The NH Historical Society celebrates its 200th anniversary this year and has organised a statewide scavenger hunt. My wife picked up on this right a way and we will be doing at least some of it. The reminder that Mike King sent me included a picture of an Archie Andrews statue in Meredith, which I don't believe I have ever seen. In my NH trivia, and even in my Manchester Central High School trivia, I somehow forget that Bob Montana graduated from Central. It was not often referred to when I was growing up, and I only recall my mother mentioning it once. A new deli had been built on Bridge s just above Elm around 1965, and Montana had painted some Archie figures on the walls. The owner had apparently known Montana when he lived there. When we visited, my mother pointed them out and explained. I was impressed, but apparently not very impressed. This association was not part of our general association with the city. People weren't bringing it up at every turn and naming parks after him or anything. I don't recall it ever being mentioned at Central. He graduated in 1938 or so, and there would have been teachers who were there then, but it just wasn't noted much. Or at all.
In trying to reason out why, I read the Wiki and concluded it must have been his short duration here. He had lived all over and was even at a rival high school before finishing here, so there wouldn't have been a lot of "I remember growing up with Bob my neighborhood" nostalgia. He fought in WWII and didn't return here, so there wasn't a long stretch of time he could have been here.
But I think there was a quieter factor that seems strange to us today. Not every kind of fame was celebrated. Comic books were still considered for children only, and not quite respectable. If someone had tried to name a park after him there might have been objections from respectable circles like the Carpenter Library or the Currier Art Gallery. This was not the sort of thing people wanted Manchester to be known for. This was not the sort of reading and art we wanted to encourage in the children. Grace Metalious of Peyton Place notoriety was known (and disliked: "I have nothing good to say about Grace DeRepentigny," said my namesake uncle) by my family directly, but no one mentioned a word of this until much later. It was not suitable for children to know such things. When the TV series came out, none of the teachers at Straw School pointed that out to our impressionable minds. And it's not like we were swimming in famous people who came out of our school.
There is a great deal of wailing about one group or another being erased from history, and I think it's fine that people try to undo that. But I think there is a misunderstanding of earlier times. They weren't being erased from history so much as from the present. Ethnic groups vied to establish some sort of prominence, so that we would know that Greeks or Scots had been Very Important to the development of Manchester. People who actually were Very Important often did not seek the limelight, and that was respected. May Gruber of Pandora Sweaters, for example. I chuckle when I see the claims that black people or gay people were erased from history. Are you kidding? That was only the beginning. Almost everyone was erased. It's not just that we were trying to keep those black people down, it is that we automatically took no notice of anything that doesn't project what we prefer. We are curating our thoughts before they are even fully formed.
Well, not only is calculated oppression more fun to think about, but in our current version of curating our thoughts, it allows us to ignore the question of whether we are doing the same thing ourselves. Do activists ever ask themselves if they are erasing others? Okay, activists don't ever ask themselves anything, it's sort of the definition of the term. But just hypothetically, y'know? Deplatforming is this writ large, because everyone can force themselves into the public consciousness now and primly looking the other way no longer works. Ignoring people with other POV's is itself ignored, so it is no longer an effective strategy.
And BTW, I always preferred Betty to Veronica and thought this was unusual. I thought that the whole school should just leave Reggie and Veronica to themselves, who clearly deserved each other. I now know that everyone preferred Betty. That was intentional.
3 comments:
Archie comics were my older brother's thing for a while and my Dad liked them too. Since it was my habit to sneak any reading material my brother had, I read them too. My mother tried to limit me to Nancy Drew type books.
I was 12 when he left for college and now I wonder if he left his stash under the mattress knowing I'd get to them.
As adults we constantly 'stole' books from each other. I miss him
One of Bob's children was two years behind me at Inter-Lakes. He was in the band and I seem to remember some Bob Montana siting's at band concerts. But there did not appear to be much of a fuss.
I was not aware of Bob Montana's NH/northern Mass roots when I was reading Archie comics.
I once skimmed a biography of Bob Montana- apparently a good guy not full of himself, who among other things, gave a helping hand to aspiring artists.
I am reminded of adolescent angst about my hometown being a hick town, i.e., isolated from what was going on in the outside world. Growing up in Manchester, with Bob Montana and Grace of Peyton Place, you didn't have that problem. In later years, I came to realize that my small town home town was not isolated at all from the outside world. In my class of 25, two classmates had Iron Curtain refugee parents. Nor was my hometown isolated from past history. My Sunday school teacher was descended from a Revolutionary War hero from our town- mentioned in history books and honored with at least one statue.The father of a childhood friend- she still lives in town- had sufficient merit as a WW2/Korean War/Vietnam War hero to get his obituary published in the Washington Post.
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