WEBVTT - The Lost Archive 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:23.276 Pushkin. Imagine there's a place in our world where the 0:00:23.356 --> 0:00:30.556 known things go. A corridor of the mind. Along the walls, 0:00:30.916 --> 0:00:36.396 shelves stocked with proof, and all around the clutter of clues, 0:00:38.156 --> 0:00:43.916 wooden card catalogs, metal file drawers, walls covered with old maps, 0:00:44.596 --> 0:00:49.516 and over here my mother's sketch books, my father's notebooks. 0:00:51.476 --> 0:00:55.316 This place stores the facts that matter and matters of fact. 0:00:56.116 --> 0:01:00.436 It's all that stands between reasonable doubt and the chaos 0:01:00.436 --> 0:01:05.956 of uncertainty. Welcome to the Last Archive, a place I've 0:01:05.996 --> 0:01:08.516 been coming to for a while now to think about 0:01:08.596 --> 0:01:14.996 knowledge and the history of evidence. I'm Jill Lapoor. I'm 0:01:15.036 --> 0:01:20.196 fascinated by origins, When did something start and why? So 0:01:20.316 --> 0:01:22.996 for this final episode, I wanted to go on a 0:01:23.076 --> 0:01:27.236 quest for my own origins, a trip to the place 0:01:27.236 --> 0:01:30.756 where I first started asking questions about how we know 0:01:30.796 --> 0:01:33.316 what we know. I wanted to try to understand why, 0:01:33.836 --> 0:01:37.476 why exactly. I've gotten so worried about losing those things, 0:01:37.556 --> 0:01:41.796 losing the ability even to know anything at all. Step 0:01:41.796 --> 0:01:46.396 over the threshold to the town where I grew up. 0:01:53.756 --> 0:01:56.116 Long before I was born. The town where I grew 0:01:56.156 --> 0:01:59.516 up was taken apart brick by brick, stone by stone, 0:02:00.316 --> 0:02:06.636 plank by plank, tree by tree. How long does it 0:02:06.676 --> 0:02:10.636 take to build a town? I don't know. Decades, generations, 0:02:11.276 --> 0:02:15.876 clearing fields, cutting roads, building houses, planting crops, setting up 0:02:15.876 --> 0:02:19.516 a grist mill for grinding flower, a butchers, a bakers, 0:02:19.556 --> 0:02:24.476 a candlestick makers, establishing a church, a town hall, town 0:02:24.516 --> 0:02:27.516 common How long does it take for all that to 0:02:27.556 --> 0:02:34.516 be dismantled? I know that answer precisely nine years. In 0:02:34.556 --> 0:02:37.116 the eighteen nineties, the city of Boston was running out 0:02:37.116 --> 0:02:40.076 of drinking water. The Board of Health studied the problem, 0:02:40.196 --> 0:02:43.436 looked all over the state of Massachusetts for solutions. Where 0:02:43.476 --> 0:02:47.156 could they get water? They decided the best solution was 0:02:47.196 --> 0:02:50.876 to dam a river, the Nashua River. They'd create a 0:02:50.916 --> 0:02:53.676 reservoir with the water from the dammed river and build 0:02:53.716 --> 0:02:56.436 aqueducts to bring that water from the reservoir to the city. 0:02:57.236 --> 0:03:00.036 Problem was the place where they wanted to build this reservoir, 0:03:00.436 --> 0:03:03.996 A beautiful valley, a bound to full four thousand acre floodplain. 0:03:04.916 --> 0:03:08.476 It was a town, the town of West Boylston, population 0:03:08.756 --> 0:03:12.196 three thousand. Still, it was the best option, and the 0:03:12.276 --> 0:03:14.636 state decided to go ahead. In the name of progress. 0:03:15.356 --> 0:03:19.076 The state brought in the best engineers, drep plans detailed 0:03:19.116 --> 0:03:21.596 every inch of it, the dam, the reservoir, the pipes. 0:03:23.156 --> 0:03:26.956 The dismantling began in the year eighteen ninety five. Half 0:03:26.996 --> 0:03:29.836 the population of the town was displaced. The state brought 0:03:29.876 --> 0:03:34.436 in immigrant laborers battalions like my grandfather Giovanni Lapoor, to 0:03:34.476 --> 0:03:37.876 do the work. At night, they slept in shanties made 0:03:37.916 --> 0:03:41.716 of old boards and rusty nails. By day, every day 0:03:42.076 --> 0:03:46.756 they took things apart three hundred and sixty houses, eight schools, 0:03:46.876 --> 0:03:51.516 six mills, four churches, nineteen miles of roads, and six 0:03:51.556 --> 0:03:55.316 miles of train tracks. The dam was finished in nineteen 0:03:55.316 --> 0:03:59.356 oh five, and then the valley was very slowly flooded 0:03:59.356 --> 0:04:03.356 with water, its vast expanse swirling round the stone foundations 0:04:03.356 --> 0:04:08.476 of dismantled houses rising higher higher, higher, like filling a 0:04:08.516 --> 0:04:12.236 bowl with sue to the very rim. It was as 0:04:12.276 --> 0:04:21.436 if the town underneath had never been there. When we 0:04:21.476 --> 0:04:24.796 started this podcast three years ago, people kept getting the 0:04:24.836 --> 0:04:29.636 title wrong, the Lost Archive. It sounded so Indiana Jones. 0:04:30.236 --> 0:04:33.156 I had to keep correcting people. No, No, not the 0:04:33.276 --> 0:04:37.196 lost Archive, the last Archive. But I've come to see 0:04:37.276 --> 0:04:40.036 over these three seasons that a lot of the show 0:04:40.076 --> 0:04:43.676 really has been about loss. So instead of trying to 0:04:43.716 --> 0:04:46.676 avoid that title, I decided to jump right into it 0:04:46.836 --> 0:04:49.076 by going back to whist Boilston, the part of that 0:04:49.156 --> 0:04:52.476 town that survived the building of the reservoir. By nineteen 0:04:52.476 --> 0:04:55.236 o eight, half the town had been flooded. The valley, 0:04:55.316 --> 0:04:56.996 or what had once been the main part of town 0:04:57.396 --> 0:05:00.316 that was long gone. But after the reservoir was filled 0:05:00.556 --> 0:05:04.556 the hills that part of town survived. What had once 0:05:04.596 --> 0:05:08.036 been the outskirts became the center. I grew up there 0:05:08.156 --> 0:05:13.876 in the nineteen sixty in nineteen seventies, I can't even tree. 0:05:14.076 --> 0:05:17.076 This giant spruce tree was here when I was a kid. 0:05:18.116 --> 0:05:20.356 Was the weeping so far the only thing the willow 0:05:20.396 --> 0:05:24.796 tree in our backyard. I felt right bringing my producer 0:05:24.836 --> 0:05:28.156 Ben here. We first met, oh more than a decade ago, 0:05:28.596 --> 0:05:30.996 when he was a student of mine. He was one 0:05:31.036 --> 0:05:33.796 of those college students where you say, plainly, I'm the 0:05:33.836 --> 0:05:36.676 one learning here. We'd really gotten to know one another 0:05:36.716 --> 0:05:39.316 when he was working on his senior thesis about orson Welles. 0:05:39.796 --> 0:05:42.196 Ben and I share, among other things, a love of 0:05:42.196 --> 0:05:46.996 old radio and dogs and eb White essays for the 0:05:47.076 --> 0:05:49.476 Last Dart I've We've taken a lot of road trips, 0:05:49.996 --> 0:05:53.716 but for me, the weirdest quest we'd ever undertaken was 0:05:53.756 --> 0:05:56.396 that trip to the house where I grew up, a 0:05:56.516 --> 0:05:59.876 tiny white brick fronted colonial across the street from a 0:05:59.956 --> 0:06:03.876 restaurant called The Manor. Ben got there before I did. 0:06:04.356 --> 0:06:06.596 I was standing out front of the house, and then 0:06:06.636 --> 0:06:08.676 I was like, you know, maybe I shouldn't just be 0:06:09.156 --> 0:06:13.596 can here with those strange Yeah. I hadn't been back, 0:06:13.836 --> 0:06:17.196 probably since the nineteen eighties. You might think a historian 0:06:17.236 --> 0:06:20.316 would like to look back, to go back, but I 0:06:20.436 --> 0:06:23.356 don't like looking back at my own life. I'm also 0:06:23.636 --> 0:06:28.556 the opposite of a hoarder. I threw everything away, photographs, diaries, letters, 0:06:29.076 --> 0:06:31.876 pretty much junked all of it. I love reading other 0:06:31.916 --> 0:06:35.676 people's old male pawing through their archives, but not my own. 0:06:36.436 --> 0:06:39.636 I also never go back. Everything's different in my old 0:06:39.636 --> 0:06:42.556 neighborhood now. The street used to be a sleepy little 0:06:42.596 --> 0:06:46.196 road and something closer to a raceway. Now. Our house 0:06:46.236 --> 0:06:48.796 was kind of raggedy, a little shabby, a vacant lot 0:06:48.836 --> 0:06:52.516 next door for kickball, wild BlackBerry patch in the back. 0:06:53.396 --> 0:06:56.196 None of that's there anymore. What hasn't been mowed down 0:06:56.396 --> 0:06:59.916 has been tarted up. When I was twelve, the night 0:06:59.916 --> 0:07:02.196 before we moved out of that little brick fronted colonial, 0:07:02.716 --> 0:07:04.756 I walked through every room in the house in my 0:07:04.796 --> 0:07:08.516 pajamas in the dark, carrying a flashlight, casting its glow 0:07:08.556 --> 0:07:12.036 from corner at a corner, from floor to ceiling, trying 0:07:12.076 --> 0:07:15.316 to frame within the light and then commit to memory 0:07:16.036 --> 0:07:21.036 every single object within my sight. The yellow laundry shoot, 0:07:21.156 --> 0:07:25.756 the cream and leather world book encyclopedias, the pink flowered wallpaper, 0:07:26.316 --> 0:07:30.116 the shelf of canned soups, the ashtrays in every room 0:07:30.276 --> 0:07:33.436 for my father's wooden pipes, the smell of his brigs 0:07:33.476 --> 0:07:37.676 tobacco everywhere. I wanted to memorize the contents of the 0:07:37.836 --> 0:07:41.036 entire house as if I were shooting a film, to 0:07:41.196 --> 0:07:43.716 keep and etch and preserve it in my mind, an 0:07:43.836 --> 0:07:47.556 archive of my childhood. Nights afterward, I would close my 0:07:47.596 --> 0:07:49.716 eyes in bed and run the film again to watch it, 0:07:49.956 --> 0:07:53.156 so I wouldn't forget it visiting there looking at old 0:07:53.156 --> 0:07:58.436 photographs that would have been crazy to me. Instead, I 0:07:58.556 --> 0:08:04.236 kept it in my head. I can still unspool that 0:08:04.276 --> 0:08:06.956 film and watch it when I shut my eyes. I 0:08:07.076 --> 0:08:10.076 know where the soup should be shelved, the spot on 0:08:10.076 --> 0:08:12.556 the bumpy froumpy couch and the basement where my cat 0:08:12.596 --> 0:08:15.676 had kittens. The proper shade of pink for the bedroom 0:08:15.756 --> 0:08:19.636 above the garage. I didn't like to store things, but 0:08:19.716 --> 0:08:23.796 I like to keep memories. I was always worried about forgetting, mainly, 0:08:23.796 --> 0:08:26.196 I think because I was so distressed by what distresses 0:08:26.236 --> 0:08:29.436 every kid. Grown ups seem to have forgotten what it's 0:08:29.436 --> 0:08:34.316 like to be small and powerless and scared. How could 0:08:34.356 --> 0:08:37.676 they for me. The place to go for answers to 0:08:37.756 --> 0:08:42.796 that question, for answers to every question was the library 0:08:43.756 --> 0:08:48.036 in West Boylston. That place was the Beaman Memorial Public Library. 0:08:48.236 --> 0:08:50.316 He could walk there from our house, and I walked 0:08:50.356 --> 0:08:51.996 there all the time because it was one of my 0:08:52.076 --> 0:08:54.836 chores to bring all the library books back. How did 0:08:54.836 --> 0:08:57.636 you return all these books? I had this little red 0:08:57.676 --> 0:09:02.676 canvas rucksack that with these canvas straps that I really loved, 0:09:02.716 --> 0:09:04.676 and I don't know where I got it or if 0:09:04.676 --> 0:09:06.796 I picked it out, but like I remember thinking, this 0:09:06.836 --> 0:09:09.516 is exactly what a little girls should carry your books 0:09:09.516 --> 0:09:11.276 to the library. And I don't know why I like it. 0:09:12.316 --> 0:09:17.316 I think I God, look at the library. I walked 0:09:17.316 --> 0:09:19.476 from my house to the library went partly through the woods, 0:09:19.476 --> 0:09:21.716 at least the way I took it. You walked across 0:09:21.756 --> 0:09:25.116 our backyard, leapt over a little brook, and traveled along 0:09:25.116 --> 0:09:28.716 a path through a shadowy pine forest. You got through 0:09:28.716 --> 0:09:33.236 the sort of BlackBerry field through you merged out of 0:09:33.236 --> 0:09:35.156 the BlackBerry patch, and all of a sudden you were 0:09:35.156 --> 0:09:38.516 at the town common. There was the Catholic church, our church, 0:09:38.636 --> 0:09:42.316 the cemetery, a skating rink in the winter, a gazebo, 0:09:42.836 --> 0:09:44.996 and then you cut through this park like thing, which 0:09:45.076 --> 0:09:49.556 wasn't as landscaped as now. This is the center of town. 0:09:50.036 --> 0:09:55.356 Door to door. It took all of fifteen minutes. It's 0:09:55.356 --> 0:09:57.476 occurred to me more than once when working on the 0:09:57.556 --> 0:10:01.636 last archive, that this building, this little town library, lies 0:10:01.676 --> 0:10:03.796 at its heart. When I say this thing at the 0:10:03.836 --> 0:10:06.356 top of the show about the place where the known 0:10:06.436 --> 0:10:09.116 Things go, I must be thinking about the Beaman Memori 0:10:09.196 --> 0:10:12.556 Royal Public Library, because that's the place where I anyway 0:10:12.836 --> 0:10:15.796 used to go to know things. Out front of the 0:10:15.796 --> 0:10:19.596 library there's a little monument to the town's revolutionary era founder, 0:10:20.156 --> 0:10:23.276 Ezra Beamon. It's like how in The Simpsons there's a 0:10:23.316 --> 0:10:28.036 statue in Springfield to that town's revolutionary era founder, guy 0:10:28.076 --> 0:10:32.516 who goes by the name Jebediah Obadiah Zachariah Jedediah Springfield. 0:10:33.556 --> 0:10:41.356 So this is the famous Beeman watering trough, because I 0:10:41.356 --> 0:10:46.996 think his name is Jedediah Zachariah Obediahs. You can't get 0:10:47.036 --> 0:10:50.196 water for your horse here anymore, of course, the trough's empty. 0:10:50.436 --> 0:10:52.796 It's just decorative. But back when I was a kid, 0:10:53.156 --> 0:10:55.996 I found it magical, a portal to another world, a 0:10:56.076 --> 0:10:58.756 kind of time machine, to a world where people had 0:10:58.836 --> 0:11:02.116 horses who needed water. And I was always curious about 0:11:02.116 --> 0:11:06.596 this mysterious founder, Guy are Ezra Beamon. In The Simpsons, 0:11:06.796 --> 0:11:11.036 Lisa sets her mind on unmasking Jebba Springfield. This quest 0:11:11.116 --> 0:11:14.796 takes her to Springfield's Historical Society, where she digs through 0:11:14.836 --> 0:11:22.916 the archives and she finds the secret confessions of Jeopardiah Springfield. Know, 0:11:23.156 --> 0:11:25.556 ye who read this, there is more to my life 0:11:25.556 --> 0:11:31.076 than history record. That was exactly my girlhood fantasy. As 0:11:31.116 --> 0:11:34.236 I trudged every day into the Beaman Memorial Library wearing 0:11:34.316 --> 0:11:38.596 my red canvas rucksack stuffed with books, standing in front 0:11:38.596 --> 0:11:41.236 of the historical plaque. I can still feel a little 0:11:41.236 --> 0:11:44.596 bit of that thrill. This watering trough was erected in 0:11:44.716 --> 0:11:47.116 eighteen o eight at the old Beamon Tavern by Major 0:11:47.196 --> 0:11:49.956 as Rabeam, and the founder of was Bolston. This is 0:11:49.996 --> 0:11:52.476 an ingering question. What does it mean to found a town? 0:11:52.756 --> 0:11:54.876 Is it like he showed up here and he was like, 0:11:54.916 --> 0:11:57.596 I like the cut of this valley and you should 0:11:57.636 --> 0:12:01.356 come out, or as Rabamon founded was Bolston in the 0:12:01.396 --> 0:12:04.356 way that most New England towns were founded by seceding 0:12:04.556 --> 0:12:07.676 from another town. The Beamon's settled in New England in 0:12:07.756 --> 0:12:11.436 sixteen thirty five. Ezra was born in seventeen thirty six. 0:12:11.996 --> 0:12:15.316 In seventeen sixty four he built the Beeman Tavern, where 0:12:15.356 --> 0:12:18.636 colonists would laid a rail against British tyranny. Then he 0:12:18.636 --> 0:12:22.076 fought in the Revolutionary War. Starting in seventeen ninety three, 0:12:22.116 --> 0:12:24.996 he lobbied the state, hoping to establish the valley where 0:12:25.036 --> 0:12:27.756 he lived as its own town, separate from the town 0:12:27.796 --> 0:12:31.316 of Boylston. He won that battle in eighteen o eight, 0:12:31.876 --> 0:12:36.196 founded West Boylston and died three years later. How the 0:12:36.276 --> 0:12:39.996 library got started, that's another story. West Boylston opened its 0:12:39.996 --> 0:12:43.476 first library in eighteen seventy eight, mainly with a collection 0:12:43.476 --> 0:12:47.436 of books donated by the writer, abolitionist and suffragist Lydia 0:12:47.476 --> 0:12:51.076 Moriah Child. That library was demolished for the reservoir, and 0:12:51.196 --> 0:12:54.356 so was Ezra Beeman's family farm, and so was the 0:12:54.396 --> 0:12:58.116 Beeman Tavern. Anyway, in nineteen eleven, when the New Town 0:12:58.116 --> 0:13:00.876 Center was just being built, after the reservoir was filled, 0:13:01.076 --> 0:13:04.436 Ezra Beeman's great grandson funded the building of a new 0:13:04.476 --> 0:13:08.156 Town library. It opened the next year as the Beaman Memorial. 0:13:08.676 --> 0:13:10.956 It opened at the height of the progressive era, when 0:13:10.996 --> 0:13:16.076 public libraries represented the vanguard of democracy, These free, beautiful 0:13:16.196 --> 0:13:22.156 places open for everyone, especially for the waves of new immigrants, Hungarians, Jews, 0:13:22.356 --> 0:13:28.276 Italians like my grandfather. You know, probably the stateliest building 0:13:28.276 --> 0:13:30.476 in town. I mean, we're looking at it. It's a 0:13:31.316 --> 0:13:33.396 you know, it's it's not gorgeous. It's a it's a 0:13:33.476 --> 0:13:38.596 sort of very kind of prim brick with white trim, 0:13:39.236 --> 0:13:43.636 two story building with the kind of pitched slate roof. 0:13:44.356 --> 0:13:50.316 It's not imposing, it's not monumental, but it communicates its 0:13:50.436 --> 0:13:55.196 public charter in the way it faces this little common 0:13:55.476 --> 0:13:59.076 and in the way it occupies the tip of this 0:13:59.156 --> 0:14:03.076 long triangle where the two main roads of the town 0:14:03.116 --> 0:14:07.236 are coming together. It just says, welcome to our town, 0:14:07.476 --> 0:14:12.756 and here is our world of knowledge. Ben and I 0:14:12.956 --> 0:14:16.756 headed inside. We walked into a reading room with tall windows, 0:14:17.276 --> 0:14:21.676 long wooden tables equilt on the wall, each square stitched 0:14:21.716 --> 0:14:25.676 to depict an episode in the town's history. And it 0:14:25.836 --> 0:14:30.916 was very very quiet. You know how, It's like every 0:14:30.956 --> 0:14:33.476 library has the sign that says, like, maintain a library 0:14:33.556 --> 0:14:36.116 like atmosphere. Yeah, which is this kind of like very 0:14:36.156 --> 0:14:38.796 circular reasoning. I feel that this is a really clear 0:14:38.836 --> 0:14:42.596 illustration of a library type atmosphere. Upon coming in, you 0:14:42.676 --> 0:14:47.356 feel it. The library was a lot smaller than I remembered. Also, 0:14:47.396 --> 0:14:49.876 it was a lot nicer. I could still close my 0:14:49.916 --> 0:14:52.596 eyes and picture where my favorite books used to be shelved, 0:14:52.996 --> 0:14:56.116 the corner where I liked best to read. Now when 0:14:56.156 --> 0:14:58.796 I go to a library reading room, it's a big library, 0:14:58.836 --> 0:15:01.916 Harvard's widen Air Library or the New York Public Library 0:15:02.036 --> 0:15:05.356 or the Library of Congress. The beam in reading room 0:15:05.876 --> 0:15:08.236 is the size of a living room, and all the 0:15:08.276 --> 0:15:13.436 more magical for at a tiny mystical palace. You see 0:15:13.436 --> 0:15:15.716 all these quotes about libraries. They're penned up on the 0:15:15.716 --> 0:15:20.476 glass the very existence of libraries affords the best evidence 0:15:20.516 --> 0:15:22.636 that we may yet have hope for the future of 0:15:22.716 --> 0:15:27.796 man ts Eliott with u Isabella end a quote that's 0:15:27.876 --> 0:15:30.836 very last archivey. The library is inhabited by spirits that 0:15:30.916 --> 0:15:33.636 come out of the pages at night. We're at the 0:15:33.636 --> 0:15:36.476 beginning of the episode. When I was a little kid, 0:15:36.676 --> 0:15:38.596 I spent most of my time in the children's room 0:15:38.676 --> 0:15:41.836 in the basement, where the librarian was named Missus Noise, 0:15:42.516 --> 0:15:46.036 Missus Noise, who told everyone to be quiet. The children's 0:15:46.116 --> 0:15:48.556 room has since then moved up to the second floor. 0:15:48.876 --> 0:15:52.836 Ben and I headed upstairs. Rugged carpet, hip high shelves, 0:15:53.036 --> 0:15:59.156 pint sized chairs, stuffed animals. This is so cute. I 0:15:59.276 --> 0:16:04.156 love a children's every puppet theater start. Yeah, they have 0:16:04.156 --> 0:16:08.196 a painted puppet theater like a Jella. You graduate from 0:16:08.196 --> 0:16:10.876 the children's room and get set loose in the nonfiction 0:16:10.916 --> 0:16:14.556 and fiction stacks, the reference room, the card catalog, the 0:16:14.636 --> 0:16:17.756 computer terminal. Everything in a library is there just for 0:16:17.876 --> 0:16:21.596 you and also just for everyone else. It's a public 0:16:21.636 --> 0:16:25.036 space for common knowledge and for community. But you could 0:16:25.076 --> 0:16:27.756 also take a piece of it back home in your backpack. 0:16:28.516 --> 0:16:30.836 Every step of the walk home passed the town Common, 0:16:30.876 --> 0:16:33.516 through the BlackBerry patch, winding a path through the pine woods, 0:16:33.596 --> 0:16:36.356 leaping over the brook sneaker squelching in the mud, rucksack 0:16:36.396 --> 0:16:40.036 on my back, walking through the beam in public library. 0:16:40.316 --> 0:16:43.316 I began to think it had been just this all along, 0:16:43.756 --> 0:16:47.516 that I felt I'd lost the giddiness of carrying that weight, 0:16:47.916 --> 0:16:50.836 bringing home a stack full of books, believing they held 0:16:50.836 --> 0:17:10.236 all the answers, spirits seeping out of their pages. Every 0:17:10.276 --> 0:17:13.036 little town library that I've ever been to has its 0:17:13.036 --> 0:17:17.436 own version of a last archive, some tiny locked room. 0:17:17.636 --> 0:17:20.516 Sometimes it's in an attic, more often it's down in 0:17:20.556 --> 0:17:24.476 the basement where they keep old stuff, antiques, a lot 0:17:24.476 --> 0:17:27.156 of it. It's junk stuff people donate to the library 0:17:27.156 --> 0:17:31.116 thinking it's amazing and collectible, but really it's pretty much trash, 0:17:31.156 --> 0:17:32.996 and then the library and has got to keep it, 0:17:33.076 --> 0:17:36.636 or feels obligated to keep it. I've seen very old 0:17:36.676 --> 0:17:41.716 and obscure books in these places, paintings, prints, unwanted bronze plaques, 0:17:42.196 --> 0:17:47.876 chipped marble statues, jewelry, boxes of beads, campaign buttons, moth 0:17:47.956 --> 0:17:54.276 eaten poncho's, ivory, chess pieces, stamp collections, faded photo albums. 0:17:54.316 --> 0:17:58.236 Sometimes it's a treasure, though I found uncataloged invaluable portraits 0:17:58.276 --> 0:18:00.596 in these rooms. I once went to a town library 0:18:00.596 --> 0:18:03.716 where they had a mammoth tusk and preserved in plaster 0:18:04.236 --> 0:18:07.276 dinosaur footprints. I wouldn't be surprised to find a dead 0:18:07.316 --> 0:18:10.436 body in one of these places. Honestly, they're strapped, padlocked 0:18:10.436 --> 0:18:17.196 trunk full of bones. The last archive at the Beamon 0:18:17.276 --> 0:18:20.516 Memorial Library in West Boylstone is a windowless room in 0:18:20.556 --> 0:18:25.436 the basement with metal shelves and a dehumidifier humming. Anna, 0:18:25.516 --> 0:18:28.916 the library director, let us in. There was a wooden 0:18:28.916 --> 0:18:32.116 reading table and a cardboard box filled with tiny white 0:18:32.116 --> 0:18:35.596 cotton gloves. Ben and I stretched them on and began 0:18:35.676 --> 0:18:39.716 pawing our way across the shelves. I always want somehow 0:18:39.716 --> 0:18:42.396 to touch everything, lay a finger across the spine of 0:18:42.516 --> 0:18:45.876 every book. Ben's got the same bug, I thought, watching 0:18:45.916 --> 0:18:48.916 his white gloved fingers tracing in boss titles as he 0:18:48.916 --> 0:18:52.236 read them out loud to himself, whispering, neither of us 0:18:52.236 --> 0:18:54.276 are hardly happier than when in a room like this. 0:18:54.756 --> 0:18:57.916 Dust boars dancing in the light so much in so 0:18:57.996 --> 0:19:02.996 small a space musty. It smells like knowledge. And none 0:19:02.996 --> 0:19:07.876 of it exists online anywhere. Ezra Beamon's family Bible is here. 0:19:08.116 --> 0:19:11.676 Heaviest Stone, the guy who started the Farmer's Almanacs from 0:19:11.716 --> 0:19:14.516 West Boylston. So they've got a complete set of old 0:19:14.556 --> 0:19:17.556 Farmer's Almanacs down here. They've got the whole of Lydia 0:19:17.636 --> 0:19:21.476 Maria Child's Library, the hundred and seventy volumes that started 0:19:21.516 --> 0:19:24.356 off this collection. There are also plenty of records of 0:19:24.356 --> 0:19:27.236 my own family, Photographs of my father, who was a 0:19:27.276 --> 0:19:31.116 public school teacher, in the town's high school yearbooks, smiling 0:19:31.196 --> 0:19:34.396 surrounded by the men's basketball team, or sitting behind a 0:19:34.476 --> 0:19:38.596 desk wearing a bow tie, smoking his pipe and looking shy. 0:19:39.476 --> 0:19:41.356 Then there were also lots and lots of old maps 0:19:41.356 --> 0:19:44.236 and blueprints of the town, the two thousand acres of 0:19:44.236 --> 0:19:47.396 farms and houses and churches and mills that in the 0:19:47.396 --> 0:19:50.876 early eighteen nineties the water board was planning to flood. 0:19:52.436 --> 0:19:55.476 Plan of West Boylston after the survey of the Metropolitan 0:19:55.516 --> 0:20:01.036 water Board eighteen ninety eight, the state had to inventory 0:20:01.076 --> 0:20:03.956 every square inch of land and everything on it to 0:20:04.036 --> 0:20:07.636 pay property owners and to plan the engineering marble that 0:20:07.796 --> 0:20:11.436 was the reservoir in the dam. Each slope and incline, 0:20:11.756 --> 0:20:14.756 the pitch and size of it all. Looking at the 0:20:14.796 --> 0:20:19.116 engineering plans blue with white lines like water and fishing line, 0:20:19.476 --> 0:20:22.556 I pictured what they hid. The farm or somesow once 0:20:22.596 --> 0:20:25.436 had a record number of piglets. Could almost hear them 0:20:25.436 --> 0:20:29.556 squealing the hayloft where lovers met on autumn evenings, whispering 0:20:29.596 --> 0:20:33.036 over the thrumb of crickets. Their whole world had been 0:20:33.076 --> 0:20:36.756 reduced to these blue sheets of paper. And then, after 0:20:36.796 --> 0:20:39.676 the project had been completed, what did the State Waterboard 0:20:39.676 --> 0:20:42.796 do with all those plans? They gave them to the 0:20:42.836 --> 0:20:46.636 town library. On the wall above the bank of drawers 0:20:46.636 --> 0:20:50.436 that held the blueprints, they hung a manuscript, framed and 0:20:50.596 --> 0:20:55.076 under glass, a letter dated nineteen twelve from the town 0:20:55.116 --> 0:21:00.316 Clerk's office, in much faded handwriting. We are deeply gratified 0:21:00.436 --> 0:21:03.316 that we are the recipients of a kindness, the final 0:21:03.356 --> 0:21:08.036 expression of a long cherished purpose, so appropriate and so timely. 0:21:10.356 --> 0:21:13.556 It was a resolution of thanks to Ezra Beemon's great grandson, 0:21:14.036 --> 0:21:18.036 thanking him for the gift of the library. This gift 0:21:18.276 --> 0:21:22.236 will enable us, our children, and our children's children down 0:21:22.316 --> 0:21:33.676 through the generations to reap the rich footage of recorded 0:21:33.756 --> 0:21:42.356 human thought rich? Where is it? It's got to be footage. No, 0:21:42.476 --> 0:21:48.476 it's not footage vintage. I just could not figure out 0:21:48.516 --> 0:21:51.596 this weird old word. Could not see the letters tell 0:21:51.636 --> 0:21:54.716 one from another, could not sound it out. I found 0:21:54.756 --> 0:21:59.916 myself in a library unable to read the word. Is footage? 0:22:02.636 --> 0:22:08.556 Is not the rich footage of recorded human thought? Okay, 0:22:08.556 --> 0:22:10.716 so we had not. I found the equivalent of Jebediah 0:22:10.756 --> 0:22:16.396 Obadiah Zachariah Jedediah Springfield Secret Diary. But honestly it was 0:22:16.476 --> 0:22:21.396 better this tribute to Ezra Beemon's great grandson. This gift 0:22:21.836 --> 0:22:25.276 will enable us, our children and our children's children down 0:22:25.436 --> 0:22:32.636 through the generations to reap the rich. It's a good thing. 0:22:32.716 --> 0:22:34.716 Ben was with me. He's much better at keeping his 0:22:34.796 --> 0:22:37.796 head at a word like footage. I mean, you can 0:22:37.876 --> 0:22:47.196 read fruit, to read the rich fruited. It comes to this, 0:22:48.516 --> 0:22:52.796 the end. This is like, this is the original, This 0:22:52.876 --> 0:22:56.436 is the Incanla, the last dur Guy. We have found 0:22:56.436 --> 0:23:01.756 it here, and yet we cannot have it to read 0:23:01.316 --> 0:23:06.356 the footage of recorded human thought. This is where the 0:23:06.476 --> 0:23:13.956 known things go. This letter, pressed under glass, framed in wood, 0:23:14.756 --> 0:23:18.316 hanging on a wall, fading had been in this little 0:23:18.356 --> 0:23:22.516 basement room my whole life, a fifteen minute walk from 0:23:22.516 --> 0:23:25.956 my house, and I'd never seen it before. It would 0:23:25.956 --> 0:23:27.516 have meant nothing to me when I was ten years 0:23:27.556 --> 0:23:31.236 old anyway, but it's been waiting here for the moment 0:23:31.716 --> 0:23:35.796 I needed it. Reading it, trying to read it gave 0:23:35.836 --> 0:23:38.396 me that same magical feeling I always get when reading 0:23:38.436 --> 0:23:41.436 something written long ago that says something to me, as 0:23:41.476 --> 0:23:43.716 if it had been written and sealed in an envelope 0:23:43.716 --> 0:23:47.556 and mailed to me, mailed to everyone, but we each 0:23:47.596 --> 0:23:49.676 get to open it up when the time is right. 0:23:50.796 --> 0:23:56.636 It's very beautiful. The archives of old podcasts don't have stacks, 0:23:56.756 --> 0:24:00.676 no spines of books, not even any file drawers. Just 0:24:00.876 --> 0:24:04.396 MP three's floating in the ether, episodes about Rachel Carson 0:24:04.396 --> 0:24:07.916 and bird Song, about Pedro Gonzalez and Spanish language radio, 0:24:08.316 --> 0:24:12.396 about the polio vaccine and access Sally, and Soviet propaganda, 0:24:12.596 --> 0:24:17.356 everything from the Scopes trial to January sixth. The idea 0:24:17.396 --> 0:24:20.756 of a fictional archive had been Ben's, but the fictional 0:24:20.796 --> 0:24:24.756 conceit always intersects with something real. That's what we found anyway. 0:24:25.356 --> 0:24:28.196 This love letter to Ezra Beemon's great grandson from the 0:24:28.236 --> 0:24:31.636 town clerk it was like that. I wanted to nab it, 0:24:32.236 --> 0:24:35.476 stick it in my rucksack, head off through the BlackBerry brambles, 0:24:35.756 --> 0:24:39.396 and carry it back into the last archive. But not 0:24:39.436 --> 0:24:43.196 everything lost finds its way to an archive. Not most things. 0:24:43.236 --> 0:24:48.276 Actually most things they just vanish. Ben and I had 0:24:48.276 --> 0:24:52.716 one more stop to the place where the lost things go. 0:24:57.396 --> 0:25:00.516 So see how we're just driving down into You could 0:25:00.516 --> 0:25:03.796 imagine this just as a valley. It we're just really 0:25:03.836 --> 0:25:07.476 gone lower, much lower than we were. But this is 0:25:07.516 --> 0:25:11.996 the Wachuset Reservoir, and it's really very beautiful. When I 0:25:12.036 --> 0:25:14.196 grew up in West Wellston, the same as if everything 0:25:14.316 --> 0:25:18.236 involved around the reservoir, it was just so big. It's fast, really, 0:25:18.596 --> 0:25:21.956 which means that you're forever driving across it or around it. 0:25:21.956 --> 0:25:23.836 It's just a reservoir. Though you take it for granted. 0:25:23.876 --> 0:25:26.916 You don't really think about it, except that I did. 0:25:28.756 --> 0:25:30.836 Maybe when I was six years old, my mother told 0:25:30.836 --> 0:25:33.076 me that under the reservoir used to be the town. 0:25:33.796 --> 0:25:36.676 I remember we were driving over this same causeway, and 0:25:36.716 --> 0:25:39.956 then I got obsessed with it, the drowned town under 0:25:39.996 --> 0:25:45.156 the water, the town haunted, flooded, vanished. I biked across 0:25:45.196 --> 0:25:47.596 here all the time, as a kid, this causeway, and 0:25:48.276 --> 0:25:49.876 I'm going to take a left here and go buy 0:25:49.876 --> 0:25:55.876 this hotdog stand, which is a famous landmark. Well used 0:25:55.876 --> 0:25:59.356 to be Bobs, but I guess it's Roun's now. The 0:25:59.476 --> 0:26:02.756 last stop of this last last archive road trip to 0:26:02.876 --> 0:26:05.796 the watch Us Reservoir. Like when you're a kid, like 0:26:05.836 --> 0:26:07.636 there's your family, and there's your house, and then there's 0:26:07.636 --> 0:26:09.516 your street, and then there's your neighborhood, and then there's 0:26:09.516 --> 0:26:12.236 some sense of your town. It always felt like my 0:26:12.316 --> 0:26:16.436 town was just missing. My town had gone to its 0:26:16.476 --> 0:26:21.756