Looking at the good – or at least not-horrible – in history, what lost or forgotten bits of historical Americana do you wish the culture had hung onto?

13 comments

1. I’m making a Faro board for my wife and the question occurred to me. I’m also planning on planting fig trees and vines a la George Washington.

2. Grant was actually a good president, and historians thought so for years and years and years until lost causers got a hold of Grant’s legacy and turned it to shit

   I think it’s a crying shame that he’s seen as a drunk, when he was all “I’m sending the army in against the KKK” until the supreme court told him he couldn’t do that.

3. Robert Johnson was an American blues musician from the 1930s. He is well known within the music community and had an incredible influence on all forms of popular music throughout the second half of the 20th century. But he is not well known throughout American society, and that’s a shame because he really is an American treasure.

4. Early 20th ccentury trustbusting.

5. The Battle of Athens TN. When corruption and police brutality got too bad, WWII vets just wrecked the local government rather than be subjected to the corruption any longer.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

6. we need a return of the militant labor unions like the old coal mining unions from the late 19th and early 20th century!

7. George Washington hated political parties, refused to join one, & warned the country against them in his farewell address upon leaving the presidency. It was the *only* precedent he set that his successors failed to adopt. And here we are today.

8. [Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945) an American engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. Goddard successfully launched his rocket on March 16, 1926, which ushered in an era of space flight and innovation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard)

9. I wish they had embraced the native Americans instead of trying to assimilate them. I wish we knew more about their history.

10. For me it has to be classic drive-in movie theaters. They’re not esoteric in that people don’t remember that they existed, but more so that there aren’t very many left for them to still enjoy; I’ll always remember those October Friday nights when my high school sports team went to watch cheesy horror double-features and mess around in the parking lot.

11. Would be kinda cool if traditional pop still had a footing. It’s a fun genre.

    Obviously guys like Michael Bublé keep the style alive but, like, there’s pop radio, rock radio, classic rock radio, rap radio… would be cool to flip through stations and land on a traditional pop station with new songs by new artists in that same style.

12. The Mickey Mouse Club

13. A minimum wage that could single-handedly support a family, as was its intended purpose.