Listing Through Life

There wasn’t a lot to see at this park. We watched a corny film in the visitor center and looked at the few exhibits. It was cool to see the Lincoln family Bible, the one Abe famously read in front of the fireplace.

We walked up the sidewalk to the “birthplace.” This has to be the prime example of misplaced memorializing. A large marble structure sits on a hill at the top of a long flight of marble stairs. Inside the structure is a sad-looking log cabin. This isn’t the cabin Lincoln was born in. Nobody knows if it looks at all like the cabin Lincoln was born in. The Park Service isn’t even sure it’s located where Lincoln’s cabin was. The woman ranger in the memorial building said the cabin was a “symbol.” All they know for sure is that the Lincoln cabin was “on a hill above the spring.”

They know were the spring was — and is. It’s at the bottom of a sink. There are now stone walls and a walkway down to it.

We wandered around in the cheap gift shop across the parking lot. It wasn’t part of the park as the Park Service made a point of warning us with a large sign.

In the photo, notice that the flag is at half-mast in honor of Ronald Reagan. He had just died and his funeral was that very night.

We spent the night at the lodge in Mammoth Cave National Park. On the way, we stopped at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site. Part of the park is located 10 miles northeast, near where Abraham Lincoln lived with his family for five years, from the time he was two until he was seven. There isn’t much to see — just a log cabin we weren’t allowed into. It isn’t the Lincoln’s cabin and isn’t located where their cabin was located. But it probably looks somewhat like their cabin looked and is located somewhere like where their cabin was located. Lincoln’s earliest memories were of this place — or somewhere like it.