Vermont Presence Probes Yesteryear 

In what ways do you imagine life as more appealing if could have experienced growing up during your parents or grandparents times?

“I love the nostalgic myself. I hope we never lose some of the things of the past.“ (Walt Disney)

In the original Twilight Zone TV show from the early 1960s, there’s an episode whereby a frustrating advertising executive, stressed out by modern urban life falls asleep on a train and wakes up in the late 19th century in a peaceful community called Willoughby. Check out an excerpt from this show in the link below.  

https://youtu.be/ca0dGWbXJxk?si=FkAMFkJ63-GHLAd-

So it appears that such a nostalgic opinion of small town America past centuries ago influenced how I felt during yesterday’s road trip excursion to the open air expanse of the Shelbourne Museum near Burlington, Vermont.  Know that with over thirty nine buildings showcasing New England daily life in the past, I seemed consumed primarily by three exhibits that portrayed a happier version of America than I am experiencing in my country today.     

I noticed for example at the circus annex how exciting it must have felt when the 1950s traveling circus  entered town to showcase its “ big top” spectacle. Nearby, an authentic carousel built in the 1920s also enticed me to climb aboard a “hobby horse and playfully “giddy up”, round and round to my hearts content. Such longing for the past feelings I experienced today intensified as well during my interior tour of the massive  steamboat Ticonderoga, Being originally used  for passenger crossovers of Lake Champlain between 1906-1953, I seemed noticeably engrossed by its portrayal of leisurely luxury for travelers who boarded the ship during this time of operation. 

Our vintage Vermont tour would conclude today with a short walk along a boardwalk corridor of Church Street in downtown Burlington. Along the way, I noticed an old  photograph of this area from the 1920s. Immediately then such glorified viewpoints of the past that I obtained before at Shelbourne  somehow vanished away into a cloudy dust of rashly premature wrongness. For I suddenly realized that the horse and buggy era of movement in American city society back then seemed more unpleasant than I’d so impulsively believed Enjoy the photos.