Desperately Seeking Big Rocks

As promised, I spent February chasing down (in Stephen Covey’s terms) several of my Big Rocks, trying not to fall so far behind my New Year’s resolutions that I’d have to restructure them--like just about everything else in this dismal economy.

I am happy to report that I had some reasonable success. The surprise mail delivery of a Kindle 2 (see Mossberg's review) by a friend in the last few days of the month nearly threw me off my game entirely, however. Needless to say, the Kindle 2 is a very cool device. My wish for you is that one would show up in your mailbox as well.

The problem with Big Rocks, I’ve discovered, is that once you start thinking about them, they just start cropping up everywhere.

Take, for example, the recent Wall Street Journal article on the 840 lb. Brazilian emerald reported missing (yes, missing) before being discovered in a crate by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The emerald is, needless to say, now being reported as stolen and has attracted five people, all of whom say they are the real owner.

This particular Big Rock is worth nearly $400 million.

Now, come to think of it, I did misplace something like that a few years back. Excuse me for a minute while I make a quick call to Los Angeles. . .

By the way, gem experts say crystals of this size are rarely broken down into smaller pieces of jewelry. However, like Solomon, if someone wanted to take a crack at it with a sledgehammer and send me a sixth of the result, even the smallest piece, I’d consider it all fair-and-square.

The other Big Rock that’s been in the news of late is, ironically, Little Rock, or more especially, the "little rock" after which the capital of Arkansas is named.

It seems that the good folk of Little Rock are intent on spending about $650,000 to excavate the remains of their namesake, which used to jut out prominently along the Arkansas River but was blasted away in 1872 to make way for a railroad bridge. Since then the remaining little(r) rock has been overgrown, nearly hidden and largely forgotten.

Nobody knows how much of the 300 million-year-old sandstone is actually left, which makes this all an iffy proposition in a very tough economic time. Still, the project has its backers, including private money, and is estimated to take five months. The result will be a plaza constructed around the rock for visiting and picnicking.

If you live in New England, as I do, this fascination with rocks is old hat. We’ve been through enough wars, fires, and urban renewals to have razed or rebuilt nearly every human structure from Native American and colonial times.

Which means, quite often, that the only thing left to honor and cherish, the only thing with any permanence, is a rock.  (Even then it's a little bit risky, as the Old Man in the Mountain reminded us a few years ago as it came crashing down.)

So, we’ve got Redemption Rock, where Mary Rowlandson was redeemed for some twenty pounds sterling after King Philip’s War, and we’ve got Anawan Rock, where Anawan was captured by Benjamin Church and the same war ended. We’ve also got Dighton Rock (the first picture at the top of this post) which was visited sometime in antiquity, depending on your point of view, by the Portuguese, Phoenecians, Chinese or Vikings.

I told you we had famous rocks, right?

There are more: Abrams Rock in Swansea; Steerage Rock in Brimfield; and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, and the one upon which Arkansas could really go to school: Plymouth Rock.

Plymouth is a lovely community just a bit north of the bridges to Cape Cod, home to the Mayflower and Plimouth Plantation, both of which are fascinating museums worth visiting.

But, there is no stranger or dumber sight then, on a freezing day--the wind sweeping off Plymouth Harbor--watching a bunch of poor tourists surround an early 20th century stone portico and gaze down into a sandy pit upon a pitiful rock.

The story of Plymouth Rock is oft-told, but no better than in John Seelye’s magisterial (which means both brilliant and almost 700 pages) Memory’s Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock. In it, Seelye makes clear that there is much less geological than political about Plymouth Rock—a concept Bill Clinton aptly assessed when he launched his political career many years ago by the site of "little rock."

Seelye pulls no punches: Plymouth Rock is “the central figura in what amounts to an ongoing hoax.” To wit, the following:

• There is no mention of Plymouth Rock in any surviving first-hand Pilgrim accounts.

• In 1741—121 years after the landing of the Pilgrims in America—plans were being made in Plymouth to construct a wharf that would, coincidentally, surround and bury a huge boulder located on the shore. Carried to the site in a chair, 95-year-old Thomas “Elder” Faunce testified that the boulder about to be buried was one “which his father had assured him was that, which had received the footsteps of our fathers on their first arrival, and which should be perpetuated to posterity.” Elder Faunce then cried and bid goodbye to the Rock.

• Faunce’s words were transmitted by Ephraim Spooner, who was six years old in 1741 and present on the occasion of Faunce’s visit to the Rock. Spooner died in 1818—only one conversation removed from his 1620 Forefathers--and likely repeated Faunce’s story often.

• Nevertheless, the Rock only “heaved into view” on the eve of the American Revolution, making its appearance in a sermon seeking to link the Pilgrims with New England’s role in the upcoming split with England. The Patriots of Plymouth decided to move (what was then called) Forefathers Rock from the shore to their courthouse and near a recently planted Liberty Pole. Employing several screwjacks and thirty yoke of oxen, they managed to accidentally break the Rock in two and were reduced to hauling the loose piece into town. The resourceful Patriots saw the break as nothing less than that coming between England and her colonies.

• The Rock emerged from local to national prominence only in 1820—the bicentennial of the Pilgrim’s landing--thanks to Daniel Webster, who spoke at the Plymouth celebration. Webster, retired from politics and on his way to godlike stature in New England, gave a speech which, one listener noted, “three or four times I thought my temples would burst with the gush of blood.” And Webster, connecting Plymouth to the grand sweep of (even Southern, Jeffersonian) history, reminded his country that “We feel that we are on the spot where the first scene of our history was laid. . .[and now] two thousand miles, westward from the rock. . .may now be found the sons of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields, rearing towns and villages. . .Ere long, the sons of the Pilgrims will be on the shores of the Pacific.”

• (Which reminds me of the joke, oft-repeated, that had the Pilgrims landed in California then New England would still not be settled by Europeans.)

• In its long history the Rock moved a number of times, was subject to mending with cement, was chipped and whacked and ended up with little pieces in collections all over America. In 1920, the remainder of the Rock(s) came to reside back near the shore, surrounded by grating and a portico designed by the legendary firm of McKim, Mead and White.

• So, Seelye concludes, Plymouth Rock is really about the politics of New Englanders, and their spore blown around the country, who tried valiantly to retain their regional importance in the face of an expanding nation. But, the truth is, not since Calvin Coolidge in 1920 has an American with presidential ambitions associated himself with the Rock. And today, Seelye says, “Plymouth Rock is so dead that it has become, so far as most intellectual historians are concerned, an invisible artifact.”

• The alternative, however, turned out to be not so bad for New England, as the region managed to trade the symbol of Plymouth Rock for that of the First Thanksgiving (inclusive of Natives and women), lending the country a national holiday anchored in the region.

• There’s more (much more), but suffice to say this: If you were landing a boat—a skiff, a pram, a launch, a battleship, an anything—on shore, would you aim for a flippin’ ROCK?

Although, given that the Pilgrims were heading for the banks of the Hudson River and ended up on Cape Cod, anything was possible.

Those of you on the backside of the Baby Boom may remember, as a child, a visit to Plymouth also included that funky wax museum. It was the stuff of nightmares, at least for me, and I am somewhat sad (who wouldn’t want a nightmare featuring Priscilla Alden?) to report that it was taken down years ago to be replaced by condos.

I will add, as much as I like Memory’s Nation, that Seeleye gives us one of the truly horrific sentences ever cast in the English language: “The spirit of the jeremiad, as defined by Sacvan Bercovitch’s refinement of Miller’s use of that Puritan genre, maintains a concomitant vitality, even while exchanging the punitive for a celebratory emphasis, holding up the Forefathers not as impossible models for emulation but as the founders of a securlar apostolic succession.”

Ouch, and shame on the editor.

On the other hand, Seeleye practices some laudable self-reflection when he states upfront, “I would wish this book no larger.” And, the paintings and images of the Rock and infamous landing—the genesis of the book—are wonderful to behold.

So, you can see for yourself that Big Rocks are everywhere. Some are worth pursuing, as I discovered last month, and as those chasing an 840-lb. emerald have decided. Some are worth avoiding, as truthful folks in Plymouth might whisper in your ear (though not during tourist season).

As for the folks in Little Rock, Arkansas: They (and $650,000) will find out soon enough which kind of Big Rock they really have.

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

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