McBride's Medicated Papers & Other Bottom Delights

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 150^th 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 5^th 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.

Root, Hog, or Die

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 10^th 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 150^th anniversary of the Civil War, this time in Mobile, Alabama.

 

Going North to North Carolina

I’m a day late with this weekly post, delayed by an unexpected trip out of town to make a hospital visit to a family member in east Texas. The patient is recovering, so that’s good. Moreover, I’m back home, today is St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m drinking a cold green beer brewed in Shiner, Texas, in recognition of all things Irish.

This coming weekend I’m taking part in a big Civil War reenactment in Bentonville, North Carolina.  The battle at Bentonville took place in March, 1865, and was the last fight between the armies of Confederate General Joe Johnston and Union General William Sherman.

The spring of 1865 was a time of forlorn hope for the Confederacy. The Union armies of Grant and Sherman outnumbered the troops of Lee and Johnston by two or three to one and were squeezing the Rebs hard on all fronts and the outcome was inevitable. I’ve not figured out why Confederate President Davis didn’t capitulate before the last tragic spring campaign, but there’s no denying that stubborn pride is often more important to political leaders than are the lives of thousands of soldiers they command. 

I’m going to the reenactment with four other guys from Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah, and we’re going to be part of Company A, 1oth Iowa Infantry – damyankees. I have mixed feelings about wearing blue for this particular reenactment since Bentonville was the last battle of the Sixth Texas Infantry, the regiment in which the Alamo Rifles served. The Alamo Rifles being the group of soldiers from San Antonio who are the subject of my first novel, Whittled Away, I’m feeling a bit disloyal.

Nonetheless, I’m excited about being in the 150^th anniversary reenactment at Bentonville for three reasons. First, I’ve never reenacted in North Carolina, so this trip will be a check off my bucket list of states where I’ve played Civil War soldier, leaving only South Carolina and Florida as relevant states that haven’t been part of my national reenacting playground.

Second, the 10^th Iowa fought in the real battle of Bentonville with a roster of 350 men. Our reenacting 10^th Iowa battalion has 297 men registered, a number close enough to the strength of the real regiment to be unusual in reenacting world.  Even though tens of thousands of Civil War reenactors are scattered across America, our battalions rarely approach the size of the real ones. Maneuvering a battalion of 80 riflemen in a long thread-like line is immensely different from maneuvering a battalion of 300 riflemen, nearly four times the length. Size matters. So this experience has the potential to be exceptional.

As a side note, since we’ll be in North Carolina, it’s worth mentioning that the 26^th North Carolina Infantry Regiment went into the battle at Gettysburg with nearly 800 riflemen, a number that is so large, I wonder how they ever moved and changed formations with any efficiency. Of course, they drilled every day that they were not marching or fighting, which is to say they practiced a lot, and practice matters, too. The 26^th NC lost half its soldiers during the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg, and then lost half of the first-day survivors during Pickett’s Charge on the third day. Gettysburg may have been the 26^th NC’s finest hour, but the glory earned there cost 600 of the 800 young men who marched into Pennsylvania.

Back to the Bentonville reenactment, third, we will be reenacting on part of the actual battleground. Knowing we are on the same turf where the historic soldiers bled and died always adds to the experience, especially at large events. When thousands of reenactors fill your line of sight with long lines of soldiers and cannons, it’s not hard to mentally transport yourself back in time and have some of those “magic moments” reenactors hope for. 

Tomorrow I’ll make a dozen “hardtack” crackers to go in my “haversack” (cloth food bag) along with a couple of links of good Lockhart dried sausage. The hardtack crackers are 3” squares of salted flour, baked until they are hard, and pretty tasteless. The sausage links are smoke-cured as opposed to fire-cooked and start soft and juicy, but turn hard like jerky after a few days at room temperature.

I’ll round out my personal pantry for the weekend with a couple of fresh apples, some dried apricots, Texas peanuts in the shell, and some “Baby Bell” wax-wrapped cheese bits. None of those items need refrigeration for the two days we’ll be snacking out of haversacks, and there’s a chance we’ll be issued some raw food that we can actually cook. I won’t starve, but a meal at the first Cracker Barrel restaurant on the road home will seem like fine dining.

Hopefully, next week I can let you know that I had a great time, even if I was wearing a blue uniforms instead of being a good Texan.

 

 

Red Shirts, Dragons, and Killing A Mockingbird

My writers’ critiquing circle companions are starting to accuse me of mimicking George R Martin, author of the Game of Thrones. I’ve probably invested hundreds of hours reading the lengthy Game of Thrones novels and watching and re-watching the forty episodes of the Game of Thrones TV series. Therefore, I’m taking my friends’ comparisons to Martin as a compliment, even though Game of Thrones is medieval fantasy with dragons, and my novels are Civil War tales without dragons.

This is a good place to mention that dragons appear to have a long abiding place in genre fiction. I fondly remember Anne McCaffrey’s fantasy dragon book series, Dragons of Pern, from three or four decades ago, and more recently I’ve been hooked on the Temeraire Napoleonic War novel series by Naomi Novik. Temeraire is a Chinese-bred war dragon in the service of the British army, a part of the Brits’ “dragon air force,” if you will.

Temeraire speaks and thinks and is quite personable, and is one of the main characters, not just a prized flying horse. It takes a lot of bravado to write an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars to include dragons on both sides, but dang if Ms. Novik doesn’t pull it off well enough to make the series widely popular. I suspect more of my books would be “flying” off the virtual shelves at Amazon if I had included dragons in my Civil War tales, instead of the expected sex, slaves and intrigue-as personified by Faith, Levi, and the evil Lieutenant Samuelson.

Nonetheless, the comparison with George R. Martin wasn’t about dragons, sex, slaves, or intrigue, but was noting that Martin and I both kill off characters with regularity. To which I reply, gosh, I’m writing about the American Civil War, not the American Civil Peace, and lots of people die in wars and war zones. It seems to me that the anguish of killing and dying is an essential element in a good war story. Along with sex, slaves, and, alas, no dragons.

Last week I learned a new literary term that addresses the phenomenon of killing off stock characters to underline the danger of the environment in which the main characters are engaged: Red shirts. The Red Shirts were the security guys in the original Star Trek TV series, the big guys who wore red uniform blouses and often got zapped by the bad guys when they accompanied Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Doctor McCoy to some newly discovered planet. We in the audience generally didn’t even learn the poor guys’ names, as their purpose was just to die near the show’s main characters, to stress that someone has to die, and but it couldn’t be our heroes.

All serial novelists, like I’m working at becoming, have to protect their main character. I still remember as a teenager who read every James Bond paperback as soon as it came out, being shocked when Ian Fleming killed Bond’s new wife – but notably, not Bond himself. Then came George R. Martin, who holds no character sacred. When Eddard Stark’s head tumbled off the chopping block, I probably had to put the book down for a while.

What about the Red Shirts in Whittled Away and the McBee books? I think I’ve at least put names to the poor guys who die early and often. I’ve been through the rosters of the real companies of Confederate infantrymen that are featured in the books and culled names of men that died. I’ve sometimes killed them in the same battle where they died historically. Other times, I need a name for a fictitious scene and pick a fellow who died in the hospital of disease or wounds, and plug his name in.

If someday an old Reb’s descendent writes me all indignant that I maligned his ancestor in my book, I’ll apologize and thank him for buying a copy and reading it so closely.

Unrelated, except that my novels are set in time of open racism, yesterday I watched the movie To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time. I grew up in northeast Texas, which was part of the old south, for sure. Harper Lee, a southern girl who had moved to New York City, won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1962, while I was in junior high school. It was a segregated junior high school, as was the rest of the culture of my youth.

While To Kill A Mockingbird grew to be a staple for classroom reading and study, that was after my years in school, and I’ve never read the novel. No teacher in the schools of Longview, Texas from 1961 when the book was published to immediate national acclaim, until my high school graduation in 1967, used the novel to instruct us on the evils of racism.  I suppose the theme was just too close to home at that time and place.

Therefore, I shouldn’t have been surprised yesterday as I watched the film to think that Harper Lee could just as easily have set the story in 1961, contemporary to when she wrote it, instead of setting the scene in 1931, thirty years earlier. I saw the same unapologetic, pervasive racism in the film that I grew up with in the 1950’s and ‘60’s.

That was over fifty years ago, and things are better now, mostly. With lots of bumps in the road we are moving in the right direction. We’ve left behind most open racist practices that were commonly accepted in fifty years ago, but we aren’t there yet. Not yet.

I’m hoping that young Jackson, my new grandson, will grow up in a culture that looks back in disbelief and disgust at the racism of my growing-up days of the 1950’s and ‘60’s.  

    

Just A Rock

I was eleven, still four months from twelve. I was short for eleven, still waiting for the growth spurt that never came. But I was a gung-ho Boy Scout and had already earned my First Class rank, three steps up the ladder in less than a year. And now I was at Camp Tonkawa for a week. No low level advancement classes for first year Scouts for me. I was ready for merit badges classes, and that was a big deal to this eleven year old.

I also had been through all the Red Cross swimming classes at the neighborhood public swimming pool, but wasn’t old enough to take the Lifesaving class. So guess what merit badge class I signed up for at my first summer camp.

All of us who wanted to take the Life Saving Merit Badge class had to demonstrate our swimming skills and stamina to the waterfront staff. I did that, swimming across that cold dammed-up spring maybe a thousand times before they consented to let me in the lifesaving class.

The first class was the next morning and I was pumped. There were a dozen or so of us, all older and taller than me. So what. I was at home in the water, like a frog, and eager to get it on.

I was the first one chosen to do the initial drill to again show that we had the right stuff.  The day before we just swam to show we were good in the water. Today we had to swim with a rock on our hip. A simulated, unconscious person, as it were. Not a fighting, thrashing panicking person who would try to climb all over us, just a dead weight rock. No problem, it was just a rock.

The rock looked big, but I had swagger. I got in the water and stood next to the rock wall that lined the bank and had been built by the CCC some twenty-five years earlier, and made the spring such a fine well-defined swimming place.

I took the big rock in both hands, finding it heavier than I thought it would be, and shoved off.  I got the rock settled on one hip and used scissor kicks to keep going towards the middle of the springs. I had to use one hand to keep the big rock in place, so I did an improvised one-armed sidestroke to keep my head and shoulders up. I still had swagger, and said a little mantra, “It’s just a rock, just a rock.”

Halfway across the call came to stop and drop the rock. I did and it sank. Like a rock. I tread water and nodded when the Merit Badge Instructor from Hell yelled at me to go down after it and bring it back.

I nodded and did a fine fishy sort of arching dive and swam right down to the rock. I picked it up and pushed upwards, but didn’t go far. I let go of the rock and came up for air. Three times I did that. My kicks weren’t enough to propel me and the rock to the surface.

The orc on the bank yelled again for me get the rock and finish. I yelled back that I was trying to do that. He yelled that if I didn’t get the rock off the bottom and bring it to him, I was out of the class. I tried once more with no more success.

I swam to shore, got my towel and was told that was it for me. Maybe next year I’d be bigger and stronger. I nodded and made the long walk back to my tent on the other side of camp.

No one else was there, everyone being off to their own first morning of classes. I shut the tent flaps, lay down on my cot and cried like a kid. The swagger was on the bottom of the spring with that just-a-rock. No mom or dad, no big brother, not even the scoutmaster to console me. Just me and my shame and anger at my failure. It sucked, and the memory of it still sucks. It was a long day.

The next morning I started a different merit badge class, Nature, I think it was. When I turned fourteen I enrolled in a Red Cross Lifesaving Class at the YMCA. I was still the shortest student and probably the youngest, but I passed the big test after the series of Saturday classes. No rocks, though.

Where’s the tie-in of this little pity party tale from my childhood to the Civil War novels I’m writing half a century later? Only that I was at Camp Tonkawa, and an unnamed Tonkawa Indian brave is one of the first characters who John McBee meets in the Tangled Honor. Can’t say they become friends, but they have a brief relationship. I must have blotted out the memory of the just-a-rock story when I was writing that part of Tangled Honor, or I would have killed off that Tonkawa sonofabitch.  Writers can get even with bad memories that way.

Camp Tonkawa is no longer a Boy Scout camp, it’s now a privately-owned RV camp and the dammed-up spring swimming pool is still in use. The photo is from the RV camp website and is the very spot of my come-uppin’s that June morning in 1961. If you look closely, about half way out you can detect the just-a-rock on the bottom. Well, not really. But I can still see it down there, up close and personal.

 

 

Five Shades of Gray

I’ve decided I’m barking up the wrong tree if I want to be a best-selling author. This morning I read that the novel Fifty Shades of Gray, which was initially independently published as a Print-On-Demand paperback, has sold more copies via Amazon in England than have all of Rowling’s Harry Potter series combined. That’s about 60 million books. That’s amazing.

 

So, I’m considering pulling Tangled Honor from Amazon, renaming it Five Shades of Gray, and spicing up the cover with images of ropes and padded handcuffs.

Here’s my thinking: the five primary characters in my book are all connected in some fashion, and one of them is a real stinker who likes tying women to the bed and having his way. I’ve not actually read Fifty Shades of Gray, or seen the new movie, but from what I read about it, my stinker is right in line with the plot of Fifty Shades.  So why are my Amazon sales some 59.9999 million behind Fifty Shades of Gray’s sales?

 

Maybe the important difference in Fifty Shades and Tangled Honor is that my stinker who likes kinky sex is only featured doing his kinky thing in one single chapter, not the whole book. Even then, I hope I wrote that chapter with appropriate restraint and discretion. I suppose I’ve effectively hidden the main selling point of my novel, instead of broadcasting it on the cover and in the plot from beginning to end.

 

Of course, I wouldn’t really do that, but the incredible financial success of Fifty Shades, book and movie, do give me pause to reflect on why a book by a beginning writer with that plot would strike a chord with so many readers. The book is not even really well written from the reviews I’ve seen, yet who can argue with sixty million sales.

 

I’d love to see Amazon’s records of the accounts that ordered Fifty Shades as an electronic download for a Kindle, IPad, or phone. With that many orders, I guess people in every demographic have bought copies: horny old men, as well as proper young women with a secret passion for a scary brand of sex. What do those record-setting sales say about our taste in books? It probably goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, and we should ask Eve and the snake. I bet they both know.

 

On to other things: Our house was chaotic all weekend with houseguests and out-of-towners here for the Saturday night wedding shower-party that our next-door neighbors held for our younger son and his fiancée.

 

I suppose that it’s the way of the world. I started dieting two weeks ago, so I won’t have to buy a new, bigger, suit for their April wedding, then we endure a three-day home invasion for a pre-wedding party for the same couple, and feast on pizza, BBQ, and Mexican food. Not to mention the sweets and wine at the party itself.  

I loved every minute and every bite of the whole weekend, but the scales are not my friend this Monday morning. Just what does a new suit cost these days?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canals and Eggs

When I was in my elementary school choir in the fifth grade, I remember singing:

 

Low bridge, everybody down,

Low bridge, ‘cause we’re coming to a town,

You’ll always know your neighbor, you’ll always know your pal

If you’ve ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

 

Little did I know back in 1957 that on a sunny Sunday afternoon in 2015 I’d be researching on a tiny magical TV screen, learning about canals and canal boats in the Shenandoah region of Virginia, and digging around to learn if an egg can be cooked in water that doesn’t reach boiling temperature.

 

Here in central Texas, canals are not even a dim historical memory. But in Virginia, I’ve learned that George Washington himself surveyed key canal routes. I learned that Washington and Lee College in Lexington changed its original name to “Washington College” in appreciation of a large financial donation Washington made to the school, funds that were profits from his investment in the canal industry.

 

Canals, up until about 1880, were the liquid “train tracks” for much of eastern America. Canal boats were first powered by men with long poles or oars, then much larger freight and passenger boats called packets were pulled by a team of mules or horses that walked the canal path next to the waterway.

 

The tie-in to my novel is again the town of Lexington, the place to which my characters in the McBee saga keep returning for one reason or another as the Civil War continues being fought across Virginia.

 

I’m reading the new biography of Stonewall Jackson, who was truly a fascinating man. I knew he had been a teacher at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington before the Civil War, and I’ve even visited his grave at the city cemetery in Lexington. The day my brother and I were there, half a dozen lemons had been tossed over the wrought iron fence surrounding his tombstone and lay scattered as bright yellow tributes to one of Jackson’s health and nutrition quirks.

 

What I didn’t know was that Jackson’s remains had been conveyed by train from Richmond to Lynchburg, south of Lexington, then loaded onto the ninety foot long, fourteen foot wide, iron-hulled “packet boat,” named the Marshall, and towed via canal to Lexington for Jackson’s second funeral and only internment. The Marshall was not a shabby freight boat, but carried passengers in its crafted mahogany cabin, as well as tons of cargo.

 

I’m learning as a fledgling novelist that half the challenge to a good plot is credibly getting your opposing characters into the same place where they can joust with each other, verbally or physically. I recognized that while Stonewall Jackson is not a living character in the McBee saga, his corpse’s ride on the canal boat could be just what I needed. What better than the crowded funeral procession of a famous man for my two primary antagonists, both testosterone laden characters who really, really don’t like each other, to cross paths in Lexington once again.  So, I’m thanking General Jackson for his unintended service to my plot, as I hum the tune to the Low Bridge song from my childhood.

 

As to the egg boiling research, I found a website that detailed a French (where else?) cooking method called something indecipherable, that over a period of forty minutes will soft-cook an egg in water of 130 degrees.

 

Why in the world does egg cooking matter to my Civil War plot? I can’t tell you yet. It’s a secret. And maybe I’m being too clever, but you’ll remember this forewarning when you read the scene in Redeeming Honor, the current McBee saga book in progress.