Scary People in Uniforms

So, tomorrow the tribe and I are going to go and watch a WWII reenactment. Let me tell you - the tribe is NOT excited, except for the female general and the second oldest of the troops. He is excited about the MOVING TANKS. That are going to shoot off BIG BANGS. We hope. We went to another WWII reenactment in Oak Ridge, TN, a year ago, and it didn't have tanks. It did have people dressed up in German uniforms running around shouting "Schnell! Schnell! Achtung!" (Fast, fast, watch out!). We were quite well placed since we got to see the captured American soldiers escape. Tomorrow will be more exciting because there will be British, Germans, Italians, Americans, Canadians, and RUSSIANS. Oh, the joy of it all. Lots of loud bangs and cursing in multiple languages. The girl recruit is desperately trying to get ill or find anywhere else to be.

I am embarrassed to admit how much I love these reenactments. I wouldn't plan a trip around it, but I would make sure that it is included in my options. I love to watch people make bullets, tan hides, rotate a possum on a spit. I drug the kids a few years ago to see a French and Indian War reenactment, and girl soldier FREAKED OUT. Maybe it was the 20 or so Native American reenactors that suddenly ran towards her half naked waving guns and tomahawks. A few years ago (well, let's say 18?), I was on a college field trip. We had been to Rodney, MS, which is another place that has a lot of freak lines radiating out from it. It is a ghost town. Like streets and banks and stores and churches and graveyards with empty caskets lying open in it. It is very, very weird. Eudora Welty wrote about, as did Rick Bass, and it is well worth the side trip if you are ever lost on the Natchez Trace in South Mississippi. Anyway, a bunch of my classmates were driving back, and for some unknown reason, we were passing the only (I think) nuclear power plant in Mississippi. We were looking for a picnic spot, and there is a state park there. Anyway, as we drive by, a man in full Confederate calvary comes charging over the bank at the side of the road on a big old horse, followed by a bunch of screaming men in gray uniforms. It was definitely surreal, but sort of what you would expect after a day in Rodney. So, we set around eating our sandwiches, watching the Confederates lose the first of many skirmishes leading up to Vicksburg.

So, in the past year or so, I have found out quite a bit about my relatives up the family tree. I could be a Daughter of the Confederacy through 3 of the 4 grandparent branches, and the 4th, I could probably get in because he was the county slave-catcher for Clarksdale, MS. I double checked that one on my trip down South in January, and it was right there in the library. Yuck. Anyway, one of my (four?) great -grandfathers joined up before the war even started, and within a couple of months, my second great-whatever-grandfather had joined him. The two of them fought all the way through the war and pretty much hit every major battle in TN and Georgia. One of them was captured 3 times! and escaped 3 times! He also managed to be at the surrender in Appamatox, which in Southern confederate history, if you care at all about it, is a VERY BIG DEAL. This is verified, too, because I went to a teacher's convention in Columbia, TN. In Columbia, if you have a daughter so inclined and you register the day the opportunity opens, she can go and learn to dance the waltz, learn the language of fans, etc., and literally learn to be a southern belle. And at this convention, we went on a progressive dinner, which was quite fun. Wine and cheese at James K. Polk's house, then on somewhere else forgettable, to the main course at the headquarters of the SONS OF THE CONFEDERATE VETERANS NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS. It may have been the Sons of the Confederacy. Both exist, but I am too lazy to figure out which one this was. I can not even begin to tell you how wrong this was. They have a dixie flag flying outside, but they did at least put it below the American Flag. The part that I found really weird is the planners thought this was okay. Memphis, TN, sent the largest contingency of ESL teachers, and they were predominantly minority. I remember this Memphis teacher in front of me, saying, "You have got be kidding." when we pulled up. The headquarters were nice, the hosts lovely, but it was such a shrine. All the pictures on the wall of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, JEB Stuart, etc. Anyway, back to my family. I told the president that I thought I had relatives who fought in the Civil War, and so he plugged in his last name into his database, and presto! I had a list of everything this man had done for all 4 years of the war. The funny thing is, my family apparently didn't own any slaves. Or at least the ones who fought didn't. I guess they were very committed to States Rights', which many people have told me was the REAL reason the war was fought. I try not to repetitively bang my head when that conversation starts.

Baby Boo, who like his siblings, has decided that he will sleep with his mommy the year he is four, told me yesterday, with a tone of great world weariness, "Mommy, I think I am going to be a baker. I am going to make pies, and cakes, and cookies, and MUFFINS. CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS." I asked him if wanted to work in a zoo, but, "No, I think it is best that I am a baker." Where did he learn this way of speech? Bunny, who has long struggled with her apathy towards sports, has suddenly decided that she is a soccer star. This has made her immediately younger brother decide that she might have value in his world, as long as she understands that she will never be as good as him. He has also proven that hell CAN freeze, because he has finally decided it is time for a haircut. This is his first one since last September.

Oh, I decided that the snake venom isn't working. it is just masking the giant, throbbing infection that is my brain.