• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1410 0

there was no you-are-here arrow to help you get oriented. Indeed, the visitors’ centre wasn’t even shown. There was no way of telling where the village was in relation to where you were now. That seemed strange to me and I became suspicious; I stood back and watched the crowds. Gradually it became clear to me that the whole thing was a masterpiece of crowd management. Everything was contrived to leave you with the impression that the only way into Williamsburg was to buy a ticket, pass through a door ominously marked ‘Processing’ and then climb aboard a shuttle bus which would whisk you off to the historic site, presumably some distance away. Unless, like me, you pulled out of the river of people, you found yourself standing at the ticket counter making an instant decision on which of three kinds of ticket to buy – a Patriot’s Pass for $24.50, a Royal Governor’s Pass for $20 or a Basic Admission Ticket for $15.50, each allowing entrance to a different number of restored buildings. Most visitors found themselves parted from a lot of money and standing in the line to the processing doorway before they knew what had hit them.

I hate the way these places let you get all the way there before disclosing just how steep and confiscatory the admission price is. They should be required to put up roadside signs saying THREE MILES TO COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG. GET YOUR CHEQUE-BOOKS READY! or ONE MILE TO COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG. IT’S PRETTY GOOD, BUT REAL EXPENSIVE. I felt that irritation, bordering on wild hate, that I generally experience when money is being tugged out of me through my nostrils. I mean honestly, $24.50 just to walk around a restored village for a couple of hours. I gave silent thanks that I had ditched the wife and kids at Manchester Airport. A day out here with the family could cost almost $75 – and that’s before paying for ice-creams and soft drinks and sweat-shirts saying ‘Boy, Were We Screwed at Colonial Williamsburg’.

There was something wrong with the whole set-up, something deeply fishy about the way it worked. I had lived in America long enough to know that if the only way into Williamsburg was to buy a ticket there would be an enormous sign on the wall saying YOU MUST have a ticket. don’t even think about trying to get in without one. But there wasn’t any such sign. I went outside, back out into the bright sunshine, and watched where the shuttle buses were going. They went down the driveway, joined a dual carriageway and disappeared around a bend. I crossed the dual carriageway, dodging the traffic, and followed a path through some woods. In a few seconds I was in the village. It was as simple as that. I didn’t have to pay a penny. Nearby the shuttle buses were unloading ticket-holders. They had had a ride of roughly 200 yards and were about to discover that what their tickets entitled them to do was join long, ill-humoured lines of other ticket-holders standing outside each restored historic building, sweating in silence and shuffling forward at a rate of one step every three minutes. I don’t think I had ever seen quite so many people failing to enjoy themselves. The glacial lines put me in mind of Disney World, which was not altogether inappropriate since Williamsburg is really a sort of Disney World of American history. All the ticket takers and street sweepers and information givers were dressed in period costumes, the women in big aprons and muffin hats, the men in tri-cornered hats and breeches. The whole idea was to give history a happy gloss and make you think that spinning your own wool and dipping your own candles must have been bags of fun. I half expected to see Goofy and Donald Duck come waddling along dressed as soldiers in the Colonial Army.

The first house I came to had a sign saying DR MCKENZIE’S APOTHECARY. The door was open, so I went inside, expecting to see eighteenth-century apothecary items. But it was just a gift shop selling twee reproductions at outrageous prices – brass candle snifters at $28, reproduction apothecary jars at $35, that sort of thing. I fled back outside, wanting to stick