And They’re Off!

I stood in the morning on a grassy knoll overlooking a Civil War battlefield. My companion, an old-timer named Roger, belonged to an organization called the N-SSA: the North-South Scrimmage Association.

Roger builds replica artillery with his sons and grandkids, then tows the pieces around in a trailer to set up and fire at targets 200 yards down range. “Bullseye” and “Yankee” are common words in their lexicon.

The piece that drew my attention Roger’s way was a rifled Army Parrott capable of firing ten-pound projectiles three inches in diameter. It was aimed at 10:00 off the starting line 100 yards away where several thousand high school runners – my son included – would soon line up for their cross country races.

Fifty schools had registered for this, the Third Battle Invitational, named for the Third Battle of Winchester, a Virginia city that changed hands seventy times during the war. The National Park Service describes it thus:

“Confederates suffered a costly defeat at the Third Battle of Winchester, September 19, 1864. The largest battle in the Shenandoah Valley saw 54,400 total troops engaged and 8,630 casualties, including over a quarter of the Confederate Army of the Valley. The Confederates' retreat from Winchester to Fisher's Hill was the beginning of the end of their resistance in the Valley.”

The Parrott, Roger said, would start each race, eight times it’s blast setting in motion up to 500 athletes, running more or less toward rather than away from the gun in a stupendous act of counter-intuition.

Time with Roger had me mulling Civil War history, the ravages of age, the glory of youth, and the kinds of hobbies that inspire some people with all-consuming passion while leaving others to scratch their heads. It got me thinking about where we are as a nation, two weeks out from a presidential election thick with the ghosts of the Confederacy marching in open display of hatred and intolerance.

Artillery blast clip. Stampede clip.

–

The sun had just come over the trees when we emerged from the mile-long hike to the battleground where the fifty teams were beginning to pitch tents emblazoned with colorful mascots and prideful slogans. A hot air balloon added a drop of color to the clear blue sky.

I wandered away from the encampment and was soon drawn to the Parrott, which seemed an object fixed to the landscape. Turned out it was animated by half a dozen members of Rogers’ 3^rd Maryland Artillery, including two young boys in worn confederate uniforms and their younger sister playing a board game in the trailer’s emptied interior.

Roger sat in a camp chair as the others kept busy with the gun, back and forth to the trailer for the sponge and wad-screw and ladle, the primer and rammer and priming iron. Roger alone knew the location of a key to the locked magazines holding the powder, and he winked when he told me where to find it.

I thought how much my father would have enjoyed this encounter, and how hard it’s become for my folks to get down here to visit as age increases the miles between us. Roger spoke an awful lot like dad – wash came out warsh – and blended his reverence for firearms with his derision for fools in a way that reminded me of grandpa.

He enlightened me about the years he’d spent perfecting his replica Parrott, working with his sons and training his grandkids to fire it, and their participation in N-SSA activities. These included days’ long competitions firing shells at targets or lobbing mortars at stakes in the ground from Civil War-style encampments weekend after weekend.

The obvious question came to mind that I dared not ask: Why?

Or maybe more than why should be: To what more constructive purpose might you put your considerable talent and capacity to build sturdy mechanisms with an eye for detail? Why all this empty flinging of lead across fields once soaked in the blood of Americans slain by their fellow countrymen?

I saved the Why question for when he mentioned that his 3^rd Maryland Artillery weren’t welcome at re-enactments. He said something about too much risk to the living, then winked again when he said, “We use live ammunition, not black powder.”

–

I stood behind and a little to the side as the artillery team watched for a signal from race officials down on the field. Roger’s son, holding his own son, pulled the rope that fired the ignition in a great flash of light, cloud of smoke, and echoing thunder to send the athletes running.

The team on the knoll whooped with the thrill, giving me the answer to my previously unasked why. “We’re out here for the F-U-N,” said one, smiling ear to ear. Did he mean fun, or F.U., Northerner.

I didn’t sense anything unpatriotic in Roger and his team, other than the grey shade of their tunics and their liberal mockery of Yankees. He was unapologetic about these views, as if sharing them with a Connecticut boy were an honorable thing for both parties: No offense, and after competitions I’ll drink a beer with my opponents just the same.

But of course, it all raised another unasked and unaskable question. What did Roger think of the present course of our country, the recent history of events in our capital? What did the former Seabee, who served two tours in Vietnam, think of January 6^th, and how did he view the prospects for trouble after November 5^th?

I wondered what fascinating and terrible machines were being forged in the foundries out where Roger lived, which he called Western Virginia, not West Virginia. “There’s no such thing as West Virginia,” he said, and shared a story to cast doubt on the legitimacy of how that vote for statehood played out.

I had a race to watch and runners to cheer thanks to Roger’s old replica. I headed down off the knoll and onto the course, tracking my son’s progress as he paced gamely along these fields of long-buried soldiers and lost, dud ordnance, pursuing a PR in the glory of his youth.

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