Blue Plate Special

As you drive down the road in the United States, you will with some regularity come upon roadside historical markers.  They have a somewhat standard rectangular shape with  scrolling at the top and the seal of the state where they are located above the text.

These historical markers can memorialize places that run from the significant to the mundane.  I do not know what qualifies a place for such markers.  I understand the "George Washington Slept Here" and "Ward Hall" ones, but there are others that confound me--like the one in Andrews Texas that reads, "ON MAY 25, 1965, FROM ONE OF 7,400 PRODUCING OIL WELLS IN THE COUNTY'S 196 FIELDS, CAME THE BILLIONTH BARREL OF ANDREWS COUNTY CRUDE OIL. . ."  Uh, o.k.  Congratulations, I suppose.

Oxford is a town with a history that dates back to the eighth century being first mentioned in writing in 915 A.D. Over the ensuing 1200 or so years, it has been witness to any number of historical events and personages.  From the "dreaming spires" of the massive architecture of the buildings of the colleges, to the martyrdom of the bishop of London Hugh Latimer, to Roger Bannister's sub four minute mile, to the Inklings and W.H. Auden, Oxford is pregnant with significance.

The British have a similar tradition to our roadside markers.  They are round blue circle signs with white lettering referred to as blue plates.  You would expect there to be one on every structure in Oxford.  But I had to go winding down an alley before I finally found one.  It referred to an event that seemed to me a bit trivial all things considered.

I understand that there has been an effort by the city to resist the placing of these plates.  Whether because they think they take away from the beauty of the locales they locate or that they fear that if every historical spot were designated the town would become a blue plate special, I do not know.

It does seem odd to me, though, that while a town in Texas marks it's billionth barrel of oil in 1965, the spot in Oxford where Latimer was burned is marked in the middle of Broad Street with brown cobbles in the shape of a cross surrounded by a white circle of stones and no sign.  It is almost as if Oxford understands that the whole city is history and to point any of it out is to cheapen it all.