Holidays in Heck (31 page)

Mrs. O. and I remember thinking how big the White House was. Not our children. They're used to the neighboring summer places in the Beige Mountains, built when that region was a fashionable retreat for the more cracked type
of Boston Brahmin. These dwellings cover acres with their cobwebs, dry rot, curling shingles, falling roof slates, and various wings that have been boarded up since the Gilded Age. We emerged from the White House at dusk. “Where are the bats?” said Poppet.

The kids had had a tour of the Capitol building, too, given by our then-senator John Sununu. He is a vigorous guide who loves the place and knows everything about it, but what the kids liked best was getting their photograph taken with the senator—because he signed his name “Sunununununu.”

We couldn't get into the FBI building, no matter the wire-pulling by Mrs. O.'s father. Something about construction activity or the security situation or security activity in the construction situation. I doubt the FBI's liability lawyers let them fire machine guns anymore anyway.

The ranks of tour buses idling in a reek of diesel smoke and disgorging cargoes of fat rubbernecks camcording each other in their gigantic sports jerseys, balloon shoes, and fashion mistake shorts spoiled the quiet majesty of the Lincoln Memorial. And the emphasis on Sally Hemings in our children's history lessons spoiled the quiet majesty of the Jefferson Memorial.

The Air and Space Museum was great, of course, but we always go there. Buster and I like things that go fast and explode. And Mrs. O. and the girls get a kick out of hearing Daddy make dive-bomber noises.

In the end, by way of being real tourists, we went to the National Museum of American History. Built in 1964, the museum is ugly in a way that's best described as built in 1964. The ill-proportioned exterior slab walls are covered in prolix quotations from historical Americans. It takes longer
to read the building than it took the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White to design it.

Inside the front doors was an exhibit of random guitars and a folk musician playing folk music. Folk music had an enormous impact on American history, causing the North to win the Civil War documentary by Ken Burns. Also, Woody Guthrie had a guitar with “This Machine Kills Fascists” carved on it, although the guitar probably would have been broken if any fascists actually had been killed. But maybe the guitar did get broken, because it wasn't in the exhibit. At least I don't think so. Not that we looked very hard.

Mrs. O. and the girls headed straight for the first ladies' ball gowns. An attempt had been made to add relevance to this exhibit. “Includes material related to their social and political activities,” read a placard at the entrance. I dragged Buster to the exit to see if Hillary Clinton's ball gown was on display. Wasn't there some kerfuffle about this in 1993? Didn't Hillary Clinton think the First Lady clothes horse thing was beneath the dignity of the office (not that first ladies technically hold office) or sexist or something? And she wasn't going for that. But there was Hillary Clinton's ball gown nonetheless. Trailer park burka.

Buster and I retreated to a bench outside, where we contemplated Horatio Greenough's monumental sculpture of George Washington. Washington is depicted in the classical manner, half naked with his toga slipping. I don't think of George Washington as somebody who went around with his shirt off much. “Did he just get out of the bathtub?” Buster asked.

Poppet darted out from among the ball gowns looking worried about the prospect of adult womanhood. “What if they want to get on a teeter-totter or go down a slide?”

Muffin, although she is more fashion-conscious, or because she is more fashion-conscious, escaped soon after. “Stupid,” she said.

Mrs. O. was in there for an hour. She emerged confirmed in her philosophical conservatism. “There's no such thing as progress,” she said. “If I were to take a stylish Martian woman through that exhibit backward, starting with Michelle Obama's off-the-shoulder bedsheet and winding up with Abigail Adams, the Martian woman would be convinced that I was showing her the story of a society's gradual development of sophistication and good taste.”

The Hall of Invention conveyed the same reverse message, beginning with marvelous things like mechanical wheat reapers and finishing with “How a Stroller Is Designed.” How strollers are designed so that parents invariably get their fingers pinched when folding the strollers was not explained. Women and minority inventors were emphasized. Another exhibit was “The House.” All it contained was pictures of and objects from what seemed to be the house where I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. (Although the people depicted as living in my house were improbably racially integrated and dads were doing more housework than ever happened.) What interest could anyone have in looking at my house in the 1950s and 1960s? The less so since everyone visiting the museum had grown up in a house just like it or had parents or grandparents who did. Many of those houses are still around, much the same as they always were. I suppose “The House” had something to do with being interested in ordinary middle-class life or making ordinary middle-class life interesting, this being of interest to extraordinary non-middle-class museum curators. But John Hughes's movies do a better job.

“The History of Transportation” was sponsored by General Motors, so it was the history of cars, trucks, buses, and locomotives made by General Motors. Your tax dollars paying to bail out a corporation that's paying for an exhibit at a museum so that the museum doesn't have to spend your tax dollars—a nice Third-Way social democracy touch.

Buster and I were blissfully surrounded by cars. A great thing about being sixty-two years old and having a six-year-old son is that there's still somebody you can impress. “When I was a kid we owned one of these,” I said. “And one of these and one of these and one of these . . .” (My father was a car dealer.)

Poppet likes the round-fendered models from just after World War II. “They're cuddly.”

Muffin prefers the styling exuberance of the late 1950s. She said, of a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, “Justin Bieber should drive one.”

“With the top up,” said her little sister, “because of his girlie hair.”

Mrs. O. travels forty miles a day delivering kids to school and picking them up. She was interested in the old streetcars. “Or anything else that's on rails, so I could read a book or something.”

It was a fine exhibit despite the Museum of American History doing what it could to spoil the mood by using every excuse to present text and videos about segregation in public transport. It's not something the transportation did. Trains, Greyhound buses, farm pickups, and old jalopies got millions of black Americans out of the segregated South.

We went to see the Star-Spangled Banner. Older readers will remember when this hung on a wall in the Smithsonian. (And that wonderful Charles Addams house/nation's
attic is no more. The original Smithsonian building has been turned into, I quote our guidebook, “an information center with video orientations.”) The Star-Spangled Banner hung on the wall, and if you were nine, as I was when I visited Washington, you stood there agape, saying, “Wow. It's the Star-Spangled Banner whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming. And it's right here hanging on the wall. Wow.”

Not any more. The Star Spangled Banner has undergone “eventification.” It's not about what you're going to see, it's about the journey. We entered a labyrinth darkened to pre-dawn's early light degree and cluttered with ancillary displays—“Baltimore in the Balance”—every one of them interactive as all get-out. We were bumping around in there for fifteen minutes, almost forgetting why, when Muffin mumbled, “Oh, there's the flag.” It reclined on a semi-elevated surface as if on a hospital bed and was illuminated sporadically by only a dim light to prevent UV damage, never mind the rockets' red glare that our national colors had survived handily. It's not nearly as big as the AIDS quilt displayed on the Mall a few years back.

“How the heck are they going to work women and minorities into the Star-Spangled Banner?” asked Mrs. O. The answer was around the corner in an interactive display devoted to the seamstress Mary Pickersgill: “Her daughter, two nieces, and an African-American indentured servant helped piece together its ‘broad stripes and bright stars.'” A plaque by the exit proclaimed that the principal donor for the Star-Spangled Banner installation was Ralph Lauren. If his company were based in Canada, with its “time to rake the leaves” ensign, he'd be shit out of luck with his logo.

We poked around in the museum for a while, a very little while, longer.

“That was boring,” said Muffin as we left.

“Really boring,” said Poppet.

“Really, really boring,” said Buster.

We could persuade the kids to visit no further tourist attraction. Muffin and Poppet (and Mrs. O.) were more interested in shopping opportunities—something rural New Hampshire offers in the variety of animal fodder available at the feed store. Even Buster preferred the mall to the Mall. And we all wanted to see our friends. Some of these friends have swimming pools, an unheard-of thing in the Beige Mountains, where it would require the output of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to heat one to fifty degrees in August.

As I floated in the pool, a gin fizz balanced on my paunch, I reflected that a liking for free enterprise, civil society, and material comforts as opposed to a liking for august institutions of democratic government indicated that none of my family will stray far from the GOP verities of life.

On our way to the airport, as we turned onto Memorial Bridge, Muffin asked, “What's the point of the Washington Monument?”

“Five hundred and fifty-five feet, five and one-eighth inches,” said Mrs. O., consulting our guidebook.

New Hampshire, March 2011

S
chool break loomed and the children were agitating for a vacation trip. Mrs. O and I are tired of traveling with kids. They get peevish, bored, and quarrelsome, and they never want to go to where we want to go to, such as out for a late dinner at the Brasserie Lipp in Paris followed by a stroll across the boulevard and a nightcap at Café Flore.

“A cruise ship with an indoor climbing wall!” demanded Muffin.

“Disney World, Sea World, and Hogwarts at Universal Studios!” insisted Poppet.

“We should go to Nickleodeon!” declared Buster, who gets confused about geography.

“We have Nickleodeon at
home
,” said Poppet, giving Mrs. O and me an idea. Home is a fashionable watering hole for the elite these days. High-powered executives brag about working from home. A stay-at-home mom is a status symbol. Home entertainment centers fill the cathedral-ceilinged great rooms of America. Why not home travel? Reservations aren't a problem; the mortgage company has us booked for thirty years. No need to pack light; we all bring everything we own home. And meals are absolutely guaranteed to be had in a comfortable, homey atmosphere.

We lined up the children in the front hall and had them march shoeless through the door frame four or five times while emptying their pockets. “Gummi Bears are allowable only in containers of three ounces or less and must be sealed in a ziplock bag,” said Mrs. O., giving the kids a sharp frisk. Meanwhile I repeatedly droned, “Please report any suspicious objects to police or TSA representatives” and “Curbside is for active loading and unloading only, unattended cars will be ticketed and towed.”

We squeezed the kids into the third-row seat of our SUV, piling their laps with iPods, DVD players, Game Boys, and coloring books. I drove up and down our long, bumpy driveway for hours with occasional halts outside the garage for “minor maintenance delays.” Mrs. O. grudgingly passed out peanuts.

“Time zone change,” announced Mrs. O. when we were back inside. “It's four PM. Everybody go to bed.”

In the morning we dialed the thermostat to “Florida.” The Orlando Amusement Park experience was easily evoked. Line up the kids again and leave them standing there for ages. Eventually they expect something in the way of a ride. Fortunately ours is an old house. There's a large, loud, and
scary nineteenth-century toilet in the guest room bath. Our children were greeted by big, furry, overfriendly animal characters. “Dad,” said Poppet, “those are our dogs.”

“Yes,” I said, “and you can have your picture taken with them. As for evening fireworks, don't get your father started about Harry Reid.”

Going on a cruise with children means seasickness and sunburn. We convinced the kids to spin themselves around 100 times, then stand too close to the fireplace.

Mrs. O. emptied all the leftovers from the fridge onto the dining room table, creating a twenty-four-hour free buffet with authentic tourism-style discolored slices of lunch meat, wilted lettuce, and melted frozen yogurt. No cooking for Mom for a week!