HGTV Teaches America: Refurbishing Good Bones Retains the Past in the Place we Live Today
HGTV has given the American public shows we can all enjoy. Viewing pleasure is found in renovation, refurbishment, giving an old house a facelift. Within the ethos of most HGTV home renovations is that the past is kept intact.
When a show’s rebuilders reference “good bones” they mean the foundation or framework of the house is solid, something to build from. Often when homes are remodeled, the celebrity renovators keep something of the past. Original wood from a porch, for example, might be reused to create a table top to recall what once was.
Remembrance coincides with restoration. “Tear downs,” the phrase given to eradicating the original house for something brand new, is not the optimum outcome. Crucial to most every HGTV show is a recombination of the past with the present. A memory is maintained.
Wilfred M. McClay sustains “The Claims of Memory” arguing for the need of retention, keeping the past
As a central precondition for a mature, civilized way of life.
McClay wants something “durable.” Referencing George Santayana, McClay is set against the rewriting of history, not wanting to subvert the old for the new:
The flames of memory, kept alight in culture, embodied in custom, passed along in tradition, ruins, relics, rituals: These have their own reason for being, their own insights, their own right to our respect.
My mom is the pictorial archivist of our family; gifts given are often photo albums. Sometimes mom writes notes about who someone is in the grainy black and white mid-twentieth century photo. For me, now in my sixties, mom reminds me of folks I never met or was too young to know. In her own way, mom is a memoirist, similar to McClay who says in words not pictures
We see the importance of memory by seeing what happens to us when it goes away.
Family history is close to cultural history. It is not necessary to worry about dementia when one has historical amnesia. Here McClay warns, “A culture without memory will be barbarous.” He worries for America that
if we fail to pass on that knowledge to the rising generation, we will be responsible for our own decline . . . we fail to grasp the overarching meaning of our history, a meaning that would impart coherence to the way we live together.
Yes, “together.” When HGTV shows refurbish a house, it is done on the same property, in the same neighborhood. The house remains. The land remains. The resuscitation of a house’s history is kept where it was. I remember tales of “urban renewal” from my childhood which meant buildings were torn down and replaced; history wiped out. HGTV takes a different tack. Plumbing, electrical, and structural codes may have been altered over a century, but the beauty of the residence is renewed.
Visiting my grandmother’s house in Syracuse, New York, I remember the
beautiful brick façade, accented by a front porch that overlooked the neighborhood street. In my mind’s eye I can see that street, the sidewalks, and all the other houses with architecturally beautiful porches. Now when I see refurbished homes with that same architecture, I know that the past can be remembered properly in the present, the present giving us hope for a future.
McClay ends his article by noting
The power of memorization lies in the fact that the poem, or prayer, or speech that is committed to memory becomes one’s own, alive in one’s mind and spirit.
McClay and I both are cognizant of memory’s limitations. We can remember what we want, forget what we don’t like, only cite those who agree with us, and twist the insights of others into a historical pretzel. But McClay’s article, my mom’s pictures, and HGTV remind me that we must not forget our history. We should build on the good bones of our ancestors and the idea of America that enlivened our predecessors. Our history is not a “tear down” but a “build up,” committed to retention of a history that can enliven the beauty of our national neighborhood, where we all live together.
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Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat