Day 55 - All day in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

You've heard the old saying, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." Well, today we were faced with doing precisely that. While yesterday's weather was gorgeous beyond all expectation, today was decidedly less than gorgeous. We woke this morning to skies that were overcast and threatening, which was too bad since we were headed for the much anticipated Colonial Williamsburg right after breakfast.

John Fogarty's, "Looks like we were in for nasty weather," came to mind as I went outside to pack all the hoses and electrical cords before our departure. Even though I knew that we'd be spending most of the day indoors watching artisans and craftsmen and women plying their various skills, I also knew that we'd be walking outdoors a good bit as we moved from building to building. If it rained, we were almost certainly going to get wet.

By the time we arrived in the largely deserted RV parking lot at the Williamsburg visitor center, the weather outlook for the day had not improved. This was confirmed at check-in when I asked the receptionist what the weather prognoses was for the day and she said, "Rain. Rain today and rain for the rest of the week."

Here's where I thought, "Oh, oh. Time for leomonade making." From past experience here in the south and southeast, I know that rain seems to hold off for most of the day, but clobbers you around mid afternoon, or just about the time you are enjoying yourself, whichever comes first. Studying the map, I decided that the visitor center shuttle can drop you just inside Williamsburg and you can then spend the rest of the day getting farther and farther away. OR, you can ride the shuttle all the way around the park to the far side, then get off and then spend the rest of the day walking back toward the visitor center. The second choice would probably be best if the rain held off until the usual mid afternoon time.

And that's what we did. We rode around and got off at the Capitol building, took the tour there, then headed down Duke of Gloucester Street, back toward the visitor center, intending to just visit each and every shop that offered a colonial shopkeeper or artisan who would explain to us their trade. Believe me, there are lots and lots of these shops and you probably don't have a hope of doing all of them in any six or eight hour period. So we just wandered and visited whatever took our fancy.

Our first shop we entered catered to the wig-buying public (photo above right). Serendipity was in play here as we had tried to visit the apothecary shop and had been told that we had to wait until the current group of visitors had left. So, we crossed the street and entered the wig shop. Now, you'd probably be accurate if you predicted that wigs might interest neither Concetta nor me. But surprisingly, we found the entire discussion with the master wig maker fascinating and wonderfully informative. Who knew that hair for wigs came from all over the world, even in the 18th century? Who knew that wealthier women often had their heads shaved of their real hair so they could wear a styled wig? Who, in fact, knew that Pomade hair dressing was sheep fat mixed with oil lavender or similar scents? Who knew that aside from human hair, wigs were made of flax (a plant) and horsehair? Anyway, you get the drift. We learned a lot about a subject we heretofore knew nothing about.

Our next visit was to the silver shop (photo left). I didn't learn a lot there since I was so enthralled with photographing their workshop, but it was fascinating watching the craftswoman beating a flat piece of pewter into a bowl shape. I imagine that their hearing probably suffers, but their work is so good it's sold in the gift shop next door once they're done.

After the silver shop we dropped into the Milliner's shop. Here, once again, I didn't expect to get too excited over the topic, but was I wrong. The first thing the Milliner told us was how the Milliner's trade got it's name. He said that the word is derived from the French word for "thousand," which at the time meant that you could buy a thousand different things at a Milliner's shop. Now a quick search on the web produced the explanation that the word Milliner actually came from the Italian city of Milan, and was synonymous with finery of all kinds. Wherever the truth lies, the Milliner's shop was once the place to buy virtually everything you needed if you wanted to dress well, both for men and for women. A Milliner might make a suit coat for you if you were a man. Or he might make a corset for you if you were a woman.

The Milliner would not, however, make you a dress as that was the job of the Mantua. A Milliner performed three services: He/she was a tailor, a hat maker, and a maker of ladies accoutrements. The most interesting thing he told us was that the Americans sold flax to the English, who resold it to the Irish, who then wove it into linen, and then sold it to the Americans for making into clothes. This in the late 1700s. Incredible!

Our next port of call, so to speak, was to a tavern. Now before you jump to conclusions, we definitely did not get to sample any of the tavern's wares. But we did get to learn some interesting facts. Certain prices were regulated in the late 1700s for taverns that provided not only drinks and food, but lodging. The Colonial government set prices for what were called public sleeping rooms so that travelers coming to the Capital wouldn't be gouged by innkeepers. Of course that meant you might find yourself sleeping in a room with a half dozen other people, perhaps even two strangers in the same bed. There might be two beds in a room (photo below left for one), and then the floor space would be taken up by late-comers. Now the particular tavern we were visiting, called Weatherburn's, also had what they called "private" rooms where you could be alone, but the prices were not regulated on those rooms. They might come with single occupancy beds, wash stands, chairs, and the like, but you were definitely going to pay for all that.

Concetta and I went in split directions for our next educational adventure. I wanted to do the blacksmith shop, and Concetta headed right for the outdoor baking oven. I have always been fascinated by blacksmithing, and have even accumulated some of the blacksmith's tools over the years. One of the tools I have is a heavy duty, floor standing vise. These are somewhat rare and I would like to someday properly install my vise, but I've never been able to figure out how the darn thing attaches to a workbench. As I discovered today, I'm actually missing a key component of the attachment hardware. But the blacksmith was so accommodating, he volunteered to disassemble his vise so I could see (and photograph) the attachment piece so I could someday build my own. (photo below right) Just wow!

After Concetta learned all she could learn from the baker, and I soaked up as much information as I could from the blacksmith, we both resumed our walk down Duke of Gloucester Street. It was at this point that we stumbled upon the local book bindery shop and what would turn out to be our most fascinating discussion of the day. Naturally, having spent a decade of my life as a printer, the subject of book binding has always been one that I wanted to know more about. If you've ever seen one of those leather bound ancient books with the hand-tied pages, you know what an incredible work of art they are. Covers made of calf skin. Pages made of rag paper. Hand marbled end pages. Every letter hand set and maybe printed one page at a time. Gives me goosebumps just thinking of it.

Well, though we had trouble seeing the shop when we first arrived due to the crush of other fascinated viewers, our competition soon cleared out and left us alone with Master Bookbinder, Bruce B Plumley. This gentleman, who hales from a part of England once called home by my Dad's maternal grandmother, has spent fifty-seven years as a bookbinder. He has plied his trade, not only in England, but in Germany and Italy as well. AND, he now pursues his amazing craft in Colonial Williamsburg at the singular and expressed invitation of the private foundation that operates Colonial Williamsburg itself! Help, my head is spinning.

We had so much fun interviewing Bruce that we completely missed the printer exhibition right across the alley. Oh, well, on to the next adventure.....which, in this case, happened to be in the spinning and weaving building. Here a young lady was running one of those spinning wheels that you see in darned near every antique store in the country. But did we learn a lot of things at this demonstration. We learned that at this period in history making clothes and other cloth items out of cotton was just prohibitively expensive due to the labor costs of separating the cotton bolls from the plant parts. It was far cheaper to import cotton from India if you had to have it. Things could be made more cheaply out of wool because sheep were plentiful and wool could be dyed, spun, and woven easily. Wool was fine for winter, but when it came to clothing in the hot,

muggy south, folks mostly wanted to wear linen since it was even cooler to wear than cotton. Here the young lady demonstrated how the flax plant was "combed" down to get the inner part of the plant stem and those inner parts were then made into linen. Though, as I pointed out earlier, flax could be more economically sent across the ocean to England and Ireland than it could be processed and woven in America at the time.

Just at that juncture was when the rain started pitter-pattering on the sidewalk outside the Spinning and Weaving shop. Having learned that the museum of art and antiques was just a two-minute walk away, Concetta and I made a dash for it and managed to get inside before the worst of the storm turned our lemons into a lemonade shower. The museum in Williamsburg is truly outstanding, and runs the gamut from antique firearms to fine china and furniture. We saw a collection of keyboard-type instruments, as well as viewed a display on the the reconstruction of one of the Williamsburg coffee houses. We also saw a very nice display on outdoor advertising.

You get the idea. They had something for everyone. But by now our feet were beginning to suffer, so we cut our visit short, first by a trip to the attached cafe for some hot coffee and tea, then by a dash to the park shuttle for our day's-end ride to the visitor center, which, because of our good planning, was only two minutes away. By now it was raining like it usually does in the south, like the biblical flood was no myth. So we weren't really sorry to be headed back to camp. We did get a little damp navigating the parking lot back to the RV (they always put the RV lot as far away from civilization as they can), but very quickly we were back at the RV park and I was getting our water, sewer, and electrical hooked up in record time.

Now, with the damp clothes hanging in every available quarter, we're just kicking back and planning our next move. We're not sure exactly what that will be. On the way to the visitor center, I asked the shuttle bus driver if there was a place on the east coast that WASN'T planning on having week-long rain, but he just shook his head. So, we'll just have to wing it. That's what we do best anyway. So, until next time, I bid you happy traveling.