Dreams of the Expo

Began reading The Devil in the White City just after the new year. Been wanting to since it was published, and I’m not disappointed. It’s a dual story, both riveting, of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, and also of the mass murderer H. H. Holmes, who owned a hotel not far from the fair, and took gruesome advantage of the influx of people into the city that year.

I’ve read about the fair before, but as usual in a good book, never in such detail. It’s the sort of book that makes me want to finish assembling that time machine in the garage (from Ikea, easy assembly promised, but I have my doubts) and go. I’d take enough antique banknotes to visit the fair for several days, to get the full experience of the countless exhibits, the carnival on the Midway and the original, first-ever Ferris Wheel. Of course, I’d know enough to stay away from H. H. Holmes “castle” and its horrors.

But as far as world’s fairs go, I’ll to be satisfied with dim memories of the Hemisfair of 1968, which I attended, and its best legacy, the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio, a defining point in that city’s skyline. It’s the only world’s fair I ever went to. Like most of the country, I skipped the ones in Knoxville (’82) and New Orleans (’84). Considering that such events are now, for all practical purposes, things of the past, Hemisfair will be the only one I’ll ever go to.

Too bad. The idea of bringing marvels of the age together so people can see they with their own eyes still seems like a good one to me. We only have the illusion, provided by sophisticated video equipment, that the world is coming into our living rooms.