Remember the farmboy’s reply to his teacher when
asked the difference between involvement
and commitment? After thinking a moment, the lad said, “I
don’t know the big words, but when my mom cooks me a ham and egg breakfast, the
chicken is in involved, but the pig’s committed.
My wife says in regards to my Civil War reenacting
compulsion (compulsion is her word, I call it a hobby), I’m the pig, not the
chicken. I can’t argue with her since in the past ten days I’ve travelled about
4,300 miles by car to take part in reenactments on two consecutive weekends in
faraway states. In my defense, one of the other guys drove from Utah to Texas
to join our carpool to North Carolina.
The two reenactments, at Bentonville, North
Carolina and Mobile, Alabama, were the final two legs of my five-year Civil War
pilgrimage. I took part in seventeen reenactments in twelve states, each event
scheduled150 years to the week after the real battle, and held on or near the
real battlefield. I suppose that qualifies as pig-headed commitment.
But now it’s done, and Nita can stop saying, “Really?” when I tell her I’m going to
another 150th anniversary reenactment in a distant state.
I mentioned haversacks last week, the food bag
soldiers used to carry. Since we reenactors are weekend faux-warriors, we don’t
stuff our haversacks with modern MRE’s or uncooked chunks of beef or bacon,
ground cornmeal, or hardtack crackers. Instead, the haversacks become our man
purses. Here’s what fell out of mine when I got home from Fort Blakely, Alabama:
A package of “McBride’s
Medicated Papers: The Necessity of the Age” (Tissue paper wrapped in a period
wrapper copied from the first commercial stacking toilet paper). An unpainted
pencil. A clever knife-spoon-fork combo like I had as a Boy Scout. A round tin
for my modern Advil, Lipitor, and Zyrtek pills.
A little plastic bottle of eye drops. My
modern glasses. Modern point and shoot
camera. A red-checked hankie. A cloth sack of peanuts. Two pieces of
hardtack. A squashed wax-wrapped Baby Bell cheese ball. A little bruised apple.
Bookwise, I’m still stalled at the starting line
of the chapter in which Captain McBee leads the Leon Hunters up the side of
Little Round Top at Gettysburg. Since Gettysburg was the tipping point of the
war for Lee’s army, it’s an important chapter from a historical perspective and
I want to get it right.
Moreover, after being unstoppable during a handful
of bloody battles the prior year, Gettysburg was the first time that the Texas
soldiers under General Hood failed to carry the ground they were ordered to
attack.
To make things even worse, in coming up short of
their objective, the 5th Texas Regiment lost over 100 soldiers, 25%
of their men, when they were cut off and captured with the regiment’s wounded colonel
near the crest of Little Round Top.
July 2nd was not a good day for the 5th Texas Infantry, and there will be angst among Captain McBee’s company
by dusk, that is, once I kick-start my keyboard and write
the danged chapter.
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