When
I was 11-years old our family—me,
sister, mom, dad, and Granny Schultz, piled into our black '52
Chevy.
The cheap model. So cheap it didn't have an ashtray, so mom
had a
little bean bag ashtray on the dash. No radio. And
man was it hot.
We drove to New
Salem,  Illinois and the restored village
where
Abraham Lincoln spent his early adulthood. We stayed in a motel,
on
site, a first for me. The room was knotty pine; I can still smell
it.
After taking the tour I took off on my own to
investigate. Walking
down a dirt trail I, for some reason, turned onto a little unmarked
path and came upon an as yet unrestored building with a marker "First
Lincoln house," or some such. Wow. Why had I walked with
seeming
purpose to this house? Possibly influenced by the Bridey
Murphy
story that was dominating the news, I decided that the reason was
that
I was Abraham Lincoln reincarnated. Really. I've been a
Lincoln
scholar without portfolio ever since.
This documentary really rang my
bell. It's so good that I'm kind of shocked it's an HBO
product
(HBO, in my mind, is a haven for leftists who were fired for cause from
their real
jobs, and other perversions (but did you see that last Game of Thrones
ending?!) Anyway, this isn't so much about Lincoln
as it is about a family's collective five generation journey
as caretaker of just about
everything Lincoln. Yes, Peter Kunhardt's great-grandfather began
collecting photographs of Abraham Lincoln, but also tracked down the
photographs of every Union, and all
but three Confederate Great Rebellion officers. Wow! And that was just
the
beginning. FIVE STARS. |
