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George Washington's choppers.

By either dumb instinct or stubborn inclination (functionally similar) I’m often on a loser side. 
Some readers might recall the Des Moines cruiser wrangle. A strong peacenik sentiment arose. We don’t want war stuff here was the general swords to plowshares sentiment of non-biblical believers. 
Fair enough. 

The heavy cruiser never served on the Great Lakes. Fairer yet. The topmast would stand too tall. From the Skyline or top of the Incline you’d not notice, but in any case peace rose above what was not to be in the harbor as an asset to match Poseidon’s own aquarium, now a freshwater fishes tank. 

I didn’t see an outdated cruiser as a particular war advocate as some did. I leaned toward seeing a technology time capsule equivalent to a small (Twin Ports?) size city. Onboard medical, machine and radio shops, food handling, and so on: history in context of a certain time. 

Main armament wasn’t Minnesota made, but Mpls. Ordinance made six-inch gun mounts. So what? Well until we have the clean all-electric antigravity systems for moving material we’re going to go on using gears and systems able to withstand punishing use as expected of a weapon mount, using steel made elsewhere and brought back after iron ore was made into iron then steel of precise types. 

 So, we had nothing to do with a heavy cruiser named for a town in a farm state, but we had a lot to do with it in more ways than I’ve time for here, same as farmers who fed sailors and workers were part of it, along with farm equipment makers and fuel suppliers and the (foe some) unhappy coincidence of fertilizer production as a result (semi byproduct) of making explosives. 

As a side effect, making munitions largely did away with the guano industry. It did, meaning many a happy bird and bat (you can look that up – it’s fun). Fun aside, is it important? Very much so, and in more ways than I’ve time for. 

The tactic I recommend for viewing historical elements, trends, etc. is remembering any event or invention is far larger than a single moment, person or nation, etc. 

Quite often, history is marketed making a mansion in the Ports of greater importance than a simple farm or schoolhouse located an hour north of the Ports. Marketing makes for perceived importance. The more attention getting and marketable the greater the importance, for further marketing, however. 

 Whatever you did or might now think of a heavy cruiser being parked in a Twin Ports harbor is likely (correct me if I err) to be about the “thing” more so (possibly entirely) than the many (not so easy to market) human stories. 

Whether you or I find it appropriate or not, historic places, objects and events represent more than some things on display. (Frankly, I find museum displays quite lifeless, almost repulsive.) 

A thing, whether a crudely repaired wooden chair or the out-of-date warship machine shop, gives a hint, a faint glimpse into the lives of those lives connected to the object. 

The machine shop served needs and people who knew how to use a micrometer. Do you know what that is or why it matters? (It does.) If the wooden chair was repaired using a hot wire to burn repair holes instead of a drill you have on display two methods of people like you or I in addressing a small task. Doesn’t it tell us something that a rickety chair was thought valuable enough to not discard? 

If historic places and items speak, what do we hear? Does poverty force the poor to make do? Does that mark us as being rich or, instead, show that we’ve developed into a consumer society? 

Either interpretation (there are lots of others) can be plausibly followed, but now ask which would be more successfully marketed? What view of a fact or practice is the one to sell to the public and gain their financial support? 

 History is very much open to interpretation, meaning an emphasis (bias) is going to be applied in one direction or another. 

It doesn’t matter very much if Washington’s false teeth are presented as a curiosity, but would matter considerably if we were to be told (sold) a story that his false teeth were made from teeth forcibly taken from living Revolutionary War prisoners. 

Now wonder if the story would get any worse or better if the teeth were harvested from dead enemies. Being critically aware of interpretation at work is, I find, a reasonable place to be. A better mental and emotional footing, as I see it, than kerplunking a new (for better or worse) interpretation as the real-true. 

In the U.S., Canada, Mexico and parts of Europe I’ve seen history abused, twisted and repackaged in ways that make the creators of Boggle go bonkers with envy. Modern era wrangles over who is a freedom fighter and who is an insurrectionist terrorist are common enough. 

But remember this, that same wrangle can be traced back and back and back all around the globe wherever one culture, language, ethnicity or belief has collided into conflict with another. 
Pharoah plundered innocent settlers or she defended her lands from stealthy invaders. Which was it? Depends which side you take. 

 A cruiser in the Ports is a good way to rethink “story” as not his or hers or a story but our-story, a collective of material and effort from near all corners of a nation. We might not spot the role of corn farmers, etc., but it’s there. 

History is many stories, often overlooked when we unknowingly accept a fragment as a whole. 
Consider this. I recently bought some plants arriving with stickers saying WOMEN OWNED. I blinked. That was close. Thanks for the warning.

You may rightly fault me for an awful joke or take note that in the official, prescribed story two mere words are assumed to be praise, not a warning. I can almost guarantee how your story book read WOMEN OWNED. 

The accuracy of my prediction; another story.