May 31, 2006
Now this event has always been puzzling to me. I enjoy participating in it, yet at the same time I loathe it. Manly because it is the most piss-poorly run event I do. Everyone involved is really nice, but when you arrive there rarely is ever anyone around to tell you where you can and can’t set up. I spent a good 45 minutes to an hour searching for someone to tell me where I was supposed to camp. I was so pissed I about grabbed the family and drove home. Ktreva said she really wanted to stay so I just decided on Squatters rights and choose a spot. Sure enough as soon as we start setting up, who should appear, but the booshway (Man in charge) to collect our fee. Whenever you need to find someone “in-charge” after hours it’s almost impossible. It seems like any ounce of organization they attempt is done so poorly that they would have been better off not even trying to organize anything.
We could tell Friday night was going to be lonely. We didnÂ’t see any of our normal friends there. We were camped kind of by ourselves, we looked really anti-social, hoping that when our friends showed up they could camp next to us. By 10:30 PM it didnÂ’t look like any of the people that told us they were going to show up were going to. Saturday morning we awoke to a bake oven. It was already in the 80Â’s by 7:30 AM, and since it had rained so much the previous week the ground was saturated with water. That meant it was humid as all hell. Plus there was no breeze. After building a fire, (Yea, that sucked) and cooking French toast over it (That sucked more, especially since someone forgot the syrupÂ… KTREVA!) we headed out to make our day. Right away we found a camp that hadnÂ’t been there the night before. Our friendÂ’s Will and Red showed up. They also had one of their sons and a whole slew of the Illinois River Scum with them. Since they didnÂ’t have the big tent like I thought they had, they camped in the cooler shadier area. I donÂ’t blame them, if my tent would have fit down there, I would have too.
After making our rounds, picking up Boopie's custom made chair from Irish Ridge and talking to our vendor friends. Boopie and I hit the range to burn powder. BoopieÂ’s first time live firing was interesting. The gun handles fine. ItÂ’s just a little temperamental. That may have something to do with the farooking humidity making the black powder kind of gooey. I need to work on the boyÂ’s upper body strength; he had a hard time holding the rifle up. After a couple of shots he decided he liked shooting, but didnÂ’t like standing in the sun, so he gave it a rest. I on the other hand started the competition shooting. Again the humidity took its toll on my musket. The damn thing kept fouling up after every two to three shots and had to be seriously cleaned. Everyone shooting was having the same issues. Plus it was so hot that the lead balls were getting softer and starting to misshapen easier.
At the end of the weekend I ended up taking Second place in the Smooth bore competition, with out destroying the range. In fact this year range master Marty had a new rule, the “Seamus Clause” (In reference to last year when I exploded a two by four on my first shot). Anyone that hits one of the wooden supports or stands has to buy him a drink. I thought I was screwed. Funnily enough the only person all weekend to hit one of the stands was Marty.
My Friend Jim, his wife, his son and a friend of his son day tripped it to the event on Saturday to shoot. Since the award ceremony wasn’t until Sunday, he told Marty to give me any prizes they may have won. Well He took Second place in Adult rifle, His son’s friend took second place in the juvenile shoot, and his son took Third prize. I ended up collect 2 pounds of ham steaks, a pound of Canadian bacon, and two pounds of regular bacon. I was walking back from the award ceremony when someone asked what all I had, I couldn’t help but to say, “I won second place in the shooting competition. First place got a whole pig, Second gets an assemble your own pig.”
The ground at the range was pretty chewed up by the end of the event. However, most of the damage to the ground was my fault. My .75 caliber musket would chew up the ground behind the targets every time it hit. Other shooters and the audience would comment on the size of the divots I was shooting out of the ground. They also where amazed at the size of the furrows those round balls would create. At one point my buddy Jim was out on the range changing targets. He yelled back to everyone, “You should see the size of ditches Seamus is digging out here. It looks like World War 1 trench warfare.” He then proceeded to “Fall into” one.
After I was done shooting my competition rounds at the range. I helped Marty out by scoring other shooters. He was short handed and there where a lot of shooters there this year. ThatÂ’s when I ended up getting burnt so bad. I was in the sun from 10:00 AM until 2:30 PM. 20 minutes actual shooting, 40 minutes of loading, an hour and half of cleaning and two hours judging. The whole time with out any sunscreen. Yep, my own damn fault.
Saturday afternoon is when the rain hit us. It wasnÂ’t a heavy rain, and it lasted for only about 20-30 minutes. After it finished it did two things. Cooled everyone off some, and increased the humidity.
Saturday night we had a good time around the campfire and I had a couple more Mortar Maidens volunteer. That should last me until my July event. Both of my new Mortar Maidens portray Natives… that’s Indians to the PC crowd. We had fun trying to name them; ideas like, “Beaver on a stick” and “She who eats beaver” where two of the many ideas.
Sunday was even hotter then Saturday, and there was no cloud cover or wind to provide any relief. It was so hot that even the public stayed home and the re-enactors where all huddled under flies or in the shade of trees to stay out of the heat. Fortunately no one went down from heat stroke. We did have a couple of close calls. I had been drinking water all day, and immediately sweating it out. A lady comes up to me and asks me, “How do you do it? How do you stay so cool when it’s hot out.” Me, “You get used to it.” Lady, “You’re not even sweating.” Me, just realizing she was right, “Yea, that’s called dehydration.” The lady looked at me surprised and walked off. I don’t know if she now believes everyone in 1756 dehydrated themselves on hot days or not. But I did get something to drink.
All weekend I had a bunch of re-enactors tell me I was daft (the polite version of what they really said) for wanting to change to the 1830Â’s. I donÂ’t know what was more fun, arguing the history with them, or just watching them get flustered at me for even thinking of changing eras. In fact at one point I think Will was going to have a conniption fit on Saturday night.
Sunday night most of the campers packed up and left. We stayed so we could pack during the cooler morning hours on Monday. We were able to hang out with the River Scum and some new friends we made. We cooked many pork products over fire and had a good time.
For some pictures and other stories see the review at the Spoon and Blade.
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May 29, 2006
On the upside it was only on Saturday, when the temperatures were in the 90Â’s with 90% humidity. The rain was welcomed with the joy that only a re-enactor wearing wool and black canvas on a hot miserable day can understand. While the public was fleeing for shelter, every re-enactor I saw was relishing the rain like a nice long shower. Unfortunately, between the sweat, funk and sun block I donÂ’t think a one of us actually got wet. Our natural water repellent kept us dry. Water was bending around us like light through a prism.
I would love to tell you more, but IÂ’m baked. (Not from Drugs.) We packed and loaded the vehicles in upper 80 temps. I drove all the way home from Fort Atkinson (about an hour and 15 minutes from my house) with no AC so I could conserve on gas mileage. Then just unpacked the vehicles. But I did get some serious sun this weekend. Check out this nice sunburn. If you look closely you can see where my bonnet was as there is distinct line between burnt and unburnt flesh.
Once IÂ’ve recouped IÂ’ll give you all a worthy breakdown of what happened. Boy do I have stories for you!
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May 25, 2006
Do you know what the mathematical odds of that happening are? It would the equivalent of you winning the lottery! It rains on me over 75% of the events I do every year. Add to that the fact that there is a 90% chance that it will rain at least one of the days on Memorial Day Weekend.
At this point I just want to say goodbye to all my friends. I figure this must be the end of the world. ItÂ’s never that warm or nice up here on Memorial Day weekend. If the weather service is not playing a cruel, yet funny, joke on me, then this must be the end. Either that or IÂ’m going to be struck down by a fluke storm in the middle of the night.
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05:25 PM
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May 04, 2006
Friday was beautiful. The weather was nice and Boopie and I where able to get cartridges rolled for the battle re-enactment. He was very excited as this was going to be his first one. I bought him that rifle for his thirteenth birthday. During the day school kids were going from site to site (That had a demonstration) learning about different aspects of history. They had stopped by my site, but I had to move them on. I wasn’t doing a demonstration. As it was stated to me, “We love your display, and appreciate what your bring to this event. Unfortunately some of the teachers and parents don’t think distilling is a good demonstration for children, they don’t want you promoting alcohol. We know that’s not what you are doing, but the public can be narrow minded.” So I didn’t do my demonstration. No skin off of my back, it made for a relaxing day. That night we went into town (in costume) to a restaurant for dinner with some friends of ours. We had a good time, and watching people’s reaction to French Voyagers and Scottish Mercenaries invading a Chinese food restaurant was hilarious. That and we stunk of campfire and body odor.
When we returned to camp, I abandoned my family to visit some other camps. Ktreva stayed with Clone, we canÂ’t leave him unattended in a tentÂ… stupid modern laws! In 1756 I could have tied him to a tree and been okay! I visited the RogerÂ’s Rangers camp and drank some of the most god awful homemade liquor on the face of the earth. Then I drank some of the stuff they made. I was up until almost 3:00 in the morning drinking and bullshiteing with my fellow re-enactors. Which isnÂ’t a good idea when you have a 6:00 AM wake up call in the form of a 3 year old.
I felt a bit rough on Saturday and the crappy weather didn’t help any. I was nursing a bit of a sore head and upset stomach all day. Then around 12:30 I was talking to a group of people about distilling when a wave of nausea came over me. One of them asked, “Do you ever drink what you make?” (Which is water, it’s illegal to distill any liquor in the US with out a distiller-manufacturing license, and they are cost prohibitive.) Right as they asked that question, I responded with, “O’ course Aye do. I canno’ sell mah whiskay wi’ out samplin’ it first! Now excuse me, I think I’m going to get sick.” I took about ten steps through the crowd and proceeded to vomit all over the road. I whipped my mouth, walked back to my still and continued my presentation with out missing a beat. The public just stared at me like I was insane. The weird part was that I had bacon and eggs for breakfast, and that wasn’t in my vomit. Nope, it was mainly liquid with bits of rice from the night before, but no sign of bacon or eggs. I want to know how that happened.
That afternoon I took Boopie with me to his first battle. He was instructed on how to handle his rifle and to stay with me at all times. For the first 15 minutes of the battle I was busy making sure he was following the safety rules and not hurting himself or anyone else that I only got one shot off. He was so excited he kept forgetting the rules and I had to keep reminding him of what to do, including the proper way to hold a rifle. And that is how he got hurt. My son, in his first battle almost (wait for it)… shot his eye out. Instead of shouldering the rifle properly so that the butt was firm in his shoulder, he put the top of the butt in his armpit and brought his eye close to the barrel, “To aim”. I had told him 5 times that day not to hold it like that, but he kept doing it. The last time I was just yelling at him to hold the rifle correctly when he pulled the trigger. If you are familiar with Flintlocks, then you know that when you pull the trigger there is a small explosion in the pan by the hammer. If you didn’t know that, you do now. He caught black powder all along side his face. He was okay, a little more freckled and bloodshot eye. I sent him back to camp to have Ktreva check him out to make sure he was okay. After the battle I went back to check on him and he was okay, he was more worried I was mad at him then he was hurt.
That night the rain and wind got heavier. We were invited to numerous camps to socialize; however we had to turn them all down. We canÂ’t leave Clone unattended. I offered to let Ktreva go out and IÂ’d stay with the boy, but she didnÂ’t want to. We ended up sitting around the fire just talking for a while, and then went over to a neighboring camp to join their festivities. That and they had a better set up to block the wind and rain.
Sunday morning we were awoken to the sounds of vehicles and people packing. I stepped out of the tent, found an even coordinator and confirmed they canceled the event. The weather was supposed to be worse then the day before, so they where letting people pack in and go home early. Ktreva and I took the break in the rain as a chance to break camp, pack up and get home so we could hang the wet canvas to dry.
We had a good time for the time we were out there. Although we are kind of saddened and worried. We found out that four re-enactors that we know are looking to sell off their gear and get out of re-enacting. There are a lot of people that have been either getting so old they retire or give up re-enacting of late. Not too many younger people are getting involved. Hell, Ktreva and I are pups in the re-enacting crowd. The average age for what we do has got to be 55, and that may be a young estimate. We just hope some younger people pick it up; I donÂ’t want to have to find a new hobby.
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