Boots Before Corset: The Battle of Gettysburg: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

…but not necessarily in that order.

And now the moment you've all been waiting for! Or at least the moment we all were waiting for, our four days at Gettysburg, Thursday-Sunday, June 27-30. On Thursday we registered, and met our unit host, Major Todd Richardson of the 38th Tennessee. The site was huge and the Confederate camp a long ways from the entrance. The camp was (thankfully, with the heat) in the woods, so the camp streets weren't neatly organized like our camps at home. In fact, it had a very straggly appearance, with many dog tents and bivouac shelters, making it difficult to find our way around. Fortunately, the first guy we stumbled upon and asked directions of turned out to be Major Richardson! He and the other fellows we met were nice, and very welcoming, though we saw little of them over the weekend. More on that later.

The weekend was not what we'd expected, and it was interesting to compare east coast reenacting with the way we do it. We all came away really grateful to live in the Pacific Northwest!

Rufus Lawless, ready for battle.

Saving the best for last:

THE BAD

Ticks – So many of them that even bug-phobic Hailey became inured to them. None of us managed to acquire any permanent residents, but we certainly ran off a few hopeful visitors.
Heat - And humidity. Absolutely wilting at times. But we brought plenty of ice and drinks and managed nicely.

Rain - People think we get a lot of rain? Huh!! Nothing like to torrential downpour we got caught in here! We were all walking around the sutler's area (shops) when the sky darkened. Since we were ready to leave, we began racing for the car, but before we'd made it halfway, the skies opened up and let loose! We were all soaked to the skin in seconds. My dress and petticoats soaked up twenty pounds of water, and all our hats sent little waterfalls down over our faces, even after we'd achieved the safety of the van. We all laughed and dashed back to the cabin for a change of clothes before going out to dinner.

Traffic - The road running through the whole event site was a single lane - one direction at a time, rendered even more ridiculous after the downpour turned half the parking lot into a swamp. I think every Civil War buff on the planet must have descended on the small town of Gettysburg at once! I heard that G'burg has about 8,000 residents and that 10,000 reenactors showed up, plus the public (and another even bigger reenactment the weekend of July 4-7.) The residents are making hay while the sun shines though, and raking in money hand over fist for every possible battle tie-in they can persuade the buying public to purchase.

Gettysburg township - Not to be confused with the actual town of Gettysburg, the township is the re-eanctment "town" that was part of the battle. I had high hopes for seeing some really fabulous "homes", because at home our "Mason-Dixon Township" features whole homes (in large tents), with antique furniture, dining rooms with china and silver, parlors with rugs and pictures, the works. G'burg Township was advertised as a very select group that had to be pre-approved for period authenticity and were to depict Civil War home life as accurately as possible, but it was mostly just basic A-frame tents with civilians in them.

Check out a glimpse of our Mason-Dixon, at about the 2:00 mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNIVYE6cEAo

This was cool though. This tent had a front door, a real window and porch railings.

The food - A whole row of food vendors promised an array of tempting digestive delights, but proved heartily disappointing. Hoping for some fresh vegi's, I ordered a gyro. The brand-spanking-new boy behind the counter pronounced it "ji-roe" and then asked me how to make it. After spooning water-soaked meat onto a crumbly pita pocket, he added huge tomato chunks, complete with stickers and cores, and then told me they hadn't made any sauce yet. One day we managed some decent roast chicken and home-made potato chips, but the food in camp was almost universally awful.

THE UGLY: FARB

We’ve talked about farb before, remember? Farb is anything at a Civil War event that is not period-correct. Like a bevy of older ladies in shiny polyester dresses with long girly curls, smoking cigarettes and talking on cell phones.

Or turning a corner in the leafy, cool Confederate camp to come face-to-face with a huge SUV.

Or fighting a rip-roaring battle through a parking lot. Along a row of porta-potties. Not kidding. Wish I was.

Or a service vehicle with a bright flashing light sitting alongside the line of soldiers for half of the battle.

BTW, Rufus has another definition of "farb" that I like: "Fallacious Accoutrements and Ridiculous Baggage", a term I find particularly funny since it actually defines what many of us are avidly acquiring, rather than the reverse!

Other Uglies:

Racist jokes.

A guy peeing on the porta-potty instead of in it. In full view. Ew.

Noisy generators running right next to the Activities tent where the speakers were, and also next to the lunch seating area.

The farb factor was so bad that Karl, Claire and Rufus ended up fighting only one battle the entire weekend. (Brennan was drafted as a flagbearer and got to participate as well.) They marched a mile in the heat only to sit for an hour before joining the battle. But they were lucky that they did eventually get to fight. The guy parked next to us waited two hours without firing a shot and finally drove off in disgust to go swimming! Every battle we saw was interrupted, actually halted, several times to care for injured, usually just due to heat and hydration problems. No attempt was made to remove these unfortunates in any period-correct form. Instead, ambulances careened right through battle lines, lights flashing, and then disgorged neon-orange clad medics to stand around talking into walkie-talkies while thousands of soldiers sat in their wool uniforms in full sun. Golf carts whizzed all over, leaving us with no chance to experience that 1863 feeling we all hoped for.

Our boys, headed off for their one and only battle.

Frederick the Flagbearer

The Battle of the Parking Lot.

Yankees and porta-potties. They blend.

But, there was plenty of good as well.

THE GOOD

The people were so nice. We were invited to fall in with nearly everyone we talked to. The 38^th Tennessee, whom we had contacted from Washington, welcomed us with open arms. Vendors shared not just their wares, but information.

Major Todd Richardson and his wife Heather are actually from Alabama, and they have lovely deep south accents. I’ve been working on my Alabama accent so I’m took notes, but talking with them made me feel a bit like Tina Fey in this Sarah Palin skit: "What? The real one?"

Major Todd Richardson of the 38th Tennessee.

The eye candy. My, oh my! Hailey and I have come across yards and yards of gorgeous fabrics, antique laces, and real silk ribbons. (I bought some ribbon, and a woman next to me said, "If you could touch heaven, this is what it would feel like." Amen!) We were invited to try on beautiful bonnets and to finger silks shot with silver and gold. We’ve seen hand-stitched jackets, velvet Glengarry caps trimmed with ostrich feathers, pottery butter churns, period-correct coolers, fine ladies shoes, bejeweled hatpins, and a wide variety of new styles to copy when we get home. It is so exciting to see so many vendors who really know their stuff and carry goods that are not only period-correct, but often reasonably-priced as well.

A beautiful sheer dress.

The sutlers.

The Emerald Peacock - a really cool saloon set up on the grounds of the battle, with many tables, each with a hanging lamp above it, a big wooden bar, swinging saloon doors, and a real buffalo head on the wall. Having decided to remain spectators, we hung out there to watch the battles, while hungry Brennan devoured countless pickled eggs and meat sticks.

The town of Gettysburg. The real one. Many if not most of the buildings in town date back to before the Civil War. Gettysburg is a lovely little town that is jam-packed with tourists here to experience the 150^th anniversary of possibly the worst moment in American history. Kind of weird. We spent nearly every evening strolling the streets and enjoying the pageant of a whole bunch of nutters like us!

We just read Confederates in the Attic, which mentions the Blue Gray Diner in Gettysburg, so we had to eat there. It was so hilariously kitschy that we enjoyed it immensely! Karl and Rufus ordered Battlefield Burgers.

The rest of us had Blue & Gray Wings, two orders, the 15th Alabama and the Irish Brigade, of course!

Another evening we went out for Mexican food. After we ordered, Rufus pulled the waiter aside and spoke to him in Spanish, telling him it was my birthday and to do the whole birthday-singing-dessert thing (as a joke - it's not my birthday.) But Rufus underestimated my linguistic abilities, and I understood what he said. I wish I'd had the foresight to turn the tables on him though. Bizarre picture - Civil War dress and a sombrero!

The actual battlefields. The real Gettysburg battlefield was an awe-inspiring sight. The distances are astounding. Countless placards and monuments mark every troop movement. One day I took an early-morning run up Little Round Top and through Devil's Den. I asked at our camp for a good location to run in, and was thrilled to discover that the camp is actually across the street from Little Round Top! Few people were around and fog lingered over the hushed and peaceful woods. On Big Round Top, I discovered a monument to a Vermont cavalry unit that mentioned the 15th Alabama. I also located the very beautiful monument to the 69th New York in the Wheatfield.

Another day Rufus and I took a morning walk though the same area and looked out over the whole valley from the top of Little Round Top. Seeing the battlefields on foot is so much nicer than blasting through by car, and several of the main sites are within easy walking distance of our camp.

One evening in camp, Rufus rounded up the boys who were camped next to us and formed a small unit. After he and Clarence drilled the new recruits, they marched on a Yankee unit from Delaware camped nearby and stormed their tents. The Yankees refused to surrender, even after heavy fire, and our brave boys were unfortunately forced to retreat.

Ten thousand reenactors. Ten thousand. Rows and rows of soldiers. The cavalry line took ten minutes to pass by. The music was stirring. During one battle, we watched an impressive artillery team firing their cannon nearly every 20 seconds. The collective boom of dozens of cannons, the smattering pop of hundreds of muskets firing at once, the clank and tramp of a whole battalion of soldiers, the Rebel yell of the Confederacy, the rumble of horse-drawn wagons - all combined to make us feel a small sense of the scope of the actual battle. So while the sight of so much modern intrusion was very disheartening, the sounds were truly impressive.