I know you won’t believe me now but I haven’t really been huffing Jenkem, or as the hip kids call it, Butthash. The real issue is that the longer I wait to write about an adventure, the harder it gets because I lose my “in the moment” thoughts and feelings. In Southeast Asia I was generally able to write about my daily adventure on that same day, like a journal. But now, I mean I still have never said anything about my Washington D.C./North Carolina/Virginia trip from this April! Buh.
My struggle is that I want to write things that make me laugh so I don’t bore myself to tears when I reread it some day. You know, because like anyone else really reads my blog, so as long as I make myself laugh that’s all that matters right?
Now that I just finished talking about writing things that make me laugh, I remembered that this post is not about things that make me laugh. (So far it’s about me thinking out loud).
A few weeks ago I visited the Shiloh battlefield from the Civil War down in Tennessee. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. There’s a pond appropriately named the Bloody Pond because it was the one water hole around and all the injured and dying soldiers gathered in and around it to cool their wounds and drink bloody water. Lovely.
The heart of the battle occurred in the “Hornet’s Nest,” a small clearing the size of maybe a couple city blocks? The Union were lined up behind a little wood fence along the Sunken Road. Imagine chillin’ here waiting for the Confederates to pop out from those trees a’blazin’! Scary!
Well even scarier is what happened, the Confederates got a line of cannons along those trees and started bombing the heck out of the Union soldiers, busting ‘em up real bad. So much that they were able to start running across the field and make the Union soldiers retreat into the woods behind and to the left. It was from here they retreated to the Bloody Pond and then on further to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River.
It was a powerful victory for the Confederates but shortlived. That night General Ulysses S. Grant arrived with his reinforcements and decisively worked over the Confederates the next day.
I’ll spare all of us any more details but here’s a cool cannon line accurately modeling a part of the battle.
It’s interesting to remember that a lot of these battles took place on people’s private property. That building is a replica of the dude’s house that lived here and owned this land.
Closer…
If you’ve never been to a National Cemetery, it’s amazing. They are meticulously maintained and there are huge fines for breaking even a little tree branch. And of course the real amazing part is that it’s filled with courageous soldiers who died fighting for the freedoms they believed in. Freedoms too often taken for granted and misunderstood nowadays. Freedoms they believed so strongly in there were divided families fighting on opposite sides but meeting at night to make plans to be in different locations the next day so they wouldn’t kill each other. Freedoms they believed so strongly in they were willing to die for them so that their children and future generations could have them.
Nice post dude. Good talkin’s about the soldiers.
Slap a title on it and call it good.
Marshall | November 8th, 2007 at 8:56 am |Whoops, I thought the top of it looked funny last night but I didn’t know why…haha.
Oh, who’s driven one of the new Mustangs? You can peel out like nobody’s business in those things, pretty fun.
Underclown | November 8th, 2007 at 11:24 am |I came here to comment on the mustang. They’re horrible. We rented one for a weekend (not by choice), and it was probably the worst car I’ve ridden in/driven. Granted it was a v6 (but by the side banner on the one you had….so was yours). I tried to peel out with the thing…nothing. Maybe it just had that much grip…i doubt it.
Eric | November 20th, 2007 at 9:42 pm |