I need to go see this ... again.
When I was a little kid I was a passenger, with my parents and brother, on the S.S. United States on a voyage from New York to England. I still remember it.
Now it lays dead in Philadelphia, waiting for a scrapper or the slightest bit of historical concern.
She is bigger than the Titanic. In fact, she is the biggest and fastest ocean liner ever built. And she carries our name, and always has. S.S. United States.
This is how extinction starts. With loss of memory.
.
8 comments:
SS United States,, the fastest ship ever.
So far a better fate than her sister ship SS America
http://united-states-lines.org/johannes_gobel___082006_a.htm
I visit the Penns Landing area where it rests fairly often. It does appear to be falling into a state of disprepair.
If that was New York - Southampton, I have travelled the same route, only the other way round, Southampton-New York on the also retired Queen Elizabeth II. Some lovely memories triggered off by this post of the "good old days"
I'm from the West Coast, So Cal. I've been on the Queen Mary three times and stayed on her twice. Of course she's tied up, she even has a breakwater around her. They pulled a lot of stuff out of her and it would take more than anyone would want to spend to get her running and of course there are no plans to.
It would be great to get the SS United States running again, she has way nicer lines than the Queen Mary, if they could preserve her with the option to have her running would be good. On the Queen Mary the staterooms and cabins are hotel rooms. What ever it takes to preserve her.
Despite their size and significance, ships last about as long as cars and trucks; maybe 20-30 years, if you're lucky. It takes a lot to keep them alive, and eventually, only a few are able to pull the heartstrings enough to take on the very expensive task of restoration. Ditto with houses and other structures. "Historical Restoration" is much more expensive than "remodeling."
"This is how extinction starts. With loss of memory."
This line is haunting and has stuck with me since you wrote it.
Seahorse
To Pat and Seahorse: my Mother expressed much the same sentiment (how extinction starts) at her sister's funeral, when she passed out slips of paper to all of us that read:
"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."
I don't know the original source of that quote, but I sure do remember my Mother & her sister Ruby, and all the ships, trucks, buses, etc., that we ever traveled upon.
"Nothing loved is ever lost" is how I heard the sentiment expressed by my father.
As to the notion: "This is how extinction starts. With loss of memory" there is a small story behind that fragment of an idea. Not an interesting story, but I will tell it anyway...
I was at Airlie House, a conference center in Virginia. I was staring out at a large meadow during a break in the conference, and a woman came up behind me and said, "isn't nature beautiful."
And of course it was a hay field. It was not natural.
I tried to explain that this had all be forest only 300 years earlier, and that we had cut it all to the ground, roaded it, fenced it, plowed it, and settled.
None of the forest on the neighboring mountains was original - it had all come after the Weeks Act which was a bail out after we ripped, raped and robbed the Appalachian mountains of God's gift.
And the poor woman looked at me, a bit dazed. Too much!
And then I realized no one alive remembered this land as it once was. That was a dream. Like the Golden Bear. Like the Passenger Pigeon. Like the Carolina Parakeet. Like the Thylacine.
"This is how extinction starts," I thought, "With loss of memory."
Patrick
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