I want to achieve two goals with this post.
First.
Inaugurate a new series “Learning History By Looking At Statues, Before They’re All Taken Down”.
Second.
I don’t want my kid sister to feel badly about not having a driver’s license.
Geo. Washington, in the park. Sometimes stumped, often defeated, but never beaten. Carried through the Revolution by his single-minded drive, and a horse.
Dear Sis –
George Washington was a great man.
He fought the French, he fought the English, he fought the Hessians, and he fought the Whiskey Rebellion.
And despite all that, he isn’t seen as a hostile guy, everybody thinks he’s a great guy.
But.
Like many otherwise nice, intelligent people…
He. Could. Not. Parallel. Park.
Look closely at this statue. This happened all the time.
Stuck on a stump.
An unparalleled leader of men, but he just couldn’t parallel park.
“Martha? Can you give me a lift? There’s something the matter with this horse again.”
And did he give up? I do not think so.
What is carved on the base of this statue? A quotation from the Marquis de Lafayette:
“Il est un conducteur terrible. Mais il est toujours un grand homme”
“He is a terrible driver, but still, a great man.”
Washington was a lesson in perseverance, and overcoming all obstacles in your path. Except granite curbs. And light poles. Stray shopping carts, too.
Now, here he’s crossing the Delaware.
Why would you do that in a little boat, standing up, when the river’s full of ice?
Because you cannot get your horse to go around the safety cones, on the bridge to New Jersey.
So you don’t give up, you take the ferry.
You just have to keep trying. And re-taking the driving test. I will give you driving lessons over the holidays.
But not with my car.
UpState & Away - - - - Waterlooseneca.com 
I remember sitting with my younger sister when she learned to drive. It was a Whole. New. Experience.
Adds a bit of spice to life. A trip to the grocery store becomes “An Adventure in White-Knuckled, Unbridled Terror!” coming soon to a screen near you.
Yup, that’s the one. You’ve met her, then?
🙂
Hope you sis can parallel park
She’s doing great with driving otherwise, this is the last skill she needs, and then away she goes.
That’s sweet, for your sis. I shudder at the thought with my two kids. Reason for us to hold onto our 1990 Volvo wagon, maybe. It’s all about lining up the angle of the rear view mirror with something but now I forget. I guess a lot of it is about confidence under pressure too, especially in front of a sidewalk cafe in the summer when everyone’s sitting outside with drinks watching you.
This is just a small joke, I’m the last person to teach anyone parking, especially in front of a cafe crowd. I didn’t bring my car to Boston, traffic is pretty nuts here, no parking with this apartment, and they boot cars if you forget about the street cleaning schedule, etc. Living near a T-station is proving to be a great idea.
I abandoned my $500 Toyota Celica in Philadelphia for similar reasons. Took about 7 years, but it caught up with me.
You mean, the Toyota found you again? Or Philly sent you a whopping fine?
Poor horse.
The other theory for this thing in the park, is that the horse just got tired over the years, posing for statue after statue, and began to sag.
I am on board with this series.
I need to buy a can of pigeon repellent, or maybe take up falconry, and then I’ll scout the statuary in Boston. This horse-on-the-stump was actually in Pittsburgh.
Haha, nice post man! Good luck with the driving lessons. 😎
Thanks, man, wish me luck. And maybe stay off the streets/sidewalks for a while!
Will do! Lol Have a good weekend!
I like this post, Robert, and I’m looking forward to the new series.
Thanks, Pit!
This is the funniest darned post I’ve come across in some time. I’ve read it about a half-dozen times, and it took until the third time or so to finally see the stump. I was so taken with the writing, I was ignoring the image.
There’s one thing about those driving lessons — you never know when they’ll come in handy. When I was in high school, my dad took me down to the shopping center parking lot in January to teach me how to drive on ice. We did it all — it was a big parking lot — until I had “steer into the skid” down pat.
Fast forward to the Houston freeways, thirty years later. I was going about 65, and got rear-ended on the port stern quarter by a dude going about 100 or better. I started going back and forth across the freeway, and honest to goodness, I could hear my dad saying, “Steer into the skid.” I never spun out, although the tires were shredded to nothing, and the concrete barrier at the median took out the front end. The guy behind me said he couldn’t believe that I kept the car pointed straight ahead.
It’s so weird, how things we don’t even think about at the time turn out to be so important later. Carry on!
She’s actually driving just great, it’s only the parallel parking thing that has to be tackled.
I’ve seen the original of the Leutze painting. It’s enormous.
I just looked it up on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website and found the dimensions to be 149 in. x 255 in. I believe the size was intended to convey the esteem in which Washington was held.
I’ve seen it too, at the Met, pretty impressive. They’ve also got a modern version by Larry Rivers, interesting but not my thing. I’ve always like Leutze’s painting – meant to be good art, not an illustration for good boating practices.
I was an intern & docent at the Wm. Seward House museum in Auburn, NY – – they have two paintings by Leutze: “Signing of the Treaty for the Purchase of Alaska,” and a nice portrait he did of Seward’s dau-in-law, Anna.
Oh my god, this is hysterical. Your sis is a lucky person, even if she can’t maneuver a car well. She can laugh at the whole thing along with you. I bet she’s pining for a car that parks itself. If I were nearby I’d offer to help – I got really good at it when living in places (Hastings-on-Hudson, NYC) where I had to move the car daily and always parked in tight spaces. Glad those days are over though!
So glad you got a kick out of it, it’s one of the oddest statues I’ve ever seen. I’m actually pretty rusty at parallel parking. I didn’t bring my car to Boston, the T is just a few blocks away, and there’s no place to keep a car around here without spending a fortune.
Oh dear, too funny. I have PTSD from teaching my kid to drive. I have my fingers crossed for self driving cars. Very entertaining post.
I know they already have self-parking cars, and it blows my mind. Pretty cool, really. You can get your larger-sized Roombas to hold the parking space, too.