I’m late again with my weekly post. After the long extended
weekend trip to the Civil War reenactment in North Carolina, I stopped in
Dallas for three days to paint rooms in our son’s first home, purchased just
last week. Pale green bedroom, terra-cotta and pale yellow living room, and
medium green kitchen, all colors selected by Ben and his fiancé.
I did pull out the big framed Gettysburg battle print (a Christmas gift from
me) from Ben's belongings piled in the garage, and set it on the mantle to add
some class to the place. Every living room needs art of Texans with guns,
right?
Ben’s fiancé, Meredith, lasted featured as Civil War
Private Marvin, in a blog post last November, showed her thanks by having a
cold box of wine in the new fridge, ready for “popping,” and pouring into
plastic cups after each day’s labor. Like I said, we McBride’s, new and old,
are nothing but a class act.
While I was gone a week reenacting and playing
Picasso on son Ben’s new walls, grandson Jackson doubled in size, and greeted
me last night with a smile to die for.
The reenactment in Bentonville, North Carolina was a
good experience. The photo at the top of the blog does a nice job of
summarizing the simulated battle on Sunday. There were most likely over a
thousand reenactors on each side, and huge crowds of spectators lining two
sides of our “arena.”
I went as a Yankee private, joining a battalion of
300 reenactors from all over the nation. I rode from Dallas to NC with men from
Oklahoma and Utah, and we all served in a company of men from Missouri, Kansas,
and other Midwestern states.
Since our hobby of Civil War reenacting requires
blue and gray participants, I’m used to portraying a Yankee soldier, but rarely
do I actually march elbow-to-elbow with real Yankees, men from northern states.
In spite of warnings about damyankees from my grandparents when I was kid, they
are generally good guys, not the commie devils I was led to believe in.
Seriously, it is interesting to come to experience
that the frame of reference about the Civil War from those not raised in the
old Confederate states, is wholly different from my youth and from most of
those in my Texas reenacting group. To reenactors from non-Confederate states, the
war is reenacted as a rebellion to be put down, not as a grand assertion of a state’s
right to leave the Union. Sometimes it takes a while, but the difference in
basic outlook comes through.
The two big battles were different from all my past
experiences in that on both days, our side started the show by digging long
trenches and low dirt breastworks to fight from. While the spectators watched,
we used the few period shovels we had, tin plates, bayonets, and even bare hands
to hastily dig into the soft sand soil just like Sherman’s soldiers did 150
years ago.
A popular motto grew among Union soldiers during the
latter stages of the war, when both sides knew that the safest place from which
to fight was a trench, behind a pile of dirt. Since we were portraying the 10th
Iowa Regiment at the Bentonville reenactment, and we dug both days, the cry
seemed especially apt: “Big pig, little pig, Root, Hog, or Die!”
Our battalion camped “campaign” style, meaning no
tents, no cots, no ice chests, no camp furniture. Rations were issued and
cooked by “messes” of three or four men. The camping highlight for me was
entertainment by a duo of period musicians Saturday night in our camp, with
libations from a huge wooden keg filled with a local craft-brewery IPA beer. Sweet.
Sitting on pine needles leaning against a tree in the dark, drinking from a
battered and smoke-stained tin cup, it was a fine “halftime” between the
Saturday and Sunday sham battles.
I’m off tonight to another out-of-state reenactment
commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, this time in
Mobile, Alabama.
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