July 21, 2009: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

The Gettysburg Museum was somewhat of a disappointment.  It was situated on the land where the Battle of Gettysburg actually occurred, acres and acres of ebullient wildflowers crowding around the place belying the bloody tale told there.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to look too closely at the gory story.  The tickets were way overpriced; I'm pretty sure that the entire economy of Gettysburg relies on this place for their revenue.  A mile or so away from the museum, at 900 Baltimore Pike, Gettysburg, PA, we came across a military museum that specialized in gear from the Civil War to WWII.  It was pretty cool.  A private museum run by a very knowledgeable military-history junky, the place contains a huge collection of weapons, and you can even try on helmets from the Civil War to the Second World War eras.  I took the liberty of trying one on myself.  It felt pretty strange, wearing the protective gear of someone who had killed for a living.  I'm glad I'm not a soldier. Conscientious objector-ism for me, thank you very much.  

The town of Gettysburg itself is a little anachronism caught in the middle of a series of highways and shops with names like "Unbridled Fine Art", "Clinical Hypnosis"and "Toy Trains" as well as taverns, saloons, and the odd Lutheran Theological Seminary.  A computer store on the outskirts of town seems oddly out of place.  

As we headed toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, through which Confederate soldiers trudged in order to meet the Union Army in Gettysburg, I stared out the car window.  Right next to the battlefield on the US-30, are a children's playground and a health center, which struck me as quite amusing.  The attractions on this battlefield are geared to an odd combination of children and old people; little rompers and old war buffs.  There's even a tiny airport with planes that look like childrens' playthings.

In Gettysburg, people hang their clothes out to dry.  We used to do this at my house (we went without a clothes dryer or washing machine for a few months), and I loved the practice.  It just feels so right, somehow, to be peeking out from behind your clothes hanging on the line, dripping as the golden sun sops up the puddles that form on the ground beneath them. 

Another store advertises "all steel buidings at wood prices!"  We're getting into farmland now, where such things matter.  I find myself wondering what I'd be like had I grown up in a town like this.  How affected have I been by my surroundings?  Any bigotry or prejudice I've witnessed or have been victim to has only grounded me further in my own beliefs.  Maybe I'm just one of those people where placement doesn't really matter.  Who knows.  

seen off the highway:  "CHAMBERSBURG BURIAL VAULTS!"  

Burial VAULTS?  How morbid.  Imagine if we had to keep all our dead in vaults, as though their souls might wriggle out of their graves and haunt us if we didn't make sure they were locked up, never free to live out their wanderlust on the earth again.  Or as a precaution against zombie invasion.  Who wants to see a whole bunch of groaning old soldiers with frothy mouths and limbs that come loose and litter the ground around them?  Or to make sure that all the dead soldiers didn't rise up and resume their battle, tearing themselves to pieces all over again, forgetting that the war was over, that their differences had been settled and their generals long buried.  They wouldn't know about Appomatox, so who could blame them, right?