HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU my Liberty Bell story? I've been developing it during the last six months that I've been working part-time as a tour guide around Independence Hall. My Liberty Bell story is the difference between Ben Franklin and me. I know he'd tell it differently. He'd be calling it the State House bell and tell you wonderful, important and tedius stories about how the bell cracked the first time it was rung, and how rather than send it back to England where it was cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in London, two young Philadelphia metal-working dudes, both named John, became immortalized as Pass and Stow.
Their names are on the Liberty Bell. Pass and Stow. These were like the original iron workers who put the little statue of William Penn atop the highest beam of the Comcast Center. And Philadelphia booed the bell from the beginning. Broken at birth. A civic embarrassment. Rather than waste the better part of a year sending it back to England, the locals called in all the young dudes. Pass and Stow gave it their best shot, and they sucked. Their new bell sounded like crap no mattter what it really sounded like. So Pass and Stow melted the bell down, added some tin and melody, and boldly included their names when they recast it.
They signed their names in the wet concrete of America. Pass and Stow. Those lucky bastards.
Tell you what, I'm doing walking tours on Friday at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.out of Independence Visitors Center at 6th and Market. Go to the sight-seeing counter at the back of the building where they sell the bus and trolley tours. The walking tour I do costs 14 bucks, ten for kids. I work for tips. And I like my Liberty Bell story because it's not only factual, but it's true. It's my truth told my way. And, if I do say so myself, it's pretty damn good and original.
It wasn't the Revolutionary War the made the Liberty Bell famous. It was the Civil War. And that crack represented the fundamental flaw written into the law of the land No matter how you describe the peculiar institution of slavery the Constitution of the United States placed its value at three-fifths of a human being.
Interesting fact: in the years between the first meeting of Congress in Philadelphia in 1789 and the Secession of Southern States in 1860, there were 35 Speakers of the House elected by its membership. Twenty-five of them were from slave states. Three-fifths my ass.
Not only is slavery the original sin of America. It's the sin that keeps giving. Relatively recently, in the last five years, Philadephians discovered for the first time -- and I count myself among that number -- that while George Washington was President of the United States in the 1790's he kept slaves in the Philadelphia White House. And slavery had been outlawed in Pennsylvania since 1780.
The irony of this is that it was the construction of the new Liberty Bell Center that unearthed the remains of the President's House on the southwest corner of 6th and Market where Washington and John Adams lived when Philadelphia was the capitol of the United States.
See, I got too many stories to tell. Come on down on Friday. Keep me company.
I've got a bell of a story.
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