A Step Away From Reenacting, Dads and The Yellow Peril

Some might have the impression of me by now that I was an irresponsible, naive and spoiled brat, born to fortune and given everything in life. Never having to work to pay for school, or a car, or what have you. And to some degrees, yes I would say you're right. I do count myself fortunate. But there has been a major drawback to every fortune.

For example, my first car was a Pontiac Bonneville '92 (pearl gray of course) with a Landeau cover. It was THE hand-me-down of hand-me-downs. It started with someone we didn't know, went through another guy, then to my brother. And this was my brother's second car. It was driven all over creation, had at least one hole in it and my brother and I had done most of the repair work to get it going again before it could be driven. Then I paid my brother what he deemed the thing to be worth, a whopping $500.

This is sadly, not my car. Imagine this guy with the driver's side grill chewed up, the driver's side panel missing, a little more room in the trunk and a canvas, Landau top and you've got my baby.

Tada! First car! Long story short, it leaked every liquid it had in it at one point or other, and had nearly every other part replaced before I gave up on it (and even that wasn't my decision, I loved that car!) One of the windows didn't roll down, the high beams didn't work, it constantly blasted heat summer or winter, whether the fan was on or not and it really didn't idle so well. But it was a sweet car! And for all its faults it kept me alive.

So yes, fortunate to buy from my brother (who knew cars well), less fortunate to be like every other first car owner and get less than the absolute best.

Another example, college. Here's the plus side.

I got to attend a private Christian university for free that was less than ten miles from home, and smack dab in the middle of the community I grew up in. I could walk most everywhere in town, which helped since I didn't get the Bonneville until the beginning of my sophomore year, and because my parents insisted that being a student was my 'job' and because my tuition was free, I didn't need a job throughout the school year. I worked in the summer time but my free time at the university was my own.

Here's the downside. The reason I was able to attend this university was because my father has been teaching there with his PhD for going on 30+ years. He is devoted entirely to his students and his passion for teaching, and for doing so in an environment that encourages the application of our faith in every day life. Dad loves college students.

Dad is not, however, so hot about smaller people. Dad's MO is to go to work early in the morning, work through the day, work through the night, and come home late in the evening hungry, tired and ready to be very far away from people. This was the way he was when I was little, and it's the way he is now. So that meant that Dad was usually just...not around. Especially when were little, Dad would usually not be there for dinner, homework, getting anyone to band or drama rehearsal or youth group or....
'Call your father,' didn't mean shout for Dad to come in from the wood shed it meant call the college switchboard on the rotary phone and ask for his extension. (One of the reasons he didn't get a mobile phone until I was 21 was because Dad was always either at the school or at home. There was no 'mobile' to worry about.)

We went on whole summer vacations to New York and Texas without Dad. Most of our in-state outings were without Dad. Dad had no authority at home and really...wasn't an entity at home at all. If we spent a summer day 'with Dad' it meant he was in his air conditioned office and would bake us Pot Pies over a bunson burner when we came in from turning the college campus into our kingdom.

It was Dad's avoidance of things at home, of intimacy and love with all of us, especially my mother, and a bunch of other things, that lead to my parent's divorce when I was sixteen.

If Dad was bad when Mom was around he was the worst when she was gone. Dad hadn't a clue (as in couldn't find one if it were a glowing neon, ten-foot needle in a haystack the size of a pin cushion! "hadn't a clue") how to be a parent, now the only parent, to the two teen girls still living at home.

I don't know that Dad was intentionally avoiding us. He really was devoted to his work, and he is something of the 'absent minded professor' type. But more times than not interactions with Dad meant we kids would be blamed for things he had done, or else hadn't been around to witness, and when we showed how little we cared about that, his only recourse was to grit his teeth and call us 'wicked' children. To this day I hate it when Dad grits his teeth.

He was also for some reason the tooth decay Nazi.

Dad was a great provider though. And he is a musician and his love for music and the Lord, and his passion to introduce and teach both to his children are what has kept he and I together, along with our shared love for history. As an adult I know my father of course cares, and loves me, and even that he is proud of me. But I could not have said that as a child. (To this day he will not say, I love you. He says, "Daddy loves you.")

So back to the pros and cons of free college. Yes I got tuition remission, no I do not have tens of thousands of dollars of debt over my head. But I paid for that tuition remission by growing up without a father, and by suffering with my siblings through my parent's divorce.

Like I said drawbacks.

When I quit school, then was expelled, I knew a job was in my future. Other than summer work at the college in the dish room and occasionally volunteering for things in high school or the church I'd never had a job, never really been in the 'real world'. I knew I needed that experience before I could decide what I was going to do with the rest of my life (i.e. actually finish a degree), and I was craving that. But the message I was getting following camp, then Milly's, then the dish washing gig; was that I'm a failure. I haven't the fortitude and where-with-all and what have you to actually finish...anything. (If we're going to keep the pity-train going, I had been writing since the age of 5 and other than a three page fairy tale, I hadn't finished a novel, sketch, or play yet either.)

The reenacting thing gave me hope though. I was good at something, even if it was mostly make believe. Once I got back from Fayette I went on the application trail and in short order I recieved a call from The Great Yellow Peril aka Wal Mart. I had gone in to apply at one of their handy kiosks and since I was obviously a loser with little ability, no resume and no real time limitations, Wal Mart wanted me as a graveyard shift stock boy. The official title was something like Night Merchandise Manager...?

In no time flat I had gone through my hours of computer training, picked up my vest and my card and joined the ranks of pimply teens, college drop-outs, hard-working middle aged women and oft scary later-aged men.

I searched for 'Wal Mart night shift' on Google Images and most of the pictures made me laugh. This one had some artistic integrity to it though.

First of all I had to get used to the night shift. Sleep during the day, work at night. Seems like it should be simple. All you need are those special blinds that block out all the sunlight and you've got it made right?

Ever heard of a thing called Vitamen D?

Very important that Vitamen D. Comes in sunrays and milk. It is especially important for people that regularly suffer from things like depression.

Here's where it gets sticky, and as my voice tends to be aloof let me high-light the seriousness for a moment. If you have ever watched news stories about murder, rape, abuse, etc. and been unable to continue watching because you were so deeply disturbed; or have ever been heard to say, "Why would anyone do that?" in response to these terrible things (and never gone on to try to actually figure out why...) don't read the next paragraph.

I suffered from depression as a preteen and on down the line. Who hasn't? When I was a toddler, according to my mother, I would bite my arm and not stop when I was being scolded. I've heard of similar cases. At twelve or thirteen I started cutting, without really knowing what it was. Self-mutilation for you technical types. Now some time later I'll go through that whole saga, which does have a happy ending. The important thing for now is that whilst I was working at Wally Mart I was struggling with this particular habit (this would be the mysterious destructive habit from before), and it didn't help at all to be handed my very own box cutter as part of my official 'work kit'. Just saying.

The average day began with a dark ride into town along the back roads. All countryside. Lots of deer crossing signs. By the time I got to Wal Mart I had to march back to the layaway door, clock in as close to ten o'clock as possible and wait for the meeting to begin.

The meeting was about ten to fifteen minutes of waiting for the night manager (which changed every night), talking with my buddies, drinking horrible coffee and sometimes eating stale donuts, then finally being told how terrible (or, rarely, good) the store was doing on sales and being sent out to break up the skids. 

Break means unload, and not shatter with sledge hammers, sadly. Skids are those fun wooden crate things that people like to stack wood on. You stick a dolly under it and wheel the thing around as if it didn't weigh a ton with all the boxes of merchandise on top. If the truck had come in there would be a lot to do. If it hadn't come in yet we would have to look busy, front shelves, help in Grocery and wait...and hope the truck wouldn't dally until the day was nearly over and we were ready to go home.

At first I loved this job. Mostly because it was a job that didn't involve smelling like food every night. Go out on the floor find a box, open it with your snappy sharp object, figure out what's inside and put as much of that in its special place on the shelf as will go. If more won't go, mark it as such, put it back on the skid. The faster you get, the more boxes you go through in the night and the sooner you can move on to another area.

In addition to the skids there were always break out carts. I will never understand the logic behind break out carts. Maybe it was just to give the poor, bored, check out people something to do through the night since we were the 24-hour variety of Wally-Hell, and most of the farmers stayed at home at night. But every night, magically, there would be boxes of things arriving at the front of the store that had be opened and sorted into carts, (bound annoyingly in seperate, sealed baggies) and each group from each section of the store had to empty all those things onto the shelf as well.

Why those things couldn't be included in our skids I do not know. No one ever told me.

I usually worked in Housewares. That's the kitchen utensils, dishes, microwaves, vacuums, Rubbermaid part of the store. I loved late night house wives! I could take them to the product and price they wanted within seconds of seeing them enter my section, without them having to say a word. And if it wasn't in my section I would let them ask me, then point them to the price and product they wanted in someone else's section.  I liked knowing where things were, sliding products onto the shelf in perfect little lines with everything neat and tidy and spaced just so. I liked clearing the boxes and slicing through the tape just right and breaking the boxes down and OOOH! THE BALER!

Anyone working in retail knows about the cardboard baler. We had a big one too! Cause we were WAL MART! A giant rectangular hole, into which goes tons of cardboard. It gets squished and squished and when the squishing starts pushing the cardboard back out again out comes the long metal twine. With one guy behind the machine threading it through to another guy in front of the machine you bind up all the squished cardboard and watch it rise....and tighten....and strain, and just when you're convinced that your tieing method is inadequate and somebody is about to lose a limb cause that twine is gonna snap...the whole thing settles. You POP out the bale onto a skid and wheel it to the back. And then put in more cardboard.

Maybe that's more than the baler deserves but it was one of the satisfactions of the job. Everything had a place and not one of those places was the pie-hole of a customer.

The major problem with this job was...anyone could do it. It took me a week to get used to it, another week to get good at it, and by the third week I was already bored. First of all, those of you who don't go to Wal Mart all the time at night might not notice that the music playing over the speakers is the same...every night. Every hour of every night, the same line up, the same ads. It was starting to kill the ears of a girl brought up on musicals and Mozart and the BeeGees and Sousa. I love variety. Variety could not be had at WallyWorld.FM. Christmas was starting to look like more and more of a blessing until I'd heard the hippopotomas song so many times I wanted to puke.

Tune it out you say? For some, yes, that's a possibility. But music is my language first and foremost. I couldn't tune it out. And along with the lack of sunlight, I was starting lose it.

Some of the brighter moments were my coworkers. Two in particular were my protectors. I don't know what it is about my relationship with my father, and how that relates to all the other older men that I pick up along the way; but I tend to wander to intelligent, humorous, and somewhat torn people.

 One of them was named Carl. Carl was fun. Carl worked in the freezer most nights, and on breaks he and I would do crosswords in between witty repartee. On the nights I was too tired to think I would annoy him by filling in incorrect words. You know, the clue is 7 Down - A five letter word for intelligent. And I would cram the word "octopus" into the spaces. In ink.

He also had a weird problem with the way I sometimes held my pen, and any time I had my journal out he would ask how things were, what I was writing about etc. On the nights that I could get done with housewares early I would sneak over to the frozen section and help Carl finish out the night. He was comforting to be around. And he was something of a replacement father figure. He, and some of my other friends at work, even surprised me one night with a brownie and singing candle for my birthday.

Of course the ladies in the grocery section noticed my affinity for him and assumed something romantic was happening. That was something else we laughed about.

Scheduled on the days that Carl usually wasn't there was Larry. If Carl was smooth vanilla, Larry was hot chile pepper. Where Carl's teasing was based on sharing intelligence, Larry's was based on competing with intelligence. And Larry was a Civil War buff. We had long enduring arguments based on the fact that he was the son of a Yankee and I was a Reb. Larry usually worked in the furniture department, and since his other job was driving the transport for MOTA he didn't come in until closer to lunch time. But we would fight at lunch, he too would pay more than enough attention to my journal (even tried to read it once), and on more than one occasion I was invited out to his middle of nowhere home for a bonfire.

Larry had this devil may care attitude that out did most of the people I had ever met before. He built a huge fire, usually with discs of tree trunks a foot-and-a-half tall and soaked in diesel fuel; and sat near it in a recliner with a glass of icy lemonade. Since he was Mormon he couldn't have any stimulants, not even coffee or tea. So lemonade it was.

One of the first times I went out to his place it was partially for the sake of the bonfire, partially to enjoy a few hours arguing over his Civil War documentaries, and partially to live fire my 1863-model Springfield for the first time.

Larry liked guns and collected and melted his own lead. He had molds for mini balls, and lead balls, rounds for his hand gun, shot gun and pellet guns, and plenty of wadding, bore butter and powder. He liked to use the smokeless kind, though, and after a day of that I'd had enough. I brought my own next time.

The first time I tried to load and ram the Springfield I got the rammer stuck. Too much wadding, not enough bullet, and no bore butter. We fixed that. The second time it wouldn't fire. Enough wadding, plenty of bullet, too much bore butter. The third time was the charm. It fired and I shattered a pot shard to the four winds. The second and third times I was shooting at some of Larry's fire wood and he did me the honor of splitting it and digging out the bullet. I keep with me two of the rounds I fired that day. One of them still sits in the groove it carved, perfectly perched on the crest of a wedge of wood.

While he watched me load, Larry discovered that there were quite a few things about the civil war that his documentaries could never tell him. Like how it felt to load and fire a musket for the first time. He learned to load them the right way too and then he pulled out his more modern weaponry. Turns out I'm a damn good shot. Makes me wonder why the Yankees never fall at the reenactments. I'm pointing straight at them.

At Wal Mart, between Larry and Carl, a young lady named Elizabeth and a very good friend named Michelle; I had plenty of support. I also had three somewhat spectacular incident reports that bore my name, and in rapid succession.

The first involved Larry and I conversing as we worked, and the both of us happening to be working on end caps in the same aisle and then one of us, Larry, standing up too soon and cracking open his head on the edge of an empty shelf. He didn't know he was bleeding until I pointed it out to him.

The second involved working with Elizabeth and a ladder, and spotting her on the ladder but stepping away as she came down it and neglecting to mention that the last step of the ladder was no longer even with the skid we'd been working on. Elizabeth took out a few boxes and landed rather badly on the skid, but after she woke up she was fine.

The third was my all time greatest Jerry Lewis moment! When you think of fine China you don't think of those clunky, squared, cocoa-colored mugs and plates that are supposed to be all the rage these days. You think of small, dainty saucers and cups and dessert plates that are wafer thin, and have gold gilding and could probably be broken in half in one hand if you got angry enough. And at Wal Mart we had such plates. Of course nothing with any precious metals in it but these were the thin, dainty, pearly white plate sets.

Thin and pretty yes, but once you had a bunch of them stacked they were heavy, darn it. And unfortunately the brain kids at Wal Mart saw fit to display them on a free-form arm jutting out from the back wall of the shelf, with nothing but thick rubber to keep them from sliding back and forth and a tiny little lip of an arpeture to keep them from spilling to the floor. Display With Care, right?

Well...I had them all set and pretty. I went to the skid, grabbed another box, started past the plates on their little jutting out arm and noticed that one of them looked like it was tilting just a little. I watched it a second, frozen with the new box in my arms, until I was certain that it was my imagination that was making it tilt. Then I broke out the box and went for another. Once again I passed by and darn it if that plate hadn't been joined by another, and both of them were really starting to tilt. Obviously my stacking job was insufficient. I set down my box, righted the two plates, and tilted them back just a little more so that surely...this way...they couldn't possibly fall. I bent to pick up my box, got a bad grip.

The box leaned, I leaned. I dropped the box, bumped the shelf, saw my plates start to slide, went to grab for them, bumped the sticking-out-arm next to them...those plates fell, knocking into the plates I was originally trying to catch (one plate actually landed in my arms for a second but I fumbled so badly that it flipped in the air a few times then crashed to the floor); and since I was already off balance, half a dozen more things were wiped out with me and we all went shattering to the linoleum in a great cacophony of sound.

My neighbor came over a few seconds after the final tinkles of shattered glass had ended, pale white with alarm expecting to find me in bloody pieces under a pile of dishware. The look on her face, compared with the pure human comedy of the blunder I had just preformed caused me to burst into laughter. To this day I do not know why, or how, I was never charged for each of those dishes; nor was it deducted from my pay check. Maybe they were simply glad I was unharmed, and not interested in suing.

By the time my 90 days had ended I had signed three incident reports, been late to work twice, gone without without sleep for at least 72 hours, been in the manager's office a few more times to be questioned about the actions of  my coworkers, gained a tattoo, and watched three of the people I worked with get fired. One of them was fired the day she turned in her two-week notice.

So as February rolled around, and my plea to re-enter school on a probationary student was acknowledged, I strolled into Wal Mart, happily handed in my vest and announced I was quitting. This time...it didn't feel like a mistake.

The Job Hunt and Fayette

For the rest of the summer I was half-heartedly looking for work. I was asked to house sit once or twice. On the cooler days I went out to one of the local berry farms to pick berries. I think the pay was something like four dollars a bushel.
That wasn't going to help me pay for car insurance or get me to any of the reenactments.
I was interviewed by the manager of a small restaurant that I will call Milly's Mild and Messy. My title is far less appetizing than the actual name. The manager of this restaurant was terrible. She would be the Messy part of that title. She was a mix between Miss Hannigan and Matron Mama Morton.
Despite the ad in the classifieds asking for a cook or a waitress, she seemed determined to make every new hire into managerial material instantly. Basically, in a training period that consisted of two days you were to learn how to do everything she did, followed by one day opening and running the restaurant on your own. 
The cook position involved staying in the kitchen, the waitress position was a misnomer.
As a waitress  "everything else" you were required to run the cash register, take and make carry-out orders and take walk-in orders. If those choosing to dine in wanted meals that required cooking, that part of the order went to the kitchen, the rest you did yourself, as well as run the bakery display, make sandwiches and panninis, make cappuccinos and any other hot drinks, carry the hot meals to the sit down customers, bus and clean the tables including the two bistro tables outside, clean everything outside of the kitchen by the end of the night (deep breath) and!!!! somewhere in that time you got a twenty minute lunch break.
Now I'm a smart kid. After the first few days I got the basic gist of the thing and my biggest frustration, really, was having to remember how the stupid deli sandwiches went together. And I never did appreciate the tables of teenagers that came in, each one ordering a different cappuccino.
The lunch break was probably the best part of the job, though. Milly, who isn't really named Milly, is the Mild part. She was the best oriental chef I have ever had the pleasure of being around. She made incredible food, including Kim Chi, and would send it home with you if there was extra lying around. You got to eat your fill of whatever the day's special was during your lunch break...if you got a lunch break and she was sweet, inside and out.
Her manager on the other hand...well, I had more than a few customers grumbling about her including one who made a point of pulling me to the side, ducking her head and saying, "You're boss is a bitch!"
I quietly excused my boss's behavior at that particular juncture.
I'm pretty good at getting along with and/or ignoring the people in my life that annoy me. I don't like friction unless I'm causing it. That may be a poor admission on my part but, I like people to get along; especially when all of us have a singular goal in mind. If we all want the same thing, why fight amongst ourselves?
My boss didn't see it that way. If she wasn't standing over your shoulder gawking as you put together a panninni (I hate being watched while I work it makes me nervous, especially the first time!), or bashing the guy who cleaned the kitchen and took out the trash, she was whining about how awful her life/husband/children were and how badly she needed a smoke. And really..truly that was the root of the problems. She was always jonsing  for cigarettes, and constantly having to train or rehire new trainees made it harder and harder to catch the time for a smoke break.

I did a Google Maps search and found photos of the spot where the restaurant used to be. It's been many things since "Milly's" shut down. I'm fairly certain it's still sitting empty at the moment.

I worked there about two weeks and in that time I had seen at least two new hires leave, one in tears, days after they had been hired because of the way the manager treated them during training.
Sure it was a small restaurant, trying to make it in a farming town that doesn't like novelties, caters to fast food and has a Wal-Mart as the pinnacle of its social venues, but that's no reason for new hires to leave your establishment in the middle of the afternoon in tears!
The manager was trying to make it work. Unfortunately Milly's great cooking and the manager's hard-ball ways weren't enough.
At an event in Tiffin, Ohio, after much deliberation and conversation with my fellow soldiers, I did the dirty deed and called in sick. The manager didn't seem too heart broken to see me go, and I wasn't too surprised when the restaurant disappeared a few months later.
Tiffin, on the other hand, was a fun event that I saw through to the end. The relationship was there and it had continued to blossom, somewhat awkwardly. Unlike Jackson, however, we had the whole company with us and my relationship and I, and a few others shared this magnificent structure.

If I had been shy of the guys before this event I quickly learned that when it's cold out and you have only one blanket, body heat is the next best thing. No such thing as being shy.

The straw enclosure became known as Fort Humpter and was our temporary abode at Tiffin. I believe this was also the event at which a fellow soldier died magnificently while managing to dislocate his shoulder.

My next job was a fantastic three week run at a relatively popular buffet chain in town. I was hired as part-time dish washer, part-time fry cook. This meant that after hours of fried breaded chicken, ochre and shrimp making, mashed potato blending and scalding hot dish sorting; I came home sore, tired and smelling awful most every night.

My boss was a cross between a reality tv-show host and a wanna-be drill instructor. I got the idea that he was in the reserves but never actually confirmed it, he just had that bearing about him.

The uniform for the job was blue pants, non-slip work shoes and a uniform shirt. By the end of the first two weeks the lot was so thread bare from repeated washings that the seams were starting to fray. But frying-oil smells so God-awful by the end of the day that you dare not let it set in your clothes over night.

One Sunday evening, THE most profitable night for this particular business, I ended up in the dish room. The first three hours I worked up a rhythm. Spray, stack, wash, dry, grab every dish on the tray in one move, ignore the burning in your raw hands, stack them up and move on. (They told me to wear plastic gloves but I was so paranoid about them melting that I didn't bother. Besides once they're wet on the inside they're kind of pointless, and when you are working with a dish sprayer, trust me, everything gets wet.)

For the rest of the five hours I would get an occasional glass of something cool and refreshing handed through the stacks of dirty dishes. Every once in a few eons a teenage co-worker would come back to tell me that the boss was going to send one of them to help me in a bit. But they never did help. Just came back to give me false hopes. I didn't complain. I didn't whine about the constant stream of work or the fact that the piles were so high that I literally could not see past them for most of the evening. I was constantly working with my hands at a job that I had near perfected. And there really wasn't time for anything else.

I cleaned and stacked until every dish was in its place, then helped the night manager clean the rest of the kitchen before finally leaving, around one in the morning.

I went home, I showered the smell of over processed food and dish soap away from my body and I slept like the dead. The next day I went in and my boss pulled me to the side.

He said I was a 'real trooper' for working eight hours non-stop in the dish room without complaint.

He slapped me on the back to prove just how much of a trooper I was.

Then he handed me three gold-colored coins.

Not a raise. Not a day off. Not a day out on the hot bar, away from the grease and having my pants and shirt wet for eight hours. Three...nearly useless...coins.

It's like going off to fight for king and country and coming home to a pat on the back and food stamps.

That's essentially what these things were. With one golden coin you got nothing. Once you had earned three you got to have...wait for it....

Free access to the nasty, greasy, overcooked, glazed, tastes-and-smells-like-grilled-shoe-leather-and-ketchup food that you have been cooking and wearing home for the past three weeks.
....yay.

I quit soon after.

First, what I had done in the dish room was what most of the employees should have been willing to do on a regular basis, and not necessarily worthy of the 'special prize'. Second, getting shiny things as a reward is great for two-year-olds and cocker-spaniels but young adults attempting to make a living and pay for actual bills need something a little closer to big-people rewards. Like discounts for all family members; or a gift certificate to replace the thread-bare pants I was forced to wear every night.
Third, I knew I could do better.

Oddly enough, as I flipped and flopped through my jobs each location was literally higher, geographically, than the next.

Before I started working at my next job however we had our second-to-last event of the year. Fayette is gorgeous and the event is usually the first weekend of October.

Sadly most of the photos I collected of my early reenacting career were deleted when my laptop died last year. This is part of the grounds where the battles take place. And for that matter, this is the unit I first joined.

This particular year the weather was incredible. Sunny and cool most of the time, with the leaves just starting to turn and the grass so green it hurts your eyes to look at it. Driving past the cast iron fence with canvas already erected on the other side I felt like screaming for joy. It had been another long stretch between events and I was ecstatic.

I arrived, dumped my stuff and changed into my uniform, and because it was warm and most of the place was grassy I opted against wearing shoes. I greeted a few of my cohorts that were already on site and went looking for something to do since I was, per usual, incredibly early. I ended up assisting with registration for a few hours, all the time casually checking the street just beyond the trees and the cast iron fence. Not being obvious about the fact that I was missing someone relatively important to me.

As the sun started to set, and most of the familiar faces were in with their vehicles, erecting tents and preparing for the night's relaxation the familiar vehicle of choice pulled up. Some of the other members of the unit were there with him so he favored me with an odd accent and asked where he could park (as if he didn't already know.) I pointed him in the proper direction and waited. I knew he would be back. Something about the way we clicked together told me he would come back on his own. When he did he was in his vehicle, leaned out to tell me to get in, and before he need say anything else I was belted into the seat beside him and we were heading out of the park.

I remember I was elated to see him. I also remember the odd feeling of seeing the car seat in the back.  We went to dinner and had a fun time, went back to camp and set up. I had bought some painter's canvas at Lowe's and some of the guys helped me fit it together with poles and rocks and some spare tent pegs and I actually had my own she-bang for the first time.

I still used the footlocker from Dad and it fit under the tent.  I was settled and thinking about sleep Friday night. With the cool breeze blowing, a blanket over me and my bare feet poking out of the end of the tent I was fairly comfortable...and yet something was missing. Someone was missing...I thought to myself, he won't be able to sleep.

Sure enough, moments later...at first I thought it must have been ants that were messing with my feet. Then it didn't stop and I jerked up from my blankets to find him grinning impishly at me from the mouth of the tent. First words out of his mouth?

"I couldn't sleep..."

That night we walked around in the darkness of the rather large park, visiting the Yankees briefly (who were I believe, climbing and falling off of hay stacks this particular night), and finding a quiet bench to ourselves.

Despite the previously mentioned drawbacks of this new 'romance' there were other things from my past that were making things difficult. One of which was a bone rattling fear of intimacy. A big part of it had to do with tragic events shortly following my 19th birthday. Some of it had to do with being part of a broken family, and some of it had to do with being 19, and having spent most of those 1.9 decades believing I was ugly, unwanted, and just a little scary to most of the men around me.

To this point I had been convinced that my new relationship was just a fluke. Something of a desperate or crazy man that would eventually fizzle, and of course everything I was feeling towards him was just a response to being so well liked. I liked being liked, that was all. Besides it was WRONG! Right!? And yet, that night at Fayette, when the perfect romantic interlude produced itself and instead of being swept off my feet I was trembling and frightened and avoiding his eyes, I knew something had to be said.

That evening I shared some of what had happened to me, and I explained how very scared I was, how horrified I was every time it seemed that those events from my past might duplicate themselves. I kept telling him that it was me, not him, and he kept saying he understood. That he wouldn't push. He DIDN'T say that it was just a friendship...because we both knew it wasn't.

We also both acknowledged that there were places we could not go. Because for how tabloid this whole thing sounds, it was different. It was like watching two people, who have forever eaten only processed foods, and canned vegetables, step onto a farm for the first time and take a bite out of a real, ripe, off-the-vine tomato; or a stalk of fresh asparagus from a patch, or a ripe peach from the tree. There was more to the coming together of us than a romance paperback, and both of us recognized it. We valued talking, verbally exploring, laughing, fighting like children, and fighting together as soldiers against a common enemy. When one of us was out of camp for very long the other of us noticed, and would be uneasy until we were together again.

Yes there was a physical aspect, but it was just as much about the very invention of the thing, than it was about simply being included.

It was my first stab at real 'love', but I had NO idea where it was going. I just knew where it couldn't go.

The rest of Fayette was fun. Two battles on Saturday and one on Sunday. Saturday it was relatively still through the day and during the battle the smoke from the cannon fire was so thick, and the trees so dense, that by the time the Yankee infantry took the field we couldn't see them until they were well within firing range.
Sunday afternoon we had a bit of an upset. I was still in my 'war-rage' stage of reenacting, determined to out-shoot, out-fight, and out-die the enemy at every turn. One particularly young group of Yankees opposite us were flanking often but never actually advancing.
The Captain of our unit saw this and after watching a few of these little maneuvers he took a small company up the left flank, and because the other company refused to fire, we essentially walked up to them and took them prisoner.
The Yankees didn't much like this. After all there were five of us and twelve of them. At least one of them was young, way to young to be on the field holding a weapon. We ordered them to put down their weapons several times but the youngest Yankee kept his gun up, this wicked psychotic smile on his face.
We were less than ten feet from the audience and the Captain had already gone over to the red-faced Yankee in charge to figure out what to do now. The young Yankee was presenting a safety hazard with his gun up, and the rest of us so close, so one of our senior members made a move, stepping in and grabbing for the gun of the young Yankee soldier.
I swear I saw the kid grin before he pulled the trigger. The blast went straight up into the trees, knocked down some leaves and twigs and the concussion knocked our man to the ground. The sound drew both the commanders back and just like that both groups retreated back to their respective lines.
We were not happy, and there was a picture in the paper of our group as we retreated. The photographer of the picture graciously labeled it "Confederates Bravely Facing the Enemy", but no..it was a forced retreat, and at the moment we were putting up a lot of resistance to the order.
We eventually were incorporated into the rest of the confederate line and all of us went out in a grand blaze of glory when they uncovered a Gatling that one of the exhibitioners had brought onto the field. But we were not happy.
I wanted to string the kid up by his toes then parade him in front of the commanders and parents (or whoever) that had thought it would be a good idea to let him on the field. We made sure our guy still had his eyebrows and grumbled our way back to the tents. While it turned out that this wasn't the last event of the season, it was the first time I experienced great disappointment at an event. That's why I say, never fear. If we plan to show up at an event, we will burn powder.
We left the event to go our seperate ways Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining and I had music going the whole way home, a two hour drive for me, fifteen to twenty minutes for most everyone else in my unit.
I had more job hunting to think about, if I expected to make it to Gettysburg.

The Rest of Camp and Jackson

Going back to camp was torture, just like I expected it to be. My mistake with my counselors had been to distance myself and as my emotions took a nose dive coming back from Findlay, my counselors started to notice. I didn't find out about it until well after the fact though. My counslors were not terribly good at presenting themselves in my hour of need; unless they thought they could get something out of it.
At one of the pre-camper meetings I made a comment about some behaviors from the staff that made putting the campers to bed at night more challenging. Later I heard back from the lead counselors that one of my girls had been deeply offended by the comment I had directed at them in a group meeting. Once I figured out what comment that was, and convinced the lead counselors that it hadn't been directed at the offended party (for that matter the offended party had never entered my mind when I made the comment), I moved on. I thought that would be the end of the conflicts but days later the counselors got together to sit down with me and tell me that they felt I wasn't being honest with them. I asked them what it was they thought I was lying about. They told me that when I was hurting I should have come to them with my problems.
The response in my head was, "You're far too immature, unintelligent and ill-prepared to even begin to fathom my problems. I wouldn't go to a dentist to diagnose a heart condition, just as I won't go to you to diagnose what most psychiatric counselors dare not touch!"
I didn't say that. I should have. But I was aware of the fact that not having my counselors behind me would create problems. Apparently my subsequent groveling wasn't enough.
One week out of the summer the camp is graced by the presence of teenagers in the place of the usual kindergarten to middle school kids. We had the thirteen to fourteen-year-old girls.
It all came to a head when I was supposed to be off duty one evening, and all the girls in one of the rooms had busted open glow stick necklaces and splattered the glowing stuff all over the walls. Screams and hollering followed and, already on the rough end of a long and tiring day, I stormed in to correct the situation only to have my youngest counselor tell the girls, "Never mind her. She's not in charge."
I stood for a few minutes, passionately dispelling the urge to slap my counselor then threw my hands in the air and said, "Fine. You want to be in charge. You're in charge. Have at it."
I stomped out of the cabin, marched down to the bottom of the wood stair case that led to the road and sat for a very long time caught between running off into the woods to fell every tree with my bare hands, and marching up to the temporary home of the captain of the camp to tell him that I was quitting at that very moment.
I was angry, tired and worn. I had just recently discovered that the university had sent me a notice of my discontinuation as a student on an academic basis. They had expected me to receive the letter in early June but it hadn't arrived until mid-August. Since I wasn't home to do it myself, my father was in the habit of opening all of my mail and forwarding me information on what I received. He knew for a fact that the letter had not arrived until mid-August, and I was informed of its contents the day he opened it. Inside, the letter stated that I would need to send my own letter asking for re-admittance before mid-July or I would not be able to apply until the following semester.
Despite my protestations and long, costly phone calls to the administration and student affairs offices on campus I was not given a reprieve.
I was officially a college drop out for at least a semester, I was stuck in a hell hole of a summer job that was getting worse by the minute and what I most wanted to do was scream, or cry, or beat someone to a pulp. In my mind there were no longer such things as consequences.
Thankfully the lead counselors walked by before I could act. They didn't see me but I could see, and hear, them and their discussion was immediately more pressing, important and distressing than my own thoughts. Seeing another group of people with huge problems that needed solving helped lift my mood immediately.
Don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy watching others suffer. I am however very aware that it is easy to forget that you are holding a pity party when someone else's real problems are presented. My temptation is to forget my own woes in favor of doing something good, or selfless, or loving to make someone else's day far better. It's a 'change in perspective' thing that actually helped me with what was once a life-long struggle.
Before the end of Teen week I did get an audience with the head of the camp and after explaining where most of the problems in my life were coming from I left camp a week early and headed home.
I felt bad, and an awful lot like a loser who couldn't finish anything she started. But by going home early I had the opportunity to attend an event I didn't think I would get to.
In Jackson, Michigan there is a park that covers several acres of land including a large hill, at the top of which is a series of fountains.

An interesting post-card I found. Gives a good view of what the 'falls' look like inside the fence.

At night the chain link fence is opened to anyone that will pay and lovers and children alike can walk up and down the ornate paths, listen to psychedelic music and watch the lights make the fountains change colors. The park also hosts a large reenactment every year.
After a few days at home I was all set and ready to head up, thinking that I would be riding with my the Captain and several others, and that it would be a group event.
But when I arrived I discovered that I was wrong. That all the others had backed out and the only one driving up would be my relationship and I. We were still at that awkward, flirting stage; exacerbated by the fact that I do not know how to flirt and I was fully aware of my relationship's marital status. But it was an event. We were soldiers. No flirting. Right?
We headed up, enjoying each other's constant ribbing and teasing. He yelled at me for getting us lost, I yelled at him for having crappy directions. We found the place.
Our first duty, however, was to find a company to fall in with. We were both dressed in civilian clothes as we walked down the first row of tents. We got to an A-wall and asked who the unit was and if we could join them for the weekend.
The men gathered around an unlit pile of sticks looked over my cohort, seeming pleased with the prospect, then took one look at me and said, "We aren't sure about having fresh fish join our unit. Does she wear a uniform?"
I raised a brow but said nothing and my co-hort vouched for my soldierly valor. The jean-wearing soldier at the fire said, "We'll have to ask our captain. She's not here right now."
My friend and I quickly caught on to the problem that so troubled our Confederate brother and we moved on, both of us grumbling under our breaths about duplicitous reenactors and...what?! A female captain? And they have a problem with a female private joining the ranks?!
The next group was far more hospitable, especially after one of the fellows turned out to be someone we had allowed into our unit previously. The only proviso was that I had to put on a borrowed frock coat, as this was a Kentucky unit and all of them wore frock coats.
The coat was the only uniform thing about them. A few soldiers had full beards and fine locks of hair and gleaming buttons. Those were the officers. The rest...a more convincing group of scoundrels and scallywags I have yet to see. Rotting and missing teeth; flapping, holey or just plain missing brogans; patchy beards and side burns; jewelry made from animal hair or teeth; most of them with a chaw of tobacco tucked betwixt there gums and every one of them had either a pipe, an Arkansas toothpick or a harmonica.

Taken in 2009, three years after my first time in Jackson. Some of the boys from our battalion.

I had THE MOST FUN with this group! First of all, these boys were the men that birthed my alter-ego Wyatt. With my own unit I hadn't been required to come up with a man's name, and I suppose most of the guys figured I would go with the male equivalent of my given name. But I liked Wyatt, no not Wyatt E., and shortly after I donned my first frock coat; I gave myself my reenacting name. The rest of the men in the unit didn't know me as anything else so they called me that regularly. I LOVED IT! I had a new name and with it a whole new personality to explore.
Once, while marching off for some drill, some of the men around me decided to have a spitting contest. Most were chewing something and started pointing out targets to hit and expectorating at them, some more messily than others. The worst of the group was the poor private that was told to aim for a certain branch on a tall bush and miscalculated so badly that his 'charge' ended up decorating the First Sergeant's uniform.
Friday evening at the event those in the unit that were musically talented gathered around the fire with harmonica and guitar in hand, voices primed, and started singing various songs from the period. Some fast, some rowdy, some slow. To this background music my friend and I, and two others, played a long game of Euchre under the flickering light of a lantern. Toward the end of the evening a final request was made for the boys to sing Amazing Grace.
With only a guitar and a single voice on the choruses, and the company on the refrain, and the silence of the evening as an audience, I lay back on my blankets under the yawning branches of a tree, closed my eyes and thought; this I could do for the rest of my life. This is the one thing that I would never quit without finishing.
The song ended, the camp quiet as the men prepared for bed.
Then minutes later the serenity was broken by an irate mother who came storming into camp to inform the singers that their "Amazing Grace" had apparently woken and scared her child so much that he peed the bed.
It was hard not to laugh. I turned on my side, fully prepared to sleep, when I felt something poking my back. Then my shoulders, then at my cap. I turned over, saw my relationship apparently sleeping, and turned back. Once again, poke poke poke. Jab, jab, jab. I grabbed a nearby fallen stick and swung it over my shoulder, giving him a solid whack before trying once again to sleep.
The poking turned into a mini-battle, then we settled, talking, joking quietly, laughing. Before we fell asleep again his hand had found it's way to the crest of my hip. I thought long and hard about his hand being there. And about how much I liked it being there. And about how wrong it still was.

Most of the venues were in the permanent structures or temporary canvas buildings like these. Under the trees, they looked really good.

The next day we fought hard, and spent the rest of the day wandering around the large venue visiting some of the vendors that he knew, getting a free cup of soup at the Soldiers Relief Fund tent, and thanks to my magnificent frock coat, getting mistaken for a guy when I went in to use the women's restroom.
Saturday night we got some dinner and headed up the hill to the chain link fence, standing outside it to watch the 'mystical waters' and talk about how stupid we thought it was that people would pay money to go inside when you could see and even feel the spray from outside the fence. I talked a little about my past and before long we were laying down in the grass, staring at the stars.

The mystical waters.

Unfortunately, or in my confused brain, fortunately, the silence was broken by the voice of two very drunk sounding privates. We couldn't tell where they came from, or whose unit they were a part of. They stumbled about half way up the hill and sat down, drinking from flasks and talking loudly to one another. Then the more sober of the two stood up, presumably to go after more beverage and keep the party going. As he started down the hill his buddy tried to join him and took a header down the hill, spilling end over end until he landed badly in the grass at the base. For a long time he didn't move down there at the bottom of the hill and both my relationship and I were beginning to be seriously concerned about his health. Then along came one of the gators that provided emergency transportation around the park, to pick up the sorry soldier.
We found out later that he may or may not have broken his leg.
Rule #930 - If you are going to partake in mass amounts of beverage do not do so whilst sitting on a hill, cliff or staircase.
The rest of the event went well and by the time I had returned my beloved frock coat and we had loaded the vehicle and were heading home, our relationship had been significantly altered. I felt loved, and part of me hated that. I went home, did my best to forget about it, and started to concentrate on the problem of finding a job.