Civil War Reenactments and Me

A couple of Saturdays ago, I went to a Civil War reenactment. Over a month ago, I was taking the bus to my friends house, and I happened to catch a poster about it in front of Pierce College. Pierce is pretty far out in the valley, and it has this thing called "The Farm" which is a whole bunch of land, as you can see here. This particular reenactment/heritage days has been going on for awhile. I'd never been to one, so I decided to check it out.

The first thing I learned was that it is LOUD. I do not think I'll be bringing my eventual children to this until they're teenagers. We arrived and entered just before the first engagement, and walked over to where there were bleachers to sit. It turned out we had to pay to sit ($4!) but it was hot and we'd saved money buying the tickets online, so we went for it. As I was having my wristband put on me, a cannon went off, which I hadn't been expecting. I yelled loudly, then said "well, I guess it's noon."

Watching the battle was interesting. We never caught which battle they were reenacting, if it was a specific one. Everything was kind of ... slow. It's not like in movies where horses are coming at you and there's guns going off constantly and lots of death and screaming every second. The rebels were advancing on the Union soldiers, and they had to reload constantly, so you could generally anticipate when there would be noise. The rebels were also not wearing uniforms, they were lucky to have guns and horses. Some of them didn't even have rifles or shotguns, just hand guns from the time.

When the engagement was over, we headed over to the town square where Lincoln would be giving his Gettysburg Address. It was interesting and pretty quick. Then he went on to talk about other things, and I began to feel nauseous and dizzy. I thankfully had the wherewithall to remember that those are the symptoms of heat stroke, and quickly went to go sit down and drink water.

After I recovered, we went and took a look at the tents where goods and such were being sold. There was one selling hats, and they had a whole trunk full of fascinators, which I of course wanted, but they were all around $35, too much for me. I did wind up purchasing a ring with a relief thing going on, and a pair of vintage earrings (not vintage civil war, more like vintage late 40s) for a total of $15. I'm pretty stoked about them.

 Then I attended a fashion show while my boyfriend and his cousin, who happened to be in town, saw a Calvary demonstration. The fashion show was quite interesting, and the announcer definitely knew what she was talking about.

Lastly, I watched "Victorian Dancing." I was under the impression that they would have a few people to demonstrate, and then probably get the crowd involved. But instead there was only one, the woman on the left. She was pretty good at organizing, and a lot of students got corralled into it by their teacher, so there were quite a few volunteers. I didn't watch all of it, but what I did see was a lot of circle turning and walking backwards and turning your partner. I felt bad not participating, but I wanted to watch first, and then it was time to for us to head out so we could meet up with my boyfriend's sister.

All in all a good day. Maybe I'll go next year? If there's someone who wants to go. Hopefully it wouldn't be as hot ... but it's always hot in the valley in the spring.

One last thing: are there other countries that do this kind of thing? Reenact wars? Because it seems kind of odd. It's almost a celebration of that time. I know it educates and whatnot, but it's still kind of morbid, falling dead in a field.