Ticonderoga

September 2026

Today I am pondering history. Maybe not as the title above implies, although that’s a pretty good historical entity to ponder. No, mine is much more recent. It was 52 years ago, almost to the day, that my parents packed our 1972 Chevrolet Impala and took my brother and me on a trip to Maine. On the way, we stopped in New York at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and in Lake Placid, which was the future site of the 1980 Winter Olympics, and finally, Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain. A pretty cool vacation, right? Yet, I am pondering this trip for a variety of troubling reasons.

Today, I am focused on Ticonderoga. Let’s just say that the fort was not a highlight of the trip, at least in the fragmented memory of a 63-year-old trying to remember himself in the last summer before he became a teenager. Highlight or not, visits like these were certainly a part of what stimulated my lifelong fascination with history. Regardless, I’m sure I was bored when I was there then, and along with my younger brother, made it much less enjoyable for my parents.

The reason this is so top-of-mind for me, is that recently, I relived that memory in a physical sense by visiting Fort Ticonderoga with my wife. Yes, we are still on our little vacation to Maine, if you have been keeping up on it. And yes, this visit provided me with a trip down memory lane.  Frankly, some of the memories made me quite emotional. Sad really.  Overall, the visit left me quite melancholy, which was something I did not expect.

I’m certain that much has changed about the fort, but basically, it was the same. A historical monument, stuck in time, whether half a century ago when I last visited, or in 1759, when it assumed its current general shape. I remembered my first visit, standing in certain places, sighting the cannons toward imaginary targets on the river. None of which is important.

What is important is how and why this recent visit brought forth those very deep feelings in me. Latent memories, both good and bad of my parents and my childhood. Recollections of how little I was interested in something my dad was incredibly passionate about. And that’s not a word generally used in a sentence about my father, “passionate”.

My dad was a WWII vet that served in Europe. A small-town boy that went to war and when he came home, he was a man. Likely a very different man than he would have been without those wartime experiences. Scarred, in ways that were both noticeable to those that knew him before the war and with some wounds that were also hidden from view. Things he dealt with alone, in his mind. Neither of these types of things were even considered by his young children. We were blissfully naïve to the pain and sorrow he carried inside.

The man that returned was many things, and one of them was that he was fascinated, ok even passionate, about wars and battlefields. He read incessantly about them.  He watched any show on television about them. And we trudged around Revolutionary War and Civil War battle grounds and shrines on every trip we took. For a few years before I became a teenager, every summer, we packed up the car and headed somewhere.  Always south and east, where wars had been fought and men had died. For me now, those would be bucket-list trips.  But back then, they were more like torture.

Honestly, we were lucky to travel at all. We were not wealthy. Not even middle class.  Not even close. So, the fact that we went anywhere was a very good thing. We didn’t travel in style, that’s for sure.  We stayed in the cheapest places. If it was more than $20 a night my dad would walk away and move on to the next little place that had a neon “vacant” sign in front of it. This was back in the day when you took a look at the room you were renting before you paid for it. These were dinky, dingy little places. Often my brother and I slept on the floor of one of those grubby motels.

We ate pretty well; my dad could always sniff out a cheap place for a meal. Fast food didn’t exist yet. And gas was generally only around $.30 a gallon. That made it somewhat affordable. Even if you were poor. There were lots of poor people just like us traveling around at that time. Even more of them had to stay at home, not having the disposable income to do something as frivolous as travel for pleasure. So yes, we were fortunate. I recognized that even then.

Anyhow, now with the benefit of hindsight and adult wisdom, I regret not enjoying these trips more. Not just because I know now how much it would have made my parents happy, or at least less miserable, but because I would likely recall more. At the time, I just refused to pay attention to anything that seemed to interest my parents. It was the mid-1970’s, a very unique time in our history as a country. Not only that, but in my history as a person. For many things in life, I would never want to go back. But that stage of my life… I’d love to go back and do it all again.  

My wife is much better company than my brother and I were. She enjoys these war related things. Especially the gift shops, but she doesn’t endlessly pester me for wooden toy guns, swords, tomahawks or any other childish, militant souvenirs like I certainly did to my parents 50 years ago. And believe me, those things are still available. She is quite happy when actors in period dress regale the crowd with music or historical insights. That’s her kind of thing no matter what. So, she doesn’t mind too much. Her visits to the gift shop are to see if they have cookies or fudge. I can handle that. Because she is so patient with me.

Even when I, just like my dad, pause at many of the roadside stops where stone monuments stand and I take too much time reading about the battles, and the famous names that fought in them. Rekindling his joy and fascination. One I certainly failed to appreciate in my youth. And acting just like my dad, lingering here and there for no apparent reason. Probably feeling a little like he did. In spite of not having firsthand knowledge of war or its impact on the human psyche. Thank God.

I am not sure why my parents put up with us and kept taking us on trips every summer.  It couldn’t have been any fun for them. I recall being so disinterested and actually, downright intolerable. My brother was really no better. Sorry Chuck!

I now admire even more my parents’ patience and persistence. They must have known we were getting something out of it.  This just shows how parents plant seeds in their children that often bear fruit later on. In spite of the endless pain of nurturing, watering and weeding the seedlings, it’s often worth the effort. It might take 50 years but what’s a half century anyway?  Today, I still wanted one of those wooden tomahawks!  Or that plastic bayonet! We bought fudge instead.