Shackles on display at Charleston’s Old Slave Mart Museum.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.
For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…
Our day-long walk through downtown Charleston continued beyond King Street’s south end as we digressed from browsing boutique windows to observing two commemorations of American history along our path — one a cemetery, the other a museum. Those functions are common stops for us in past trips, but rarely do we find one of each within close proximity to each other and yet representing opposite ends of the moral spectrum, insofar as the unavoidable topic of slavery.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 