The Great Adventure - Day 14 - August 18, 2009

Stacy & L, Oct. 2004

I like history, but Stacy is the bonafide history buff in the family. A couple of years ago she went with me on a business trip to Washington D.C. and she was thoroughly in her element. Stacy hit all the American history museums on the mall, toured Arlington, and prowled the backstreets of Alexandria while I worked. When I had some free time she dragged me to Ford's theater and George Washington's home at Mount Vernon. After another Washington trip, when we hooked up with my folks and drove from D.C. to my sister's in Tennessee, Stacy begged and pleaded to stop en route and visit Jefferson's home, Monticello.

October 2004

She still gets a faraway look in her eye when she talks about D.C. -- it is like the Promised Land for her. Stacy was particularly thrilled to visit Boston on our excursion, and was almost angry when she realized that on our drive to Harrisburg we had been only a few miles from Amherst, Massachusetts, and didn't think to stop at the Emily Dickinson museums. But now, thrill upon thrill, we would be taking in another national landmark - a much more somber one: Gettysburg National Park. I had mixed thoughts on going.

I watch Stacy's historical undertakings with a blend of amusement, admiration and concern. I am incredibly impressed with, and somewhat envious of her hunger to learn all about our national past, but at the same time, she is by nature so keenly empathetic that it pains me to watch her study and almost relive the harsher, more troubling aspects of our history. She was quite moved and unsettled for days after our visit to Ford's theater; she later read a somewhat tragic biography about Abraham Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln (Love Is Eternal by Irving Stone) and was weepy for weeks. I wondered how Gettysburg would sit.

We braved another cold continental breakfast and got to the van Bastelaar’s around 8am. We rallied the troops, mounted the caravan, and set out for our rendezvous with history at Gettysburg. The weather was sunny and pleasant - the weather our entire trip had been exemplary - and the 30 minute drive down was smooth and straightforward. We amused ourselves by playing "Who can find a ________?" Blue signs, yellow trees, black crows, red cars - all were fair game for our version of "I Spy." N, unfortunately, was a little slow on the draw; any anything we'd throw his way had to be basically hanging in front of his face for 30 seconds or it would escape him. L had to learn the art of patience in giving N an opportunity to find a white barn or blue truck. (It's so difficult to be all-seeing and have to curtail your wisdom for the sake of the outright blind.)

We stopped first at the visitor center where we picked up maps and planned our route; we opted of outdoor locales with lots of fields and open spaces conducive to running rebels. We piled back into the cars and headed for Little Round Top - the site of a particularly crucial battle.



The first thing that struck me about Gettysburg was how big it was. It is spread over acres and acres, and along every road is monument after monument. The size of the battle and the numbers of men involved are stunning and are brought home by the wide open fields with marker after marker giving the double-digit and sometime triple-digit casualty counts at that spot. We parked not too far from Little Round Top and walked up a road through a wooded area to the crest of the hill. It was cool and dark in the shade, and even here in the forest were markers and memorials. We got to the top and the woods opened out on a chilling panorama - the battle field where a massive three-day campaign was bitterly waged. To the kids it was a bright sunny outcropping with lots of rocks to climb and pathways to dart down. All was chipper and happy in their eyes, but knowing what we were looking at made it very hard for me to see the wide and warm rock-strewn field as anything but horrific. About a third of a mile across the little valley under the hill was Devil's Den, a big rock outcropping that looked up at Little Round Top. Here the Confederate snipers would gather and attempt to pick off the Union soldiers trying to hold the hill. They in turn suffered barrages from the hill above. A plaque nearby told how desperate the fight was during the day, and how at night the scene was Satanic, with white smoke ghosts flying back and forth across the ravine and the anguished cries of the not-yet dead echoing through the boulders. It was a stunning thing to imagine.

View from Little Round Top with Devil's Den across the valley.

I bear no responsibility for the hat.

After we wandered around Little Round Top for a while we returned to the wood cover and proceeded further up the path a ways. Soon we came upon the Maine memorial off by itself in the somber tree-filtered shadows. I was surprised to learn that the 385 men of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment had fought one of the more pivotal battles there. Stationed on the left-most flank of the Union armies gathered on Little Round Top, they were tasked with holding the hill from the 15th Alabama regiment advancing from below. The 15th Alabama charged twice and Maine took heavy casualties, but held the line. Out of ammo and depleted of men, Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain knew he couldn't fend off another charge, so instead as the Alabama forces mounted the hill for a final crushing attack, he ordered his troops to charge downhill with their bayonets. In doing so he somehow managed to flank and capture the majority of the 15th Alabama, marking a turning point for the Union forces in that portion of the battle.



I remember standing in those Pennsylvania woods, a two-day drive away from Maine, and imagining how far from home and isolated those Mainers must have felt. And I thought about the Alabama armies, even further from their homes and families. As I recalled all the regimental statues honoring all of these soldiers from far away states I couldn't help but feel a pit in my stomach for what these men must have gone through.





We descended the hill to our cars and were about to load up and move on when I noticed something off on the road – a box turtle! It was about half-way across the road, making typical turtle time. There were no immediate threats in sight, but that could change quicker than the turtle could. I ran over, grabbed the turtle, who immediately retracted into his shell, and called the kids over to the side of the road. The kids all took turns passing the forlorn creature back and forth and lecturing it on dawdling in the road; we then released it safely on the other side so that it could continue its mysterious journey*, and we proceeded on ours.

*Much research has been done to uncover the road-crossing motivations of barnyard poultry, but I am unaware of any such efforts being expended on turtles.

Liz had thoughtfully packed lunches for everyone, so we found a huge, sprawling tree behind Devil’s Den and had a picnic. The kids scrambled over the rocks and chased each other about. Stacy, ever vigilant (read: paranoid), was following them around at one point and suddenly let out a shriek! Expecting blood, I ran over to see, instead, an enormous black snake, probably 3 feet long and as thick as a bratwurst, slithering into a crack between two boulders the kids were beating on.

Retreating reptile.

Once the kids saw it they all tried to mob it, throwing Stacy into new extremes of hyperventilation. I think she prefers her reptiles to be more of the turtle persuasion. Much to Stacy’s relief the snake managed to escape without dragging a small child into its evil lair. After a few more stops and wanders in the park we piled back into our convoy and returned to Harrisburg; we bid a mid-day adieu to the vBs and returned to our hotel for some naps.

The next poster child for the NRA.

At this point I need to fill in a little previously unmentioned back-story. When planning our trip, Stacy reserved this specific hotel because it was the only one in the area we could find with a pool. We paid a little more, but, hey! It has a pool! In general we were happy enough with the hotel, but the pool ended up being a sore spot. The day we checked in the hostess said the pool was temporarily closed as it had been inadvertently over-chlorinated, but it would be open the next morning. Now, we assumed “inadvertently over-chlorinated” was a euphemism for the occurrence of some horrendous biological incident the hotel didn’t want to openly admit to, and the thought of jumping into a superfund bio-hazard, regardless of the amount of additional toxins employed to clean it up, just didn’t appeal to me too much, but my opinion counts for zilch when kids and a pool are the subject of said opinions. So the rest of the family was eagerly anticipating the opening of the flood gates, so to speak, and the reopening of the pool. Unfortunately it didn’t happen the first morning, but an afternoon opening was promised instead. We returned from Hershey World – no pool, but it would certainly be open that night. After dinner – no pool, but the morning was a certainty. Except that it wasn’t. We set off on our Gettysburg trip with grumbling in our hearts. But wonder of wonders, on our return the too-good-to-be-true had occurred and the pool was now receiving daring bathers. We called the vBs and planned for a post-nap reunion at the hotel rather than their place.



At the appointed hour Jeff and Liz and entourage arrived and we all proceeded to the pool. It was a good sized indoor job and our room had a patio-style door that opened right up to it. The first opening of the door indicated to me that maybe the hotel was giving in a little bit to resident pressure because the chemical waft that immediately struck me across the face nearly knocked me out. But they’d opened the pool, so it had to be OK, right? Suited and padded and goggled and hyper, the kids attacked the pool with vigor. On retrospect, I’m a little surprised that the first kid to dive in didn’t crawl out the other side an acid-stripped skeleton. The chlorine stench was so overpowering I felt like I was back in the bleach plant of the paper mill I used to work summers in as a college kid. Within a minute or two my eyes were on fire and my nasal passages were stinging. Not that L or N noticed. We watched as they floundered about obliviously, their skin curling off and their hair bleaching as we watched. (OK, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little.) It was pretty brutal.



Side story: While we were in the pool Jeff and I noticed another kid of about six or seven playing in the water. He was pretty thin, had puffy eyes and a shaved head. Our first thought was one of sympathy for what appeared to be a very sick child. Then he got out of the pool and started yelling at some of the other kids in the pool and we noticed all the rather intense tattoos all over his arms. On observing his less than pleasant demeanor and identifying his parents/guardians/parole officers we came to realize that this kid was more likely a mini-skin head. We wondered at who would tat up a little kid like that, and whether the tats could possibly be real. If they were fakes, they were pretty elaborate, and whoever designed kiddie-tattoos that can withstand that chlorine cesspool must truly be a technological genius in the “body art” community.



Once our children were suitably bleached and we were assured that no self-respecting bacterium would approach them for several years, we hauled them out and dried them off. We headed to the van Bastelaar’s for dinner and mellowness. We spent our last evening of vacation with good food and good friends. When the wee ones started winding down I took Stacy and the kids back to the hotel, then returned to Jeff’s for a final evening of bourbon and philosophizing. Between the two of us we pinpointed the root of most of the world’s problems and suggested viable solutions for a significant number of them before I headed back to the hotel in the early hours. As I slipped into my room and again heard the rustles of sleep around me I revisited my previous evening’s thoughts of wonder and near-disbelief at my lot in life. I truly am rich beyond my wildest dreams.