On December 22, 2012 I reached
the age of sixty. This was a
milestone and I decided to spend the day with Judi visiting the Longwood
Gardens which is about forty-five minutes from our home in Philadelphia, PA. The gardens are beautiful and visiting
Longwood is a nice escape from our day-to-day lives.
Longwood used to be the 1,077-acre
estate of Pierre S. du Pont.
Ferdinand Lundberg argued in his book The Rich and the Super-Rich that the du Pont’s were the most
affluent family in the nation.
This was because the du Pont’s not only owned DuPont Chemical
Corporation, they also owned an enterprise known as General Motors. This enormous wealth not only built the
Longwood Gardens, but just about ten minutes from Longwood is the 979-acre estate
that was owned by Pierre’s relative Henry Francis du Pont. The gardens on this estate are called Winterthur.
Located at Longwood is one of the
largest conservatories in the world.
There are rooms in the conservatory that house plants from every climate
that include: tropical, desert, and temperate. We happened to be there to view the dinner table the du
Pont’s would have had when Pierre was alive. A photo of that holiday table is pictured above and it might
have had about 40 place settings.
One thing the official tour
neglects to mention is that every penny that the du Pont family owned, and
continues to own, came from the profits derived from thousands of auto and
chemical workers. Without the
day-to-day toil of all these workers the du Pont’s never would have been able
to amass the fortunes they enjoy.
Finding a place to eat
After visiting Longwood, Judi
suggested that we have dinner at a restaurant in Kennett Square which is just a
few minutes from the gardens. The
restaurants in this town appeared to be pretentious and over-priced. It was a cold day and for a few minutes
we didn’t know where we’d be eating.
Then, I had the idea of visiting
a local bookstore and thought that someone there might know about a good place
to eat. We discovered that this
bookstore was a voluntary venture where the books are donated and the profits
go to a charity. I saw a hardcover
biography of Franz Fanon that I wanted.
The original price was $40 and the bookstore price was $4. When the sales people learned that I
was celebrating my birthday, they gave me the book as a gift.
The proprietors of the bookstore
recommended a Mexican restaurant,
Taqueria Moroleon, which was about fifteen minutes from Kennett
Square. Driving to the restaurant
we passed the mushroom farms and hot-houses.
The Kennett Square area is the
center of mushroom farming in the United States. Due to the insanity of the capitalist system, workers from
Mexico travel to Kennett Square to pick mushrooms, working under horrendous
conditions. This is so we can have
mushrooms in our pizzas, omelets, and pasta sauce. The Spanish word for mushrooms is championes.
In the middle of these mushroom
fields was a truck depot. We saw
eighteen-wheel tractor-trailers that, no doubt, carry those little mushroom
boxes we see in the supermarket.
The Taqueria Moroleon was an excellent suggestion. The food was as good as any Mexican
food I’ve ever had. Unlike the
pretentious restaurants in Kennett Square, the crowd at the Taqueria appeared
to be working-class which made us feel right at home.
Well, this is how I celebrated
sixty years on the planet earth.
While we both enjoyed the day, clearly there needs to be a lot of work
to make this a world where there is human dignity for all.
You can see my photos of Longwood
at:
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