The last full measure of devotion
I was reading this, which made me think of this. I'd read it before two years ago, but of everything I've read concerning the subject, this stands out most in my mind. It always makes me sad every time I read it, but I think I understand it better now.
---
Today I went and read through the Gettysburg Address for the first time.
---
What were you thinking in your last minutes? What were you thinking in that last desperate charge against the cannons? What were you thinking in that last desperate charge against the cockpit doors? What were you thinking when you donned your colors, blue or grey, and left your family waiting? What were you thinking, when you came off the phone, and left that blinking light one last time on the answering machine? What were you thinking when you died? What are you thinking now, at rest among your sacred bones?
Friday, July 23, 2004
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
New Oxford
New Oxford, Pennsylvania, in Adams County, is a town of 1,716 people and covers 0.6 miles, square. It happened to be that I was there because I happen to be dating a boy named Jeremy, who happened to be born there, and raised. With the pretense of viewing the Gettysburg battle reenactments nearby, I decided to go visit him.
Jeremy looks different when I first see him, as is the case with him after . He looks alien and unfamiliar to me even though I know exactly who he is; I have forgotten how he looks like. We talk and are awkward, not knowing what to talk about; most conversations have their base in continuity, but it improves with time.
Saturday, July 3rd, after our first stint in Gettysburg, we came back to his house, and I put my stuff away. I said hi to Amie and she said hi back and smiled, a sudden genuine warmness that seemed nothing short of miraculous. Natalie responds when I say hi too, but rather mechanically, and ignores me for the rest of the day. The lively conversation starts. "What do you wanna do?" "I dunno, what do you wanna do?"
We decide to go canoeing. Amie decides to come with us. Jeremy grumbles. Out back, in a wooded area there is a concrete pier, and we push this canoe off, and sit in it. I've never canoed before, but paddling is easy. The creek is smooth and runs deep, and when I pole my oar, probing for the creek bottom, I rarely reach it. Sometimes I leave my oar horizontal just above the water and watch it skim a tiny wake of water, like air over a plane's wings. Amie does this too, but Jeremy yells at her, and not me, for it. With his sister, Jeremy alternates between pushy, demanding, belittling and exasperated, and in general acts like the dad of a teenage girl. She, in turn thinks he's stodgy, boring and a killjoy, like a teenage daughter. Leaves, branches and shadows dangle over our heads. Occasionally, we sweep some overhanging branches aside, and pass by the pylons of bridges overhead, and concrete docks descending like stairs into the water from the banks, from people's backyards. Sometimes we lift the canoe out of the water and take detours on land around rapids, and sometimes we get out and wade through the water pushing the canoe, where it would be too shallow for us to remain in it, and sometimes we pole instead of row. Sometimes Amie gets out of the canoe and stands on a bank and waits for us while we maneuver the boat through rapids and turn around to pick her up. A blue heron lifts off ahead of us in flight, and I listen to the ambient sound as the creek murmurs, and Jeremy and Amie bicker. It goes like this:
**
Jeremy: You're stupid/incompent/ not doing this right.
Amie: You're a nerd.
Jeremy: You're stupid/incompetent/ not doing this right.
Amie: You're stodgy and boring.
Jeremy: You're stupid/incompetent/ not doing this right.
(Jeremy: *warning tone of voice* "Amie...."
Amie: "Oooh, I'm so afraid of YOU! What're you gonna do, hit me with your epee??"
Jeremy: "You always run us into logs! If you're going to sit there, why don't you actually paddle?"
Amie: "I am paddling! And who uses the word log anymore?"
Me: "Everyone uses the word log."
OR:
Amie: "Jeremmmyyyy! Turn us around!!!"
Jeremy: "Honestly! It's just a four foot waterfall..."
Amie: "*incoherent high pitched noises* Jeremyyyyyyy!!!!")
It'd kind of cute. Completely random fact: Amie can imitate her dachsunds.
**
We got quite wet.
We have dinner:
(Jeremy's mom: "I got the low fat chicken....")
Amie acts differently around her parents than with just us. She's withdrawn. I wonder if Natalie is like that too, (I know Jeremy is) and how much I'm missing.
.. and then me and Jeremy do a hundred piece dinosaur puzzle. Amie joins us. We talk. I tell Jeremy to stop being sappy. Amie picks this up, and now her new word is "SAPPAY!" She jumps out from behind corners and yells it, randomly. I think this is funny.
After everyone is in bed, Jeremy takes me down the back road to show me the grove where the fireflies are. He says it looks like a star field when it's dark. My eyes have not adjusted yet, and I only distinguish the darker shadows of the branches against the lighter shadow of the sky where the branches blot out the stars. In a world without color the fireflies seem to glow white. Off in the distance, someone is setting off fireworks prematurely, and I hear the high pitched whistle and crackle as the fireflies dance. Jeremy starts making out with me. I am with a strange man in the dark woods at midnight in rural Pennsylvania somewhere. The woods don't look like a field of stars, I think. They look like a bunch of trees, with chemically-active insects flying abou. That's all they are, trees with insects. I leave, and Jeremy flagellates himself over imagined wrongs. I tell him, as I have countless times, that he has done nothing that needs forgiving, but he will not believe me.
When I got home, I couldn't sleep. I was thinking it unexpectedly pleasant that Amie would smile at me, so I did a little prayer (and I never do) giving thanks to God in His boundless mercy that in one small unexpected instance people should come to be nice to each other.
--
Sunday is the fourth of July. We don't do very much on Sunday. While everyone is at church, we sit around the tv and watch a documentary on alligators while every half hour a wooden bird hurtles out of one or another of a pair of cuckoo clocks on the wall, and the painted wooden figurines inside the clock do a little hellish German dance. In the afternoon we go to Gettysburg again, where it rains. At home we walk about New Oxford, around dusk. There's not very much to see. It's a very pretty town. A postcard town. A Christmas ornament town, a snow dome town, with ivy covered walls and small houses with porches and American flags hung on rods by the door, and pots of flowers. At the center of town is a brick paved square, and at the center of a circle with paths and benches and small trees, is a fountain and flagpole. Down the street from his house is a horse farm and a track used for harness racing. Train tracks run through town, dividing it, and a little historical station sits by them, unused and ornamental, a former connection with the rest of the world. We walk by the turkey plant, which smells terrible, across the rail bridge, and through the newer neighborhood where the houses seem devoid of personality, and if you look in the distance, all you see is fields with nothing around anywhere, even trees, like some sort of insta-village. We go to Crosskeys, an intersection of two major country highways with several gas stations. It's on roadmaps, but nobody lives there, and it perhaps serves as the border marker of the bubble that is Jeremy's tiny world.
At night, Jeremy's dad drives the lot of us (except for Natalie who is doing something else), to Hanover so we can see the fireworks, and parks at the YMCA. We walk through the streets where from backyards we hear high pitched whistles and crackles and watch fireworks and rockets explode above roofs and behind trees and cheers of spontaneous joy, and people spill into the streets. We reach the field where the legal fireworks are planned, and sit down, watching people in the houses nearby set off fountains of fireworks in their front yards like pyrotechnic sprinklers, and little children run about, their sparklers hissing. A pre-teenage boy darts furtively past us; several minutes later firework after firework shoots into the air and erupts some distance away from us in the woods. In rural Pennsylvania, nobody is uptight enough to arrest you, and the place is happier for it. The official fireworks start to ooh and ahs, shooting stars in the air that divide and fall glittering, or bloom in an expanding circle of points. The amateur ones fizzle out, at least for a bit.
When we get back, we have pie and go to sleep.
--
Monday starts with Jeremy in the shower, and a phone call. Jeremy's mom got it. It was the YMCA asking if Jeremy could work a lifeguard shift from 6-9:30 PM. Jeremy had already canceled an earlier shift from 9:00 am to 12:00. Jeremy's mom asked Jeremy if he could take it. He said he could but would rather not, so his mom said he could. Jeremy came out of the shower and got pissed off because she said he could though he didn't want to. (I told him that when it comes to jobs, if you tell someone, "You can but would rather not," people stop listening after the, "I can.") In any case, though Jeremy's mom didn't so much misinterpret him as he made himself unclear, I was rather annoyed myself after thinking about it, because my parents were intending to pick me up in the evening, and I'd have liked Jeremy around for me to say my goodbyes. Really, what sort of shitty job doesn't call at least 24 hours ahead for a change in your schedule, especially on the day after a big holiday? Really, Jeremy should've just told his mom to say, "Sorry, but I've already made other plans," which is perfectly valid. I told Jeremy about this, and said I would tell Jeremy's mom nicely that I'd like for him to be around when I leave and if she had any ideas, except that Jeremy got to her first, and they had a yelling match. Jeremy then called the Y and canceled his newly appointed 6-9:30 shift. After his dad found out about this, they had a yelling match ("You know, there is such a thing as respecting your parents." "This is my life, I should be able to say what I do with it!" "And this is my house, so as long as you live under my roof.." ) and I hid. I could hear it anyway, so eventually I came out and said that for the love of God I'd just call my parents and tell them to come later, after Jeremy's come home, which seemed to agree with everyone. I call.
We take time to calm down for a bit. We do another puzzle and play cards some, and occasionally Jeremy wishes himself away from home. My dad calls, and though reception is bad we figure that he and my mom are stuck in traffic driving down from Toronto, and can't pick me up until Tuesday. If he'd've called earlier, we'd've avoided a situation.
We have dinner early, and go of to the Y.
Jeremy changes into his life guard uniform, a red wifebeater with black swim trunks, and looks silly. However, he has a nice whistle that, as his sceptor of authority, sounds out shrill and piping. I hop into the pool and get bored quickly. I also sit around in the sauna, and soak in the whirlpool, and then, bored, go back into the pool and bug the lifeguard every fifteen seconds. There are many little kids and sound carries across the water. Jeremy is hot and I splash water across his toes. 2 hours and thirty minutes to go. After a bit, the free swim closes so I get out and sit shivering on the bleachers. Jeremy tests the chemical properties of the water, like Ph and chlorine level. A woman in one of the water aerobics class gets a nosebleed, so I check up on her in the woman's lockerroom at Jeremy's behest to make sure she's okay and then we clean up the trail of blood with disinfectant, and file an injury report. This is about as exciting as lifeguarding gets. With nothing better to do, I play with the water aerobics class "weights" (they're actually foam so they float, providing resistance in the water) and do laps.
We come home and decide to play in the backyard pool, since we're in swimsuits anyway. The water is cool. The back porch lights are on so we see no stars. Jeremy takes my hands and I step on his toes and we waltz across the pool. He says he can't dance, but this is because he is only thinking of what other people think of as dance. He dances better than he knows.
When we get back in, everyone is asleep. We take showers to rinse the chlorine off. Jeremy is drunk, in a fashion. For many people, being drunk causes horniness. For Jeremy, horniness causes a semi-drunken state, in which his judgment is impaired, he speaks in monosyllables, cannot walk in a straight line, and should not be allowed to operate motor vehicles or heavy machinery. I toss on my clothes, pry myself away from him, slam the bathroom door between him and me and flee to the living room. After a while, he comes out sober, and we rest against each other on the couch in the dimness of the nightlight feeling the rise and fall of our breathing until we fall asleep.
--
Tuesday comes with Jeremy's morning shift, so I go off with him. There's not much different about this time, except that I am much more serious about doing laps, and giving Jeremy neck massages with water to cool him down every once in a while. Sometimes I sit on the bleachers next to him and we talk.
After his shift, Jeremy's dad takes us to the Utz Potato Chip Factory (the Utz factory) in Hanover so we can take a factory tour. We get free samples, and look through windows down on conveyer belts of potatoes and steam rising from fryers and rather frantic packers, and a giant warehouse. By each window is a red button. Jeremy's dad gleefully pushes each of them. When pressed, soothing music emits from a speaker in the ceiling, and a cheerful, phone operator-type voice narrates the fascinating process of how Utz creates its tasty, high quality products from only the freshest ingredients, etc. Jeremy's dad comments on how it would be great to have the job as one of the guys who picks out potato chips considered defective for being dark. You could eat a few here or there, but Jeremy disagrees and says the defective potato chips are simply sold to farmers and used for pig feed. In a for-profit company, not an ounce goes to waste. The process of making potato chips is not a revelation (slice, dip, fry, pack, ship) and Jeremy's dad says that it's a pity that the Snyder's pretzel factory is closed, but I find it fascinating that each room in the factory sequentially follows the accounting process: raw materials inventory, works in process, finished goods inventory. I ponder whether it would be calculated under job or process cost accounting and decided it was process, and which processes would be covered under joint costs (washing, slicing, frying, but not flavoring), and how since Utz is a manufacturer and not a retailer its Cost of Goods Sold (ending Finished Goods Inventory minus Beginning Finished Goods Inventory) would be based on Cost of Goods Manufactured (Ending Work in Process Inventory minus Beginning Work in Process Inventory). I may be wrong; it's summer. I took a little accounting field trip. I'm sure you don't care.
Plus, we went to the Utz outlet store and ate free samples of all different flavors. I asked Jeremy's dad if the turkey plant gave out free samples. He thought I was grotesque.
At home, after lunch, I went with Jeremy to an old abandoned train, by the old station, which had been converted into a coffee shop (the train, not the station. The station is a museum.) We ordered some chai and were ecstatic, realizing that a shelf to the rear of the train was stacked with all variety of board games and card games, and we especially enjoyed Mind Trap, a card set of groan-inducing riddles, mindteasers and puzzles. Nearby, a gaggle of elderly customers were talking about the joys and sorrows of living in Bethesda. Small world.
Apparently my parents got lost because Jeremy's house is out of the way, and people were none too friendly in pointing it out to them. But eventually we got home and my parents picked me up, and when I got home and my mom went to bed in a roadtrip-induced stupor, I was lonelier than before I left.
New Oxford, Pennsylvania, in Adams County, is a town of 1,716 people and covers 0.6 miles, square. It happened to be that I was there because I happen to be dating a boy named Jeremy, who happened to be born there, and raised. With the pretense of viewing the Gettysburg battle reenactments nearby, I decided to go visit him.
Jeremy looks different when I first see him, as is the case with him after . He looks alien and unfamiliar to me even though I know exactly who he is; I have forgotten how he looks like. We talk and are awkward, not knowing what to talk about; most conversations have their base in continuity, but it improves with time.
Saturday, July 3rd, after our first stint in Gettysburg, we came back to his house, and I put my stuff away. I said hi to Amie and she said hi back and smiled, a sudden genuine warmness that seemed nothing short of miraculous. Natalie responds when I say hi too, but rather mechanically, and ignores me for the rest of the day. The lively conversation starts. "What do you wanna do?" "I dunno, what do you wanna do?"
We decide to go canoeing. Amie decides to come with us. Jeremy grumbles. Out back, in a wooded area there is a concrete pier, and we push this canoe off, and sit in it. I've never canoed before, but paddling is easy. The creek is smooth and runs deep, and when I pole my oar, probing for the creek bottom, I rarely reach it. Sometimes I leave my oar horizontal just above the water and watch it skim a tiny wake of water, like air over a plane's wings. Amie does this too, but Jeremy yells at her, and not me, for it. With his sister, Jeremy alternates between pushy, demanding, belittling and exasperated, and in general acts like the dad of a teenage girl. She, in turn thinks he's stodgy, boring and a killjoy, like a teenage daughter. Leaves, branches and shadows dangle over our heads. Occasionally, we sweep some overhanging branches aside, and pass by the pylons of bridges overhead, and concrete docks descending like stairs into the water from the banks, from people's backyards. Sometimes we lift the canoe out of the water and take detours on land around rapids, and sometimes we get out and wade through the water pushing the canoe, where it would be too shallow for us to remain in it, and sometimes we pole instead of row. Sometimes Amie gets out of the canoe and stands on a bank and waits for us while we maneuver the boat through rapids and turn around to pick her up. A blue heron lifts off ahead of us in flight, and I listen to the ambient sound as the creek murmurs, and Jeremy and Amie bicker. It goes like this:
**
Jeremy: You're stupid/incompent/ not doing this right.
Amie: You're a nerd.
Jeremy: You're stupid/incompetent/ not doing this right.
Amie: You're stodgy and boring.
Jeremy: You're stupid/incompetent/ not doing this right.
(Jeremy: *warning tone of voice* "Amie...."
Amie: "Oooh, I'm so afraid of YOU! What're you gonna do, hit me with your epee??"
Jeremy: "You always run us into logs! If you're going to sit there, why don't you actually paddle?"
Amie: "I am paddling! And who uses the word log anymore?"
Me: "Everyone uses the word log."
OR:
Amie: "Jeremmmyyyy! Turn us around!!!"
Jeremy: "Honestly! It's just a four foot waterfall..."
Amie: "*incoherent high pitched noises* Jeremyyyyyyy!!!!")
It'd kind of cute. Completely random fact: Amie can imitate her dachsunds.
**
We got quite wet.
We have dinner:
(Jeremy's mom: "I got the low fat chicken....")
Amie acts differently around her parents than with just us. She's withdrawn. I wonder if Natalie is like that too, (I know Jeremy is) and how much I'm missing.
.. and then me and Jeremy do a hundred piece dinosaur puzzle. Amie joins us. We talk. I tell Jeremy to stop being sappy. Amie picks this up, and now her new word is "SAPPAY!" She jumps out from behind corners and yells it, randomly. I think this is funny.
After everyone is in bed, Jeremy takes me down the back road to show me the grove where the fireflies are. He says it looks like a star field when it's dark. My eyes have not adjusted yet, and I only distinguish the darker shadows of the branches against the lighter shadow of the sky where the branches blot out the stars. In a world without color the fireflies seem to glow white. Off in the distance, someone is setting off fireworks prematurely, and I hear the high pitched whistle and crackle as the fireflies dance. Jeremy starts making out with me. I am with a strange man in the dark woods at midnight in rural Pennsylvania somewhere. The woods don't look like a field of stars, I think. They look like a bunch of trees, with chemically-active insects flying abou. That's all they are, trees with insects. I leave, and Jeremy flagellates himself over imagined wrongs. I tell him, as I have countless times, that he has done nothing that needs forgiving, but he will not believe me.
When I got home, I couldn't sleep. I was thinking it unexpectedly pleasant that Amie would smile at me, so I did a little prayer (and I never do) giving thanks to God in His boundless mercy that in one small unexpected instance people should come to be nice to each other.
--
Sunday is the fourth of July. We don't do very much on Sunday. While everyone is at church, we sit around the tv and watch a documentary on alligators while every half hour a wooden bird hurtles out of one or another of a pair of cuckoo clocks on the wall, and the painted wooden figurines inside the clock do a little hellish German dance. In the afternoon we go to Gettysburg again, where it rains. At home we walk about New Oxford, around dusk. There's not very much to see. It's a very pretty town. A postcard town. A Christmas ornament town, a snow dome town, with ivy covered walls and small houses with porches and American flags hung on rods by the door, and pots of flowers. At the center of town is a brick paved square, and at the center of a circle with paths and benches and small trees, is a fountain and flagpole. Down the street from his house is a horse farm and a track used for harness racing. Train tracks run through town, dividing it, and a little historical station sits by them, unused and ornamental, a former connection with the rest of the world. We walk by the turkey plant, which smells terrible, across the rail bridge, and through the newer neighborhood where the houses seem devoid of personality, and if you look in the distance, all you see is fields with nothing around anywhere, even trees, like some sort of insta-village. We go to Crosskeys, an intersection of two major country highways with several gas stations. It's on roadmaps, but nobody lives there, and it perhaps serves as the border marker of the bubble that is Jeremy's tiny world.
At night, Jeremy's dad drives the lot of us (except for Natalie who is doing something else), to Hanover so we can see the fireworks, and parks at the YMCA. We walk through the streets where from backyards we hear high pitched whistles and crackles and watch fireworks and rockets explode above roofs and behind trees and cheers of spontaneous joy, and people spill into the streets. We reach the field where the legal fireworks are planned, and sit down, watching people in the houses nearby set off fountains of fireworks in their front yards like pyrotechnic sprinklers, and little children run about, their sparklers hissing. A pre-teenage boy darts furtively past us; several minutes later firework after firework shoots into the air and erupts some distance away from us in the woods. In rural Pennsylvania, nobody is uptight enough to arrest you, and the place is happier for it. The official fireworks start to ooh and ahs, shooting stars in the air that divide and fall glittering, or bloom in an expanding circle of points. The amateur ones fizzle out, at least for a bit.
When we get back, we have pie and go to sleep.
--
Monday starts with Jeremy in the shower, and a phone call. Jeremy's mom got it. It was the YMCA asking if Jeremy could work a lifeguard shift from 6-9:30 PM. Jeremy had already canceled an earlier shift from 9:00 am to 12:00. Jeremy's mom asked Jeremy if he could take it. He said he could but would rather not, so his mom said he could. Jeremy came out of the shower and got pissed off because she said he could though he didn't want to. (I told him that when it comes to jobs, if you tell someone, "You can but would rather not," people stop listening after the, "I can.") In any case, though Jeremy's mom didn't so much misinterpret him as he made himself unclear, I was rather annoyed myself after thinking about it, because my parents were intending to pick me up in the evening, and I'd have liked Jeremy around for me to say my goodbyes. Really, what sort of shitty job doesn't call at least 24 hours ahead for a change in your schedule, especially on the day after a big holiday? Really, Jeremy should've just told his mom to say, "Sorry, but I've already made other plans," which is perfectly valid. I told Jeremy about this, and said I would tell Jeremy's mom nicely that I'd like for him to be around when I leave and if she had any ideas, except that Jeremy got to her first, and they had a yelling match. Jeremy then called the Y and canceled his newly appointed 6-9:30 shift. After his dad found out about this, they had a yelling match ("You know, there is such a thing as respecting your parents." "This is my life, I should be able to say what I do with it!" "And this is my house, so as long as you live under my roof.." ) and I hid. I could hear it anyway, so eventually I came out and said that for the love of God I'd just call my parents and tell them to come later, after Jeremy's come home, which seemed to agree with everyone. I call.
We take time to calm down for a bit. We do another puzzle and play cards some, and occasionally Jeremy wishes himself away from home. My dad calls, and though reception is bad we figure that he and my mom are stuck in traffic driving down from Toronto, and can't pick me up until Tuesday. If he'd've called earlier, we'd've avoided a situation.
We have dinner early, and go of to the Y.
Jeremy changes into his life guard uniform, a red wifebeater with black swim trunks, and looks silly. However, he has a nice whistle that, as his sceptor of authority, sounds out shrill and piping. I hop into the pool and get bored quickly. I also sit around in the sauna, and soak in the whirlpool, and then, bored, go back into the pool and bug the lifeguard every fifteen seconds. There are many little kids and sound carries across the water. Jeremy is hot and I splash water across his toes. 2 hours and thirty minutes to go. After a bit, the free swim closes so I get out and sit shivering on the bleachers. Jeremy tests the chemical properties of the water, like Ph and chlorine level. A woman in one of the water aerobics class gets a nosebleed, so I check up on her in the woman's lockerroom at Jeremy's behest to make sure she's okay and then we clean up the trail of blood with disinfectant, and file an injury report. This is about as exciting as lifeguarding gets. With nothing better to do, I play with the water aerobics class "weights" (they're actually foam so they float, providing resistance in the water) and do laps.
We come home and decide to play in the backyard pool, since we're in swimsuits anyway. The water is cool. The back porch lights are on so we see no stars. Jeremy takes my hands and I step on his toes and we waltz across the pool. He says he can't dance, but this is because he is only thinking of what other people think of as dance. He dances better than he knows.
When we get back in, everyone is asleep. We take showers to rinse the chlorine off. Jeremy is drunk, in a fashion. For many people, being drunk causes horniness. For Jeremy, horniness causes a semi-drunken state, in which his judgment is impaired, he speaks in monosyllables, cannot walk in a straight line, and should not be allowed to operate motor vehicles or heavy machinery. I toss on my clothes, pry myself away from him, slam the bathroom door between him and me and flee to the living room. After a while, he comes out sober, and we rest against each other on the couch in the dimness of the nightlight feeling the rise and fall of our breathing until we fall asleep.
--
Tuesday comes with Jeremy's morning shift, so I go off with him. There's not much different about this time, except that I am much more serious about doing laps, and giving Jeremy neck massages with water to cool him down every once in a while. Sometimes I sit on the bleachers next to him and we talk.
After his shift, Jeremy's dad takes us to the Utz Potato Chip Factory (the Utz factory) in Hanover so we can take a factory tour. We get free samples, and look through windows down on conveyer belts of potatoes and steam rising from fryers and rather frantic packers, and a giant warehouse. By each window is a red button. Jeremy's dad gleefully pushes each of them. When pressed, soothing music emits from a speaker in the ceiling, and a cheerful, phone operator-type voice narrates the fascinating process of how Utz creates its tasty, high quality products from only the freshest ingredients, etc. Jeremy's dad comments on how it would be great to have the job as one of the guys who picks out potato chips considered defective for being dark. You could eat a few here or there, but Jeremy disagrees and says the defective potato chips are simply sold to farmers and used for pig feed. In a for-profit company, not an ounce goes to waste. The process of making potato chips is not a revelation (slice, dip, fry, pack, ship) and Jeremy's dad says that it's a pity that the Snyder's pretzel factory is closed, but I find it fascinating that each room in the factory sequentially follows the accounting process: raw materials inventory, works in process, finished goods inventory. I ponder whether it would be calculated under job or process cost accounting and decided it was process, and which processes would be covered under joint costs (washing, slicing, frying, but not flavoring), and how since Utz is a manufacturer and not a retailer its Cost of Goods Sold (ending Finished Goods Inventory minus Beginning Finished Goods Inventory) would be based on Cost of Goods Manufactured (Ending Work in Process Inventory minus Beginning Work in Process Inventory). I may be wrong; it's summer. I took a little accounting field trip. I'm sure you don't care.
Plus, we went to the Utz outlet store and ate free samples of all different flavors. I asked Jeremy's dad if the turkey plant gave out free samples. He thought I was grotesque.
At home, after lunch, I went with Jeremy to an old abandoned train, by the old station, which had been converted into a coffee shop (the train, not the station. The station is a museum.) We ordered some chai and were ecstatic, realizing that a shelf to the rear of the train was stacked with all variety of board games and card games, and we especially enjoyed Mind Trap, a card set of groan-inducing riddles, mindteasers and puzzles. Nearby, a gaggle of elderly customers were talking about the joys and sorrows of living in Bethesda. Small world.
Apparently my parents got lost because Jeremy's house is out of the way, and people were none too friendly in pointing it out to them. But eventually we got home and my parents picked me up, and when I got home and my mom went to bed in a roadtrip-induced stupor, I was lonelier than before I left.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Gettysburg 2004
So over July 4th weekend, I went to Gettysburg, and by default, New Oxford.
Friday night, I stayed up til 4 am making pies. The banana creme pie worked out to be quite yummy, the personally I thought it tasted better hot than chilled, like you're supposed to. The latticed blueberry pie had a fatal collision with the kitchen carpet. Sustained an oven burn on my arm.
Saturday, July 3rd, went to Gettysburg to watch re-enactments. Met up with Jeremy, and presented him with a slice of banana creme pie. He left it in the car, and it melted. The Gettysburg re-enactments themselves have the feel of a country fair, with a rows of rectangular white tents set up with aisles in between them littered with straw, selling overpriced lemonade, hotdogs, funnelcakes, and other miscellaneous fair fare, and of course the line of ubiquitous blue porto-potties. There is of course Civil War merchandise unique to these types of events; the nightmarishly hot woolen uniforms of the Union and the more comfortable cotton ones of the Confederacy, sturdy boots, collectable weapons for ungrown-up adults and plastic guns and wooden sabers for children, prints, hair braiding services, wooden craft knicknacks, video casettes of previous battles or DVDs of old favorites, Civil War movies, CDs of folk music from Appalachia and the South. Women in gingham and calico hoop skirts and straw bonnets wander around fanning themselves, contemporary naval officers in full uniform stroll about looking at muskets along with brass-buttoned historical counterparts, looking rather dashing in gold and red piping, with their sideburns or muttonchops, and modern mounted policemen do slow patrols around. Gettysburg is a bit like Rennfest, except the accents are real. Bikers and other species of red-blooded American males display their Confederate pride, or perhaps simply a breed of country music patriotism in shirts emblazoned with things like, "God Bless America, " or "Freedom isn't Free." Pickup trucks, draped or painted in the blue cross on red of the South roll up the hill and squash the grass in the parking field, and closer by, pickups pass with Union or Confederate soldiers seated and dangling their legs out the back. Some of the trucks haul artillery.
We were a bit early for the battle, so we had a stroll around. Away from the glut of merchandise, we talked to a camp surgeon, who showed us various amputation procedures on his comical collection of plastic and rubber legs, complete with fake blood. We passed tents as men and women tended to smoky fires wafting the smell of frying ham, and a camp follower woman generously fed us hardtack, much to our misfortune. We ended up getting, in the commercial area, "Italian sausage," which is fair fare, not Civil War fare, but a lot better tasting.
Didn't get a very good view of the battle itself, though we were in the front row of the general "seating" (by which they mean standing, in a crowd) area flanking the (more expensive) grandstands. A man with a loudspeaker began to narrate from a platform, explaining the battle and its significance. I ignored him. From the Union Camp on our right, a mass of men, dark and buglike against the distance of the hills, snaked to the top of a hill, where the cannons already were. Further out, a line of men set up, in formation, hunkered down in the high grass at the crest of a hill, muskets pointed. Solo cavalrymen, on horses doll-like in the distance, charged back and forth, seemingly at random. A signal from somewhere, the line moved. All this setting up was interspersed by long periods of nothing, with the sun beating down upon our backs. Cannons fired, a blossom of smoke expelled from the barrel and a vortex cloud spiraled from the mouth visible, and half a beat later the boom of thunder like a loud clap, and gradually later, the rotten-egg smell of sulphur and the battlefield cloaked in plumes of smoke. Something was happening on the other side. The deceptively cheerful music of the fife and drum corp, escorting people to "kill" each other. Long periods of nothing. Being that it was a Union retreat, it ended with a bunch of people swarming spectacularly on our side. Then the battle "ended," by which they meant somebody won, I guess.
We were hot and a bit bored, so we left.
-----
Sunday, the Fourth, went back to Gettysburg for the last day of battle, which is supposedly the most intense. We got there pretty late, and so we couldn't find any seats. Apparently the last day is the most popular, and everyone had camped out in the general seating area with picnic blankets or lawn chairs. We spent the first battle, a cavalry battle, running back and forth behind the grandstands trying to get a peek of the action through the gaps in the bleachers. We did end up just standing behind the press photographers, which made for a good close-up, if limited panoramic view, and watched cavalry skirmish with fake sabrists wheeling about slashing at each other and shots of smoke puffing out from pointed pistols.
Spent some time going over to the Confederate and Union camps (Reb and Federal), where re-enactors actually lived for three days. Union camp was larger and seemingy better organized. It seemed quite normal, with tents, smoke fires and food, signs with rules and regulations posted, people sitting around talking, a group of rowdy young men firing their muskets into the air, and a more disciplined dozen or so doing drills, horses tied to lines stretched between trees, surrounded by a ring of horse trailers, patties all over the ground like mud, and plentiful piles of firewood. A black cavalryman on a prancing grey Arabian poses and parades for hoop-skirted, bonneted women and girls. "I was just in the Midwest, chasing Indians," he says, of his full-time hobby/job. Semaphore signalers stood a few yards apart and practiced, while having colorful conversations with a modern Navy signaller. As it started to rain, a boy with a tin whistle, a fiddler and a guitarist began to improv within one of the tents, a high and lovely music to the patter of rain on canvas, a dry place and home (at least for a bit) while the world stormed outside.
When we left, we could still hear the tin whistle from the stalls. a grinning trio of teenage boys beat snaredrums for loose change. We decided to get a funnelcake and lemonade and get seats.
The last battle was Pickett's Charge. We did get a good view this time, at the center edge of the general seating area, near the front. It began to pour, historically accurately, and umbrellas bloomed above the lawn chairs. It stopped, and the umbrellas disappeared. The boring, eternity of setting up, as usual, at least this time, without the heat. We had a better view of both sides this time. Cannons boomed their incoherent language to one another across the field, and short flashes flared up in the grass where the cannonballs "hit." A haybale exploded in flame and tiny firefighters in the distance rushed out to douse it, unspooling hoses. Through the smoke, the signallers motioned their troops into position; far off at Confederate camp I saw, waving around, a tiny white flag with a red square in the middle, in the distance almost appearing to be a dot. I was starting to expect samurai. Though you couldn't see them, the Confederate host down the hill far to the left took up a wild and undulating battle cry, and like the dramatic scenes in movies, became louder and louder until the sudden line of them rose, visible, above the hill's crest. Pickett's Charge. They began running, past and away from us, the flag held high, and threw themselves upon the Union barricates. With a sound of repeated, reverbing, popping, cracks, not one of which would end before the other began, like marbles being scattered to a hard surface, and a leaping line of muzzleflash ripping down the line, the Union formations let unload the contents of their rifles, again and again. Yelling, smoke, screams, people fell, from the Confederate camp, men and women with stretchers racing up at what seemed to be painfully slow pace. We, calm spectators, watched a man attempt to get up, and fall to the ground again. Clash, hand to hand combat.
"Where's the Confederate Army?" I asked, peering at the field of blue. A woman next to me handed me her binoculars, and I peered at all the Grey men scattered on the ground, and in close vision, saw smoke and broken lines and the surprisingly brief, frantic, animal struggle that follows and concludes after half an hour of setting up, boredom, impatience and waiting.
"This," announced the announcer solemnly, "is the true horror of war. You can buy this video for $7.99."
People in the general seating area began leaving. They decided to get lunch. Meanwhile, the Union and Confederate reenactors were shaking hands in the right field, and firing off their muskets in random celebratory round of a weekend well done, and the corpses picked themselves up off the ground. A group of re-enactors yelled, "HOOAH!" There came the review, where the soldiers would march from one side to the other by the audience, waving, saluting, grinning and posing in general for photographs, including a Union cavalry officer who looked remarkably similar to Mr. Hines.
The rain, having let up for the duration of the battle, couldn't hold it in any longer, and the skies opened. In the gaps between the rain, a couple of young boys pummeled each other with their wooden sabers and shot each other, proving that in every generation, children will always play soldier, and then grow up, and stop playing. The loudspeaker announcer wished the best of luck to those re-enactors about to leave for Iraq and Afghanistan. Me and Jeremy looked around, and decided to leave. We sat on the haybale in a tent listening to a brass band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" with instruments they claimed dated from the Civil War.
They must have, because they sounded awful.
So over July 4th weekend, I went to Gettysburg, and by default, New Oxford.
Friday night, I stayed up til 4 am making pies. The banana creme pie worked out to be quite yummy, the personally I thought it tasted better hot than chilled, like you're supposed to. The latticed blueberry pie had a fatal collision with the kitchen carpet. Sustained an oven burn on my arm.
Saturday, July 3rd, went to Gettysburg to watch re-enactments. Met up with Jeremy, and presented him with a slice of banana creme pie. He left it in the car, and it melted. The Gettysburg re-enactments themselves have the feel of a country fair, with a rows of rectangular white tents set up with aisles in between them littered with straw, selling overpriced lemonade, hotdogs, funnelcakes, and other miscellaneous fair fare, and of course the line of ubiquitous blue porto-potties. There is of course Civil War merchandise unique to these types of events; the nightmarishly hot woolen uniforms of the Union and the more comfortable cotton ones of the Confederacy, sturdy boots, collectable weapons for ungrown-up adults and plastic guns and wooden sabers for children, prints, hair braiding services, wooden craft knicknacks, video casettes of previous battles or DVDs of old favorites, Civil War movies, CDs of folk music from Appalachia and the South. Women in gingham and calico hoop skirts and straw bonnets wander around fanning themselves, contemporary naval officers in full uniform stroll about looking at muskets along with brass-buttoned historical counterparts, looking rather dashing in gold and red piping, with their sideburns or muttonchops, and modern mounted policemen do slow patrols around. Gettysburg is a bit like Rennfest, except the accents are real. Bikers and other species of red-blooded American males display their Confederate pride, or perhaps simply a breed of country music patriotism in shirts emblazoned with things like, "God Bless America, " or "Freedom isn't Free." Pickup trucks, draped or painted in the blue cross on red of the South roll up the hill and squash the grass in the parking field, and closer by, pickups pass with Union or Confederate soldiers seated and dangling their legs out the back. Some of the trucks haul artillery.
We were a bit early for the battle, so we had a stroll around. Away from the glut of merchandise, we talked to a camp surgeon, who showed us various amputation procedures on his comical collection of plastic and rubber legs, complete with fake blood. We passed tents as men and women tended to smoky fires wafting the smell of frying ham, and a camp follower woman generously fed us hardtack, much to our misfortune. We ended up getting, in the commercial area, "Italian sausage," which is fair fare, not Civil War fare, but a lot better tasting.
Didn't get a very good view of the battle itself, though we were in the front row of the general "seating" (by which they mean standing, in a crowd) area flanking the (more expensive) grandstands. A man with a loudspeaker began to narrate from a platform, explaining the battle and its significance. I ignored him. From the Union Camp on our right, a mass of men, dark and buglike against the distance of the hills, snaked to the top of a hill, where the cannons already were. Further out, a line of men set up, in formation, hunkered down in the high grass at the crest of a hill, muskets pointed. Solo cavalrymen, on horses doll-like in the distance, charged back and forth, seemingly at random. A signal from somewhere, the line moved. All this setting up was interspersed by long periods of nothing, with the sun beating down upon our backs. Cannons fired, a blossom of smoke expelled from the barrel and a vortex cloud spiraled from the mouth visible, and half a beat later the boom of thunder like a loud clap, and gradually later, the rotten-egg smell of sulphur and the battlefield cloaked in plumes of smoke. Something was happening on the other side. The deceptively cheerful music of the fife and drum corp, escorting people to "kill" each other. Long periods of nothing. Being that it was a Union retreat, it ended with a bunch of people swarming spectacularly on our side. Then the battle "ended," by which they meant somebody won, I guess.
We were hot and a bit bored, so we left.
-----
Sunday, the Fourth, went back to Gettysburg for the last day of battle, which is supposedly the most intense. We got there pretty late, and so we couldn't find any seats. Apparently the last day is the most popular, and everyone had camped out in the general seating area with picnic blankets or lawn chairs. We spent the first battle, a cavalry battle, running back and forth behind the grandstands trying to get a peek of the action through the gaps in the bleachers. We did end up just standing behind the press photographers, which made for a good close-up, if limited panoramic view, and watched cavalry skirmish with fake sabrists wheeling about slashing at each other and shots of smoke puffing out from pointed pistols.
Spent some time going over to the Confederate and Union camps (Reb and Federal), where re-enactors actually lived for three days. Union camp was larger and seemingy better organized. It seemed quite normal, with tents, smoke fires and food, signs with rules and regulations posted, people sitting around talking, a group of rowdy young men firing their muskets into the air, and a more disciplined dozen or so doing drills, horses tied to lines stretched between trees, surrounded by a ring of horse trailers, patties all over the ground like mud, and plentiful piles of firewood. A black cavalryman on a prancing grey Arabian poses and parades for hoop-skirted, bonneted women and girls. "I was just in the Midwest, chasing Indians," he says, of his full-time hobby/job. Semaphore signalers stood a few yards apart and practiced, while having colorful conversations with a modern Navy signaller. As it started to rain, a boy with a tin whistle, a fiddler and a guitarist began to improv within one of the tents, a high and lovely music to the patter of rain on canvas, a dry place and home (at least for a bit) while the world stormed outside.
When we left, we could still hear the tin whistle from the stalls. a grinning trio of teenage boys beat snaredrums for loose change. We decided to get a funnelcake and lemonade and get seats.
The last battle was Pickett's Charge. We did get a good view this time, at the center edge of the general seating area, near the front. It began to pour, historically accurately, and umbrellas bloomed above the lawn chairs. It stopped, and the umbrellas disappeared. The boring, eternity of setting up, as usual, at least this time, without the heat. We had a better view of both sides this time. Cannons boomed their incoherent language to one another across the field, and short flashes flared up in the grass where the cannonballs "hit." A haybale exploded in flame and tiny firefighters in the distance rushed out to douse it, unspooling hoses. Through the smoke, the signallers motioned their troops into position; far off at Confederate camp I saw, waving around, a tiny white flag with a red square in the middle, in the distance almost appearing to be a dot. I was starting to expect samurai. Though you couldn't see them, the Confederate host down the hill far to the left took up a wild and undulating battle cry, and like the dramatic scenes in movies, became louder and louder until the sudden line of them rose, visible, above the hill's crest. Pickett's Charge. They began running, past and away from us, the flag held high, and threw themselves upon the Union barricates. With a sound of repeated, reverbing, popping, cracks, not one of which would end before the other began, like marbles being scattered to a hard surface, and a leaping line of muzzleflash ripping down the line, the Union formations let unload the contents of their rifles, again and again. Yelling, smoke, screams, people fell, from the Confederate camp, men and women with stretchers racing up at what seemed to be painfully slow pace. We, calm spectators, watched a man attempt to get up, and fall to the ground again. Clash, hand to hand combat.
"Where's the Confederate Army?" I asked, peering at the field of blue. A woman next to me handed me her binoculars, and I peered at all the Grey men scattered on the ground, and in close vision, saw smoke and broken lines and the surprisingly brief, frantic, animal struggle that follows and concludes after half an hour of setting up, boredom, impatience and waiting.
"This," announced the announcer solemnly, "is the true horror of war. You can buy this video for $7.99."
People in the general seating area began leaving. They decided to get lunch. Meanwhile, the Union and Confederate reenactors were shaking hands in the right field, and firing off their muskets in random celebratory round of a weekend well done, and the corpses picked themselves up off the ground. A group of re-enactors yelled, "HOOAH!" There came the review, where the soldiers would march from one side to the other by the audience, waving, saluting, grinning and posing in general for photographs, including a Union cavalry officer who looked remarkably similar to Mr. Hines.
The rain, having let up for the duration of the battle, couldn't hold it in any longer, and the skies opened. In the gaps between the rain, a couple of young boys pummeled each other with their wooden sabers and shot each other, proving that in every generation, children will always play soldier, and then grow up, and stop playing. The loudspeaker announcer wished the best of luck to those re-enactors about to leave for Iraq and Afghanistan. Me and Jeremy looked around, and decided to leave. We sat on the haybale in a tent listening to a brass band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" with instruments they claimed dated from the Civil War.
They must have, because they sounded awful.
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