Back in time in our city: The World's Fair on display

What if something as culturally shifting, as technologically revolutionary, as WOW as the World's Fair happened in your city? 

The World's Fair did take place in our town, and in six months in 1893, visitors came to see exhibits packed full of artifacts, machinery and even people on display. That moment in our city's history is big, not just because of the art and culture and advent of chewing gum, but because it built up a city that, only 22 years before was ravaged into ashes by the Great Chicago Fire. 

Chicago loves the World's Fair. My son has studied it in school twice and was a lead in a play at Lookingglass Theatre, where his drama camp performed an intricate depiction of mystery and wonder of the White City -- right in the original Water Tower, one of the only buildings in that area to survive the fire.

Today, 120 years later, Chicagoans and out-of-towners still want to retreat to the fair, playing tourist in the Field Museum's Opening the Vaults: Wonders of the 1893 World's Fair exhibit, open now through September 7, 2014.  

We pushed back on the packing, cleared the busy kid schedule and decided to be tourists in our own city, fair-goers nearly a sesquicentennial later.  Here's what to do and see if your family hits the fair, too. 

We love the Field Museum. We went so often when E was a toddler that he acted as docent and tour guide, showing me and my parents around the great halls of dinosaurs and mummies. First stop at the Field is always to see Sue, one of the largest, best preserved and most extensive T-Rex specimens on this planet. Take the requisite OHMYGAW THERE IS A DINOSAUR CHASING US! photo. Really. Do it. Don't be wary. Every other person with a phone is gathered there, doing the same thing. 

Inside the exhibit, do that mom thing where you read all of the historical information aloud to the antsy small child beside you. There are some inspiring and entertaining quotes mixed among the photos and artifacts that give great context to the time period and where we were culturally during the exposition. But what I loved best (reading silently to myself, since the Not Boyfriend and E had long slinked off from my read-alouds) was the timeline that put all of the major events from the Fire forward into place for me so I could really grasp what was on the visitors' minds, in their pocketbooks and newspapers when they handed over coins for entry.

We stopped in our tracks to see what appeared to be vintage videos, but were really old photographs from the Fair, doctored up with actors and flags blowing in the wind and dogs running by and fireworks to create "film" to put you into place immediately. Just lovely.

Wind through the rooms to find large cases holding hundred of artifacts from the museum's preserved fair collection. My son and I lingered over the handwritten financial record books, carefully penned in cursive that is long extinct. I loved the tickets and photos, like the one of above of ladies giggling with embarrassment and thrill in seeing a Samoan man pass by, that made me feel what any random Tuesday during the six months of the Fair may have been like.

The randomness of the artifacts, from trilobites captured in polished marble to intricately beaded tribal baby carriers to jars of hemp seed and taxodermy, says so much about the newness and marvel in making the world a smaller place, putting the then-unknown on display for common folks to see, touch and question. That peek at the past also shone a light on how much access we now have to a global community that was just being formed in 1893. And we talked at length later about the admissions that, although many cultures were represented at the fair, many people were presented as "lesser humans" and on display. Progress then was not progressive, and we certainly are still moving cultural acceptance forward a century+ later. 

The everyday of 1893 met the today in interactive displays. E was amazed by a digital scan of a Peruvian mummy. On display at the World's Fair in burlap, the mummy has since been scan, analyzed and turned into a digital presentation. E turned the mummy from top to bottom, saw slices of the skeleton, read what each of the buried artifacts represented, and got a deep look at a small child's life and death from hundreds of years ago.

The fair's Javanese Village was recreated digitally, with ancient instruments turned into an improvised jamboree that E and other kids (and dads) played, plunking on early xylophones, bells and drums by tapping a screen. This was his favorite part. Except for the ginormous stuffed lion, mid-roar.

Plan to spend a good long time so that you're not rushed through little corners that hold a lot -- how Wrigley introduced its classic Juicy Fruit chewing gum to patrons, the mysterious machine that historians have no idea what it did or how it powered an important element of the fair, the fanciful hats fashioned from wild game feathers, how scientists have used the stem cells of now-extinct taxidermied animals to reintroduce the species today and all of the items we pull from our pantries each meal that were then largely unattainable luxuries - spices, olive oil, millet. Two hours in, we were surprised time had ticked by so quickly.

Before you head out (or over to see the dinos and, our long-time favorite, the Egyptian grave robber exhibit), do walk through the gift shop, which has a few real artifacts for sale and lots of recreations that will, at the least, make you laugh. If you have a couple thousand dollars, you can sip your coffee or whiskey from a commemorative mug that somehow survived the World's Fair. For far less, you can also get your hands on no-longer-luxurious bamboo spoons, olive oil and old-timey head gear.  Instead, give yourself the gift of the book Devil in the White City. TRUST ME.

Because we began the trip back in time by escaping a dinosaur, it felt right to end it by trying on every 1800's-ish hat in the gift shop. Twice. I like to imagine the ladies in the pea-fowl fascinators and men awed by the ornate African headdresses would have (or would have liked to) do the same. 

Opening the Vaults: Wonders of the 1893 World's Fair is open from October 25, 2013 to September 7, 2014 at the Field Museum in Chicago. Visitors can download a mobile tours app (available for iPhone and Android) that allows you to explore more World's Fair artifacts and specimens. 

I was selected for this opportunity by Clever Girls Collective, however all content and opinions expressed here are my own.