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EKMBBC Captain Leon Harrison, G.C.M.
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Date Posted: 11:41:00 06/29/09 Mon
EKMBBC Captain Leon Harrison, G.C.M.
Harlan County Battalion Ohio Outpost
West Carrollton, Ohio
Sunday, 28 June, 2009, 17:05 Hrs. WCOH Time
“Harlan County Battalion Dispatch or EKM story?”
Colonel Cornett:
Despite my admonitions and reminders, concerning HHR-car inventory and reenactment reloading, you left your little wooden chair there at Reynoldsburg's Civic Park. So, if you want to retrieve your seat, you had better call and meet with Doctor Pete. After my arrival, back here at the Ohio Outpost, yesterday evening, my "quick" cleaning of two rifles ended about midnight; as I just kept going and going to do it right, because fighting rust is a must. My nipples are still soaking in solvent, stinky if not dirty and kinky. Today, I had The Queen Mama buy me a new supply of "Q-Tips" with her weekly scandal sheets that I barely glanced at the bitchin, uh...I mean, her kitchen table upon our return to her Clayton castle. Today, we ate at Holly’s Home Cooking [where the food is okay but the women aren’t that young or good looking], followed by browsing and buying at my local Kroger store, where I found no suitable nice white civilized suburbanites, friendly females, or new reenactress/EKM cover-girl/centerfold recruits to go, like ya know. Today, I wore short sleeves, sandals and shorts, of course.
Oh, since I am going to forward this, I shall brag until it makes people gag about Robert Mergel paying each one of us one US dollar in coin for our participation and performances at Reynoldsburg! Bob gave me a Suckiewageah Injun-girl coin. A dollar makes it well worth drilling, marching, maneuvering, sweating and shooting at riffraff rebels, having fun with guns under a scorching sun, with a little wind but with new and old acquaintances and friends again. And we got this pay for only one day! During the Civil War, a dollar would make it worth fighting for a week, especially if one could bathe and swim with women in a creek. I've got to download a lot of digital images, but should skip doing yet another repetitive typical predictable Ohio Civil War reenactment story.
Private Taylor Huelsman, 15, and his parents showed up; they may make it to Leatherwood [Oct. 23-26] again, old friends. You will remember that, last year, 14-year-old Taylor had wandered into our encampment, during the 2008 Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival, whereat we equipped him for his very first and second Civil War battle reenactments. Last October, he and his parents joined us at Cornettsville, Kentucky, and had a good time at our Leatherwood reenactment. Yesterday, Taylor was conducting drill with three other kids, and doing it pretty good! I told his parents that he would probably be an officer before he was thirty years old…if only because most of us would be dead. I also told them that they were young enough to join us and play any part that they chose to. Taylor was happy and proud, walking around with his uniform and rifle, showing off to some of his Reynoldsburg buddies. He wore my first sack jacket that had shrunk, and that I had gradually outgrown, during these past nine years…after my retirement in February 2007. I had recently removed my sergeant stripes that are now stitched upon the sleeves of a newer bigger sack jacket that fits me better. I figure that I can always shrink them down easier than I can stretch them out. Earlier, I had outfitted a bigger boy. I put both of them in sky-blue cotton pants, rather than letting them experience and feel the warmth of the summer sun upon those warmer period-authentic wool ones.
Damn it! Is this another Harlan County Battalion Dispatch or another story for East Kentucky Magazine? Paul D., yesterday, I also got Amanda Scott, a lovely young lady, to pose for a forthcoming cover and or centerfold, not that I exactly made her any promises. Ever vigilant, I had observed her approach as she was walking toward me and my camera, along the long open area between the two lines of clean cream-colored canvas tents. I was immediately and instinctively figuring out camera angles with sun and shadows, colors, background and surroundings, to choose3 and create a suitable mood to go with said such a lovely young sexy subject. Amanda even posed with me, polite and smiling despite the gun powder and my beard, sweat and stink, I think. Of course, this was after our Columbus Correspondent [Col. Cornett] and a member of the nearby 76th OVI had run over to pose with her too. Paul D., we have got to snail-mail her a couple of East Kentucky Magazines.
Yes, I have learned: Besides those typical repetitive [aka boring] reenactor pictures of old men, having fun in camp and with guns, I took some digital images of families, women, kids and animals, including cavalry horses. The Colonel and I passed out our Leatherwood Reenactment flyers and left them displayed on the long table under the big dining and pavilion tent. We were also talking about and promoting our favorite annual upcoming [October 23-26] event as we usually do. Of course, and as usual, we also received similar papers and invitations to attend similar events all over the nation.
Next weekend, the Independence Day/4th of July one, I have been invited, by Keith “Kacey” Crager and the 76th OVI, to participate with them in a Red White and Boom Parade in downtown Columbus, Ohio, followed by a Saturday fairground event at Hilliard; yet another new place that I have never been. Keith and the 76th OVI attend the annual Grove City/Fryer Park/Century Village encampment every May, giving me my first drill of the year. Kathy, Mrs. Crager, had stayed back home in Enon. Keith had set up their K&K Mercantile table and was selling some of his Civil War stuff to reenactors and visitors alike. He has a buyer for my formal dance-rank captain uniform that likewise shrunk up and got too tight, those pretty shiny brass buttons almost popping because of the fabric being stretched by my bulging muscles and firm flesh.
I related the obvious to them: At West Carrollton's annual Wilson Park 4th of July thing, I can wear sandals and shorts with sunglasses, and do likewise at the evening fireworks display on the levee along the bank of the Great Miami River, rather than march upon hot asphalt and cement while wearing brogans and a warm woolen Union-blue uniform with kepi and accoutrements [bayonet, cartridge and cap boxes, canteen and haversack], while carrying a 13-poung rifle. I mean, not to seem or sound lazy, but marching in such a parade would obviously be sort of crazy, during a sweltering-summer evening before the sun goes down downtown, because asphalt and concrete retain and release the heat of the day, by the way. But, Kacey said that I'd, uh...we'd be on TV, and that pretty [young OSU-student] women would be waving at us, and that, if I fell over with heatstroke[or a heart attack], they would no doubt run out to the street and cradle my head like a flock of lovely little Florence Nightingales [English Crimean War nurse]. I wonder if we will be allowed to shoot our loud black-powder fun guns into the air there, along the parade route, like members of the Harlan County Battalion and Caudill Confederates do during the annual Black Gold Parade in downtown Hazard, Kentucky?
No matter how cold or wet or warm, we all know that women cannot resist posing for and perform with men in uniforms, especially those pretty Union-blue ones. Besides, there are too many Oprah watchers at Wilson Park and on the levee, calling the cops and nervous about late-middle-aged men with cameras…as a few of them did a couple of years ago. The weekend following the Independence Day weekend, there is a big reenactment scheduled for Malta & McConnelsville, Ohio, Civil War Encampment Days, July 10, 11 and 12, 2009. I have seen the notices but have never been there before. It is going to start getting hot outside! So, Colonel Cornett, if you want to have your seat, you had better get it from Pete, because I am going to start exploring the thrift stores and flea markets once more.
Paul D., Colonel Cornett and I agree: WE CAN'T DO THIS EVERY WEEK! Although we are both retired and can no longer be fired. Private Whitey seems to miss us more than Nurse Sharon does when we go, like ya know. Private Whitey and I are friends now, but he always follows Colonel Cornett's orders, of course.
I think the Reynoldsburg reenactment could have been better with the Tomato Festival, except the weather could not have been much better if not wetter, as it had been in the past; it must have been a curse or a hint to separate them. Some of the 76th OVI members did not care for our new recruits using my cheap pawn-shop/gun-show Hawken rifles, cotton pants, purses and cheap kepi caps; but I believe that they could appreciate and see the method to my third-class soft-core powder-burner walk-on madness: to get us some athletic energetic enthusiastic young reenactor recruits, letting them start having fun with guns without spending any money or even cleaning them. We are also going to have to teach these new recruits how to have fun while cleaning [my] guns. Once they get the reenacting bug, it can be like a drug, even better and more fun than playing with their “Play Stations” or "Wii Wiis", you see. My camping comrades love it when I walk on and show up to prance, perform and pose in front of their campsites, after they have done all the work and have them set up for me and the public.
This nice married blonde-haired lady, from Louisville, Kentucky, was there with her 14-year-old son. He can play "Taps" and "Reveille" on his bugle. I told her that reenacting is a chance for us shy kids [like she and me] to make up for not participating and performing, during our younger school days, in events and plays. I told her that we can be anything or anyone we want to be at reenactments, playing any part we choose to and participating as much or as little as we like, girls and guys, whether it be as civilians or soldiers. “What are they gonna do, laugh at us?” Then, I gave this woman and her son a couple of Leatherwood flyers. I had to smile while imagining this kid blowing Reveille on his bugle, to awaken those first-class and hardcore campers up around Leatherwood Creek at five o'clock in the morning; a real funny joke to play on those folks, at least if I was still sleeping inside a Stuart Robinson Campus barracks room. The 76th OVI has a campfire-cooking bugler but he is not a Robert E. Lee Pruett ["From Here to Eternity"]; I somehow doubt that he is a Michael Jackson either, not that most of us normal folks really care or will stop to think about this thing of pop.
Reynoldsburg was a good one-day event and I am content. Earlier that morning, Private Harrison had pitched in with his new friends to make defensive zigzag barricades from long split fence rails, reminding them that he was not an engineer. This project was sort of like playing with "Lincoln Logs", only they were not as small, or making you parents mad at you like they had been when you left them on the floor and they stepped on them. With the fighting 76th, Private Harrison led the Union to victory just yesterday morning! The grassy battlefield was long, a line of crisscrossed split-rail fencing located at either end with the cannons.
After this first glorious victorious battle and lunch, there was a rifleman competition, between about four Union soldiers and one lonely rebel on the right flank next to the audience. Private Harrison is too old and too slow and did not want to work and sweat unnecessarily, unlike when he sanely and sensibly reenacts during the summer. Bob Mergel fired his double-barreled shotgun for fun during a dispute skit, a contrary young Confederette joining in. The rebel judge had to shoot and wound and finish her off with his pistol, the audience getting a kick out of this comical skit.
Unfortunately [yesterday afternoon], during the second and final Saturday battle, even the brave bold chivalrous courageous handsome heroic valiant Private Harrison could not lead his adopted unit to victory, nor prevent a Union defeat and retreat, because he was finally and fatally felled by rebels who yelled.
During that second and last Saturday battle, Bob Mergel had advanced in a rebel rank that halted to fire a volley into the 76th, wherefrom he had deliberately aimed at, shot and killed Private Harrison, who had thought that Bob had been at least a friendly acquaintance! Mergel was even laughing and smiling as he fired the fatal shot at close range. Private Harrison decided to take a heroic hit, despite his dramatic death scene being wasted so far away from the audience and their cameras that were far away on right Union flank. He told his comrades to let those tired sweaty rebels scream and yell, because they had to advance all the way across that long wide field of battle like a herd of gray-clad cattle to the slaughter. Well, it depends on how you imagine or look at it.
After resurrection and applause from the audience, there were short solemn closing ceremonies, followed by Confederate and Union soldiers marching back to camp in files of two, side by side, singing old Civil War songs…on faking it and humming along. Lunch was bratwurst or hot dog with soda pop and chips. Dinner was pizza and pop. Private Harrison also got a donut.
After yesterday afternoon’s Union defeat, the two Union doctors, Pete and Ron, joined the two Confederate doctors at the front of a big medical tent, the four of them with bloody aprons, standing along their side of a long table that had been set up under the shade of the canvas awning above. There they gave their medical attentions to a wounded young rebel woman, the one who had interfered with the rifleman competition. She had been wounded that very day, while wearing red-trimmed Confederate-artillery gray, now relaxing, smiling and making wisecracks while lying on her back, while these four doctors demonstrated and explained Civil War medical procedures to the attentive audience that had gathered around to listen, learn and take pictures and movies. They called Private Harrison “Matthew Brady”. Doctor Pete and Colonel Cornett had been captured but were willing to give aid and comfort to the enemy wounded too. Alas, this energetic funny young Confederette had to have her right leg amputated and bandaged, the hidden part below her knee going down through a hole that had been cut through the table.
With others, Doctor Cornett and performed with Doctor Pete at the Mansfield Civil War gun show. One of the Confederate doctors had been at the Sharon Woods Park Heritage Village Museum reenactment. The other Confederate doctor had been with Private Harrison at the recent LM&M Railroad train-robbery reenactment at Mason. At every encampment and reenactment, you see more and more familiar people and faces that you have seen at similar events and places, even if you cannot remember their units and names. Before leaving, I told Doctor Pete that I would give his regards to Fireman Fred at the Moron City Awful House, as Colonel Cornett left his little wooden chair there.
I have obviously copied and pasted this expanded email reply onto a blank “Word” page or two for you, even adding paragraphs and editing and enhancing it a little bit before I quit and send it away… without waiting for at least a day. Thank God and Bill Gates for spell-checking. I will also save this story into the Reynoldsburg picture folder after I download load them into this computer [from camera media storage] before downloading it all onto compact disks, for snail mailing at a later date. No, do not be impressed, just because I got Amanda Scott’s snail-mail address…not for me but for East Kentucky Magazine lovers who want to see her on or under the covers.
EKMBBC Captain Leon Harrison G.C.M.
EKM Buckeye Bureau Chief
EKM Buckeye Bureau/Harlan County Bn. Ohio Outpost
West Carrollton, Ohio
[Earlier]---- Colonel Ronald Cornett wrote:
General (Brother) Clay:
Today was an excellent outing at Reynoldsburg, maybe the best of the year thus far. Cappy/Pvt./Sgt. Harrison was at his best recruiting 3 troopers for the Union & always on focus with his camera. Now, Mergel had Grant & Lee on horseback & the crowd went nuts when these two rode all over the grounds. They ARE VERY INTERESTED in Leatherwood if a 'bounty' is paid for their travel! I must wait until they contact me by post to express their 'fee' & I will telegraph you immediately. Yes, Lee is on a white horse & both actually look the part of their respective portrayals. Leon has your military gift from Sharon & I, & hopefully you shall receive said item from Leon by Black & Gold Day.
Brother/Colonel Ron
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"Harlan County Battalion Dispatch or EKM story?"