Fostering curiosity in kids (and their parents) since 2011

Posts tagged ‘history’

VW Beetle painted gold.

“What’s the oldest model car on the road today?”

The sighting of the year’s first Model T is always cause for celebration at Caterpickles Central, because it means summer is well and truly here. The antique roadsters have been out and about for weeks now, though, and the excitement of being the first to yell “Funky old car!” on spotting one is starting to pale. One afternoon, my daughter, after spotting yet another red roadster with an exposed motor, started to wonder about the actual ages of the funky old cars on the road around us. “Mommyo, what’s the oldest model car on the road today?”

“How did they make old-timey ketchup?”: A Caterpickles Investigative Report

One of the reasons I love eating at local diners is that they tend to serve ketchup in glass bottles. The Five-Year-Old, though, was a bit surprised to learn that squeeze-and-squirt hasn’t always been fundamental to the ketchup experience. “Is this an old-timey bottle, Mommyo?” “Yep.” The Five-Year-Old, warily eying the red glob on her plate: “How do they make old-timey ketchup, Mommyo?” I didn’t know, but making old-timey ketchup sure sounded like a lot of fun.

“What happened to the Mayflower One?”

Yesterday morning, as we were planning our itinerary for the summer, I asked The Five-Year-Old if she would like to go visit the Mayflower in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Naturally, she would. She was disappointed to hear that the ship we’d see was just a replica, Mayflower II. “What happened to MayFlower One, Mommyo?”

“How did the Charles River get its name?”

On an unexpected detour this weekend through South Natick, The Five-Year-Old noticed a sign for the Charles River. After establishing that it was in fact the same Charles River that flows by the Museum of Science, she naturally wanted to know: “Mommyo, how did the Charles River get its name?”

How The Five-Year-Old helped me understand the Victorian practice of posing with their dead

Exposure times for photography in those days were extremely long, which had the perverse effect of making the dead daughter in this example the only reliably in-focus part of the image, while her (then) living parents appear blurred and more ghost-like. (Image via cogitz.com)

Earlier this week while doing some of the never-ending research for my novel-in-progress, Asylum, I came across memento mori, the Victorian practice of posing their dead for photographs. At first, I labeled this as just one more in a long line of somewhat creepy things Victorians did. But then The Five-Year-Old did something that completely changed my perspective on it.

“Did the Victorian-time people use duct tape?”

After presenting me with a Victorian necklace crafted of the finest rainbow-splattered duct tape and yellow construction paper, The Five-Year-Old was naturally concerned about the authenticity of her work. “Mommyo, did Victorians use duct tape?” I was pretty sure duct tape was invented after the world had said goodbye to Queen Victoria, but I had to look the exact date up.