| Straight
from the holler.
by "Buck" February 2, 2007 Is there anything more bizarre than Civil War reenactments? I’ve been to a few of these events and even have some friends who are deeply into this culture. Although I enjoy a good war movie like any red-blooded American guy, I have a hard time understanding the purpose. Grown men, dressed in period garb and playing war doesn’t exactly feel right, you know? Some women will also get into the act with those big Gone With the Wind dresses with the fancy umbrella and what not. I remember playing “war” as a kid and at times—depending on what was being studied in history class—I’d be killing everything from Yankees (I was ALWAYS fighting for the south) to Redcoats. I spent a great deal of youthful energy blowing up Japs, kicking the shit out of Krauts, running Indians off their native lands, and torturing Charlie. Eventually, however, I grew out of all of this. Why haven’t they? A friend of mine, who calls it the “War Between the States” is a Civil War “buff.” I guess that’s a name for somebody who’s “really into it all.” He has a full-on Reb uniform, with the belt, guns, the whole deal. I attended one of these things with him once just to watch. It was in the dead of summer and probably 110 degrees. As various guys fell over dead the battle raged on…..but soon, you’d see the dead crawling across the ground to escape the sun. The “dead” bodies were piled high in the shade. He was telling me another weird story about being part of one of the battle scenes in the movie Gods and Generals. He says they were out in the field “drilling” for three days and there were thousands of these characters romping around. Amid all of this 1864 technology somebody got hurt and they had to stop the whole thing and bring in a helicopter to take him to the hospital. Probably from the Confederate Air Cav Division. He said they worked on the battle scene for three-days and the movie included a two second clip of them. He was so proud. Why is there no Reenactment of the War of 1812? How come we don’t refight World War II? Don’t even get me started on the lack of respect for Korea. --Jeff’s story of the bug truck sparked a childhood memory for me. When I was in about third grade my family went on a camping trip to Buckhorn Lake, Kentucky. The campground apparently had quite a mosquito problem because they had industrial sized bug zappers sitting on giant poles 20 feet up in the air. These things were enormous, probably the size of a mattress. . There were at least ten of them in this campground. They were on 24-hours a day, but it was after the sun went down and you could see only the purple glow of the bulbs, that the show was on. I sat for hours watching that thing because not only were tiny bugs flying into it, but occasionally a bat or one of those huge moths would hit the thing. When this happened, it would literally catch on fire. The buzzing would reach such a fevered pitch that the security lights throughout the grounds would dim just a bit. Smoke would roll and occasionally there would be a flame shooting out of the mega-zapper. I’d give anything to have such a contraption in my back yard. Oh the fun I could have with that. I may have outgrown playing war, but I’m still a kid at heart when it comes to throwing shit into a bug zapper. --That same trip to Buckhorn Lake holds another odd footnote. There was a traveling band of gypsies staying there. Probably 15 or 20 campsites had all forms of RV’s with a traveling bunch of carnies. They all looked like Romanian immigrants and spoke a strange language I’d never heard. They were a little scary, a least to me as a kid, since they always stared at you and acted as if they had something to hide when you walked by their campsite. I was spinning all kinds of conspiracy theories in my young mind. I figured they were probably traveling the world collecting hillbilly children for some horrible torture experiment. Oh, the other thing I remember was at every one of their campsites they had a HUGE jar of peppers sitting on the picnic table. I had never seen such a thing and for some reason it stuck with me. --I’m trying to plan a big vacation for this coming summer. Originally, I had plans to drive to the Grand Canyon. I’ve never been there and would like to give a cross country trip a try via automobile. However, funds are already tightening up as they do at this time of year so that will likely be one that will be filed under “maybe next year.” Trips to Mt. Rushmore and to California are also in that same file. Instead, I’m considering a week of fishing in Canada. I’ll let you know how it all turns out, everything is very preliminary. --I’m torn as to who I will be cheering for during Sunday’s Superbowl. As a grad of the U. of Tennessee I am a longstanding Peyton Manning fan. However, I have divided loyalties since Thomas Jones, running back for the Bears, is from my home town. My sister actually graduated with him and has a picture with him and a bunch of other people at the beach during their senior trip. One thing is for sure, I’ll be watching and many a chicken will have to die to satisfy my desire for wings Sunday evening. Buck Out |
