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Ghosts on the Frontline.
I went to one of those Civil War battle re-enactment things yesterday. A friend of mine asked me to go, he said there would be plenty of photo opportunities. I went, camera in tow.
It was fun. Odd, but fun. Once I got there and got a feel for the place, I got into "the zone" and sorta vanished. I know this sounds weird, but I felt like the proverbial fly on the wall.
The (actors?) "enactors", being the consummate professionals they are, were completely in character. Anything outside of the scope of their "battle" didn't exist. In a sense, I became a ghost, walking around them completely unnoticed.
I decided to test my new invisibility. I walked into the "encampment" to setup a shot for the "pending carnage". I got past the camp and was heading out onto the battlefield when a sentry spoke up and said "Hawt! You go pas' tha' cawnuh, I'll shoot chuh." A simple "You can't go there." would've worked, but Jebidiah meant business. I laughed as I stepped back.
Soon after the battle started, the crowd got caught up in the flow of things. Getting caught up was way too easy for some of them. Granted, the cannon blasts were real enough to rattle your pancreas, but even without the cannons, some of these folks were REALLY into this thing. Rebel yells and all that shit.
"Yaykees er ki-erts!" The kid to my left kept screaming at the other team. "Die you sumbi'ches!" his dad would yell. I thought to myself that, technically speaking, the "sumbi'ches" are dead, get past it. Then I remembered I was a ghost, and figured ghosts aren't supposed to argue sematics with those of the here and now, so I kept my thought to myself.
Another thought I had as the battle raged, was why the south lost. I'm not a historian by any stretch of the definition. But I concluded the Confederacy lost the Civil War because of...
...too many Funnel Cakes.
5/2/2005 06:51:00 PM
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