfaces clean of bird feces
and other animal waste products, too.
Tablecloths are easy to clean.
This is a health-before-etiquette practice.
I
told Florence, “We look like we are characters in an Impressionist painting
with a tablecloth on our picnic table.”
Inside
the picnic basket, leather straps held real China dishes in place along with
metal cutlery. A built-in container held
China cups. There was room for two
plastic containers that held sandwiches.
(I thought that we could make these items in the US, too.)
We
drew a lot of interested looks from passers-by with our nifty picnic gear.
We
had humble food to eat, but we all liked it.
Nutella sandwiches with sliced bananas on French baguettes. We drank chilled water and the French soda
Orangina.
Once
we were all well fed, we lingered by the entryway and read the panels about the
important events that led up to the Revolutionary War.
One
of the most interesting facts was that the expense of winning the French-Indian
War prompted the English government to impose a series of taxes on the thirteen
colonies.
The
colonists wiggled their way out of paying most of these taxes; England’s Prime
Minister Pitt seems to have been rather dull.
However, the tax on tea was the one the colonists could not find their
way out of. Revolt against the tea tax
led to the Boston Tea Party.
This
information bored Florence. As soon as
we arrived inside, Florence wanted to go back outside where cannons were going
off. The guide dressed in brown breeches
said that a cannon should be called “a gun.”
Our
guide wanted to debunk the myth that cannon balls shoot up high in the air.
“They
fired at a level height,” he said on his mission of enlightenment.
“They
also do not explode on impact and were used not much to kill as to disrupt
lines of advancing artillery,” he said to develop our military prowess.
We
went back inside to a play center where Florence:
-could
dress up in colonial clothing
-play
with computers that had quizzes about American history
-practice
saying her letters with hand-held planks called “horn books” for practicing
letters
-play
with a mancala game board
-play
a ball and cup game
-read
picture books about colonial times
-play
with mystery boxes requiring you to reach in and try to describe objects like
turkey feathers
-play
at a table where children could do rubbings of colonial objects
I
read a few books to Florence and then helped her make some rubbings. That activity fascinated her. Rubbings are like magic. People in England get rubbings this way when
they rub their ancestors’ effigy faces on tombs.
After
visiting the kids’ section, we went back outside and visited the farm. The most interesting place to visit was a
reconstruction of a colonial kitchen located in a building separate from the
main house.
The
guide said a fire had to be kept going at all times to dry food and protect the
dried food from mildew.
Eating
only dried foods in winter did not seem appetizing to me. Summer and its resplendent gardens and
orchards (called fruit tree gardens sometimes), full of juicy fruit take, on a
whole new light when you think about eating dried fruit all winter long.
The
guide also said the colonial kitchen had a tendency to burn down every three to
five years.
Outside
the kitchen was a garden with flax growing in it. An exhibit next to it described women’s work
with flax. Once the flax matured, the
women of the house spun it into thread, wove it, and made it into fabric for sewing.
Colonial
women had their work cut out for them.
Technology makes some tasks easier like washing dishes, but creates
others like getting oil changes, chauffeuring children and husbands to school
and work, learning new computer programs, and learning new language every few
years in the modern era.
Our
visit would not have been complete without a visit to the Yorktown
Battlefield. I discovered that warfare
during the Revolutionary War and during the Civil War was all about digging
trenches and trying to enclose the enemy’s trenches. It reminded me of Chinese Checkers that you
play on a star-patterned board.
On
the way home, we stopped at an ice-cold, air-conditioned Kentucky Fried Chicken
and ate a fried chicken bucket dinner. I
took leftovers home and bought a chocolate cake and a gallon of lemonade, too.
I
was having ton of fun in Hampton Roads.
My family thought Norfolk (Virginia) just a harbor, but it was so much
fun that they started visiting, especially when they found out that it was the
North American headquarters of NATO.
By
Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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