The Excitement Wasn't There - an exercise in false advertising

 01 November 2021

1047

R. Linda:

I have always been eager to learn about American history, so when my eldest brought home a brochure for a Civil War reenactment, I was all for it. I had seen the one on Georges Island in Boston Harbour many years ago and was utterly taken by the whole setting. On one side, you had the Union troops, and on the other, the Confederates. Each camp had tents, and the daily duties an actual regiment would be about, and the ladies were there in their old-fashioned dresses, telling stories in character and selling their ancient crafts, like dresses, shawls, millinery, knitting, etc., The men also had little side shops of cleats, leather goods, lanterns, caps, you name it if it was Civil War you could buy it for your own reenactment. But better yet, there were enough men for a whole army on both sides. They had history lessons, shooting lessons, they talked Lincoln, they talked Davis; I mean, you were back in time!

The battle that took place was realistic in that some feigned getting killed or wounded, medics ran onto the field to help, ladies back at camp with bandages, one side advancing, the other retreating, and back and forth it would go. It was bloody exciting.

That was what I expected, if not more when I saw the brochure O'Hare handed me. 

Oh boy, the calvary! This I'd never seen, and I was psyched

The place where the event was to be held was on a large farm not far away. We all hopped into the car and set off for a day of education and fun. The farm was in the foothills of a mountain range not far from where we live, so it was a picturesque place indeed. See here.

We started towards the southern encampment since we were told it was straight ahead and so through the bit of new orchard we went, admiring the view

You can barely see there are people ahead, but as we came closer we saw the southern encampment was very small. I asked a spectator if there were other regiments, and he said no, this is it; you just missed the battle. Battle? I said it says that's not until 30 minutes from now. Is there another? No, said he; both sides got tired of sitting around, so they decided to go. WHAT? Here me boyos were all psyched for the battle as boys usually are.

This was the Confederate encampment. I was thinking there would be more soldiers and tents

This is what we walked into

Hum, was there a pot-throwing contest?

We were told to go to the field where the ladies gave a cooking demo. OK

Ladies (who outnumbered the troops) and spectators

We saw the ladies basically standing around chatting each other up with no actual demonstration but for one man who looked to be the company medic, scrubbing down a board and rusty knife as if he was going to do something with those implements, but nothing happened . . . sooo with not much going on, we backtracked and thought to go to the Union encampment. 

This was a trek over the river and through the woods!

Through the vegetable fields

Passed the bog

Around the hay stacks

To the neat tents

To find not much going on, EXCEPT the commander was answering questions from onlookers.

Cooking and talking - the rein actors on their cell phones

And the man was asked what schools many Confederate commanders came from. I was taken aback thinking that would have been an excellent question to ask the Confederate commander but well . . . the answer was West Point. Only West Point? I was waiting to hear about the Citadel, and notta word was mentioned. Hum! The problem was that while you had some great generals on both sides from West Point, the Citadel churned out a huge load of famous names of sons of the South. 

I thought, what be cooking? Like everything else, I was not shocked to see THIS:

That old Civil War staple HOT DOGS!

I had basically come to the conclusion this was a bust. The battle must have been one too. I can just imagine a lot of shouting back and forth, maybe throwing those pots back and forth, the three Confederate army guys raising their muskets, and the six Union soldiers laughing and jeering the southern boyos were outnumbered. Yeah, I was sure we missed nothing. 

However, we did see something we definitely want to go online and purchase. As we were walking back to our car, I saw this:

Yup, one of these for when the kiddos are bad, LOL

Turns out the place is a haunted walk at night and that device was one of the spooky things a ghoul would be moaning to be let out of. And no, after the Civil War disaster, we opted not to take the haunted walk. And no, I didn't ask for my money back. The day was beautiful, and the scenery was lovely. I just scrapped it up to a learning experience that we won't do again.

Gabe

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