Walkabout, a Few Days Worth
Apr. 15th, 2009 05:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthWhen we last left our traveler, I was getting ready to explore Winchester. Due to a variety of reasons, I haven't updated since then, but all is well more or less, though there has been at least one adventure. I've lost track of what number day I'm on, but it doesn't matter much...
There wasn't much to that day. After a lot on my mind the previous day, it was raining again on Saturday, and I decided to do not much but drive. My only stop was at a small museum in Winchester - the Old Court House Civil War Museum. This was a very different sort of place than the others I've visited (more in line with the random small Civil War museums I talked about, but nicer than the average one of those) and had a strange but not-uninteresting collection. It was mostly made of scavenged items, and in small quantities it would not have been interesting, but in bulk it was fascinating - like, 20 buttons all used by NYS, all basically the same but slightly different because they were made by different companies. They also had a large collection of cannon shells of different sizes and shapes.
The neatest thing, though, was the building itself. Used as a hospital and containment facility for prisoners during the war, by both the Union and Confederacy because Winchester kept changing hands, they had removed 150 years of crap from the walls only to find that there was graffiti made by those who were there. It was really neat.
Other than that, I didn't do much; I drove to an exit in PA called Jonestown and spent the night.
I drove steadily and reached Dad's a few minutes before I was expected. I'd talk about Sunday, but in truth there's little to say. I spent the day relaxing at dad's; went for a walk with him and Paula, hung out with the dog, ate a tasty Easter dinner, talked with dad a whole lot and Paula a little less, and read.
I did have the funny experience of realizing that I've come full circle on a couple things. As a child, I developed interests in a small list of things, most of which I'm now interested in again: collecting baseball cards and stamps (I mostly liked collecting the cards, which is more a sign of how much I like collecting things than a sign of how much I liked baseball), science (specifically paleontology, later ecology, then marine biology, then astronomy - in succession, never simultaneous), crafts (taught by my mother, and by crafts I mean mostly thread crafts, sewing and knitting and such), and history (which is to say, the Civil War). I had other interests of course, especially as I got older - fantasy novels, anime, Star Wars, Star Trek, the Beatles, all make an appearance by the time I'm in middle school/late elementary school, but in elementary school, the list was simply paleontology, crafts, history.
Now, looking at that list, I've got one interest from my mom (crafts), one I came up with on my own (science), one from my dad (history), and one joint - for my mom encouraged the stamp and my dad the baseball cards.
I find that I've come back to most of these things (except the stamps, which is mostly because collecting stamps is time consuming and expensive; I suspect if I actually sat down and looked through my old collection, I'd find myself tempted). The baseball cards have transmuted into full-blown baseball, the Civil War remains, and the science has been making a strong comeback. With this in mind, it was fun and rather nostalgic to spend a great deal of the time at my dad's chatting about the Civil War. He knows SO MUCH MORE than I do, mostly because he's had 50+ years to learn it (his 68th birthday is tomorrow), but also because I've forgotten most of what I ever knew, for I remained interested until about 10 years ago, and then got distracted by other things (first anime, then gaming; first high school, then college; etc.) and made space in my brain. Thus, I find that I have this vague sense that I know more than I think I do, but it's completely vaporous - when I reach for a fact in that ancient suppository of knowledge, it vanishes before I can get hold of it. Thus, all too often, I had to say....no, I don't remember! - but he always did. For someone who has told me his whole life he has a lousy memory, he has an amazing capacity for remembering how things went and who was involved - something I've no knack for; I tend to tell such things as, "it went basically like this, and I'm pretty sure these people were involved..." until I get to the point that I know it very well, and even then I often get details wrong.
All in all, it brought me back to being 13 and trading Civil War trivia at Pizza Hut...except that I had much less trivia than I used to.
It also tied in to my attempts to understand the Civil War as an adult rather than a child. But I've already talked about that in my stuff about hero worship and the like (at least I think I did...) and am not going there again.
On Monday night, of course, was the game! Opening night, Citifield, Mets v. Padres!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ultima_baka wanted to get there a couple hours early and wander the shiny new stadium, and with that in mind, dad and I left his place at 3 in the afternoon to make the approximately 2 hour trip (less if all goes well), to meet G at 5:30. We made two stops - one for gas and the other at Picatinny, where I needed to close an old bank account (I know have a check that will go immediately into a CD when I get home, the money I think of as my nest egg and future core of a deposit for a house). This took approximately 10 minutes. But as we approached the city at about 4:45, we hit dead-stopped traffic about 10 minutes from the GWB, and everything went to hell.
It took 45 minutes to get to the bridge, guaranteeing that we'd be late - that's 45 minutes to cross approximately 4 miles - maybe less. I hate driving in traffic, but I did my best, and ultimately managed to save a little time over how it might have been. On the way, we passed at least two other people clearly going to the game, which was pretty funny.
Things were free and clear as we took the Major Deegan to Triboro (wait, RFK) Bridge onto Grand Central Parkway, and we approached LaGuardia at about 5:45. And then everything went to someplace worse than hell, as we got within sight of the stadium and then proceeded to be in stop and go - but primarily stop - traffic for the next hour and change. I could have walked to the stadium in about 20 minutes from the point where this started, but no one knew where to go, and no one knew what to do, and everyone wanted to park. The worst part was the people who needed reassurance - concerned that they were in the wrong place or the wrong line, they'd stop and ask EVERY COP OR PARKS DEPARTMENT PERSON THEY SAW what was going on. In so doing, they of course forced all of the traffic behind them to a dead stop. Then, once they'd had a 30 second or more conversation to ease their mind, they'd drive on...AND THEN THE NEXT PERSON WOULD DO IT. The people I hated most DID THIS EVERY TIME THERE WAS A COP. One bitch in front of my pissed me off so badly that when she went to stop for a third time I honked at her.
Personally? I stopped at ONE cop, got told to go to Flushing Meadow Park lot E or F, and then did nothing but try to get to those lots (not that I actually knew where they were, but the line of stopped traffic seemed to be going in the right direction) for the next almost hour and a half. Meanwhile, people are acting like dicks because obviously their need to get to the game was greater than that of everyone around them, and G was sending me increasingly irate text messages (I don't blame him, I was upset to, and he had it worse, standing just outside the stadium waiting for me, holding tickets, it must have been torture). This hit one of my irrational problems square - the same one triggered by my inauguration experience - I'm constitutionally incapable of taking it easy and accepting that this is how things are and I can't help it, but of course...this is how things are and I can't help it!...so I get increasingly irate and frazzled and helpless feeling, which then cycles it to be worse. I'm doing better at this, though, and managed to keep myself relatively calm. Dad and I even flipped on WFAN (the radio station) and listened to the intro stuff, because what else could we do? It was 5:45 when we arrived, and the opening stuff began at 6:30, with me still squarely in traffic and no end in sight - though it was of course made worse by the occasional very promising moment when it seemed things were about to be okay, but then weren't.
In the end, we parked at about 10 after 7, or just as the first pitch was being thrown. In all, our parking spot that had taken so long to reach was less than a 10 minute walk to the stadium, right by the US Open, and we hustled and made it just as the top of the first inning ended. We didn't even miss the first Mets at bat at the new stadium - but we did miss the first home run by a visiting team, which if I've understood the comments alluding to it correctly, was hit off the very first pitch thrown by Pelfrey. Even if that's not right, though, it was certainly in the first inning.
After that, things got better. G was of course pissed, and I was pissed back (I'd done everything I could to get there early, I could not have predicted that it would take 4 hours to make a 105 minute trip), but we both managed to keep pretty cool and not rip each others heads off, and after about an inning we settled in together to hope desperately that the Mets would win. After all, I pointed out, we were still THERE, and in 50 years we'd get to bore our grandchildren to death...
"You know, Jimmy, I was at the very first game at this stadium, I was sitting up there with your grandfather and my friend, and it was amazing, this is what happened..."
"I know what happened, grandma, you've told me this story every time we come to the stadium..."
And then you get to tell it anyway! I'll be boring people to tears with this story for years to come! And that just makes it worth it. (Dad added to this theory of things when he pointed out that the simple fact that we sat in 2+ hours of traffic to get to the game only enhances the story - hence why you all had to read through a long description of my traffic woes! Blame him, not me.) ;)
It was an okay game, in all, though we didn't win. The crowd went NUTS when Wright hit his homerun, the first Mets homerun in the stadium, and I was satisfied because I was wearing the right (Wright) jersey. We lost on a lame play, but I guess it happens, and either way....we were there. :)
After the game, G and his dad had to head out immediately, but in an effort to avoid sitting in EVEN MORE TRAFFIC, dad and I decided to wander around the new stadium and explore. This we did for about 45 minutes (until they chased us out, basically) and I must say I really like it. True to advertising, it's possible to see the field from basically anywhere, even standing in line, and for the first time ever I was in a place where there was a huge line for the mens room and and none for the ladies. (The men I talked to didn't seem to appreciate this nearly as much as I did. ;) ) People were excited (though the crowd was shockingly dead for most of the game considering how many of us were there...)
Though I just had a funny thought - reading all this Civil War stuff, routinely huge numbers of people in one army are thrown around - 15,000 men charged; 135,000 men in the army; etc. and I've been trying to picture that many men, and I just realized I have a point of reference - there were about 45,000 people at the baseball game. God, 135,000 is a lot...
And we avoided the traffic on the way home.
Actually, there's not much to say about Tuesday. I hung out at dad's in the morning and then got a very nice lunch with him and Paula, and then drove down to Frederick, MD, and that's basically it. I seriously considered just going home, but the more I thought about it, the more it didn't seem like the thing to do, so I decided to go with the original plan, and swing into MD and VA to see the battlefields out there I hadn't seen. The first destination? Monocacy. I'd never even heard of Monocacy, but I spotted it on the map, and asked dad, and he says to me, "remember when Early invaded the North?" seeing my look, he added, "in 1864?" Now I remembered, but still no glimmer of Monocacy - "well, that's where the Union slowed him down a day."
Wednesday was another very rainy day, and I headed out to the Monocacy battlefield, wondering if I was wasting my time.
A short history of Monocacy: In early summer, 1864, things were looking grim for the Confederacy. Grant was pushing Lee hard in Virginia, and Lee desperately needed the pressure let up. He realized a critical thing, though: In order to grow his army, Grant had grabbed every able bodied man he could find, including the vast majority of the almost 60,000 men who, up to then, had done nothing except guard Washington DC. As a result, the capitol was almost defenseless, and if it could be taken, well, that would change everything. With this in mind, Lee sent one of his divisions under Jubal Early up to swing north and then east into the Yankee city. Even just 15,000 could do it, if they moved fast enough.
The Union got wind of this almost immediately, of course, and set about to reinforce the capitol, but just as Early had to move fast, the Union had to somehow move even faster, but with less notice. They began to load soldiers into transports, but they needed time.
In Baltimore, General Lew Wallace (who, later in life, wrote Ben Hur) gathered up his small force, then gathered up as much local homeguard and militia as he could find, and took about 5000 men with him to try to stop Early's 15,000 men. This 5,000 was reinforced by a brigade of veterans from Grant who managed to make it in time - so about 6,000. They made a stand at the Monocacy river crossing (primarily, the B & O Railroad bridge), which is just outside of Frederick, to delay them as much as possible.
Of course they got their butts kicked, but the point is that they got their butts kicked valiantly. Early was approaching from the North; at one point, troops on the north side of the river, pinned in by Early, burned the bridge behind them - thus cutting off their own avenue of retreat - rather than allow the Confederates to cross. All in all, there was lots of heroics, and when Wallace finally pulled back, he'd bought the Union a day. Early pressed on, and literally just as he got within sight of Washington, Grant's veterans marched into the trenches - and thus, the capitol, and possibly the war, were saved.
However, this might not have made for a national park, but for the influence of a judge in MD, who, as a 6 year old, watched the battle from the basement of his families farm, which was located smack dab in the middle of the Union line when the line crumbled (And thus the farm was overrun by the Confederates).
It made for a funny experience, because plenty of other battlefields that are of similar size and relatively similar importance have not been made into National Parks, but this one was. The rain made it hard to really visit, unfortunately - the main parts of the battlefield are accessible only by foot - but though I did one walk in the rain, I couldn't bring myself to do more than that one, so I didn't see much. I figure it's a reason to go back; it's a pretty spot, far enough from Frederick to feel slightly isolated, looking out over the Monocacy river...I'll walk it some other time.
I spent a lot of time considering what to do next. I wanted to go to Manasses, but not in the rain, and I didn't want to have to keep switching hotels, so I sat down with a map, and finally decided that if I stayed outside of Fredericksburg, I could be reasonably well assured of not having to switch hotels for a few days. Within about 30 mile radius of that city, there are no less than 5 major battlefields (Chancellorsville and Wilderness, which would overlap if the Parks department owned all the land, but as it is they border each other; Fredericksburg, at which there were actually two battles; Spotsylvania Court House; and Manasses, which might be slightly farther than 30 miles); extend the radius to 60 miles, and you can add in Monocacy itself, Cold Harbor, Brandy Station (which isn't a terribly important battle, but which is marked on my map nonetheless...), Ball's Bluff, and, at the extreme, at about 70 miles (I'm guessing) is Petersburg (which is south of Richmond...). Thus, I figured that from here I could definitely find enough to do to kill the rest of the time I've got.
Yesterday, I went to Chancellorsville battlefield, and got a bit of a funny surprise: basically everything that I remember is from here. I walked up to the visitor's center and thought, "gee, I remember this," I walked around the battlefield and thought, "hey, I thought this was at Wilderness!" and generally all of it was very familiar feeling, with a few glaring exceptions.
First, the road leading there, 3 - I have no memory of it being a suburban wasteland. I don't mean that it's desolated. No, I mean that it is the most horrible, built up, strip-mall laden place I've EVER SEEN. It's disgusting (though pathetically helpful to me, since it means I have no trouble finding the things I need) - across from my hotel is at least a square mile of nothing but huge chain stores and restaurants. And no, I'm no exaggerating that distance. This continues until shockingly close to the battlefield (about a mile and a half away) and has completely overrun Salem's Church, which is an important site in it's own right.
Second, the devastation of the forest. Apparently, a few years ago there was a major storm (a hurricane? it's not clear to me) that ripped big swathes of the forest to pieces. The parks department doesn't have the money to clear the land, and the result is that, particularly on the eastern end of the battlefield, there's hardly a tree older than about 10 to be seen, and the entire forest floor is so covered in fallen trees that one could walk on them without touching the ground. It was very sad to see. Of course, the distinctive thing about the Chancellorsville and Wilderness battlefields is there in the name to be seen: this is the Wilderness, second growth forest and the thicket beneath, which made it utterly unsuited for the battles that took place. And that, I suppose, leads to a short description of the battle, and the promise I made some time ago now that I would describe the horrible thing that happened here. (cause I know you all want to know about horrible things...)
Lee maintained a strong position at Fredericksburg after the battle their in December of 1862. Burnside had botched the battle so badly that he was removed from command, and in his place, Lincoln appointed Joe Hooker, who was known as a fighter. Hooker proposed that rather than attack Fredericksburg (which was tantamount to suicide) he would instead feint towards the town with one Corps of his army, and move the rest of his army around to the west and threaten Lee's flank. This was down with great expediency, but Lee caught wind of it just in time, and so he also split his army, leaving a skeleton force in the trenches at Fredericksburg and marching the rest of his army west. He was badly outnumbered - almost 2 to 1 - but he made up for it in daring, and Hooker helped by being exceptionally cautious after his initial advance.
I won't go into the details - mostly because it's a shockingly complicated affair - but Lee, confronting Hooker, decided to split his army AGAIN, sending the bulk of it to flank the Union position. On May 2nd (or 3rd? I'm not positive and don't feel like looking it up right now), 1863, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, storming into the Union's extreme right and starting a rout that nearly swept the whole of the Federal force. Unfortunately, the price was high: Jackson had led this charge, and that evening, as he was scouting for a way to make the most of it the next day, he was shot three times by his own men while returning to his lines. It cost him his arm immediately, and, within 10 days, his life, as he caught pneumonia and died. This was a severe and irreplaceable loss for Lee, and some think it cost the South the war. (I think things are never that simple and we'll never know how things might have been different so it's not really worth theorizing...Jackson wasn't always that great...)
The battle was engaged in full swing the next day, but Hooker was beat before it began; he insisted on taking the defensive despite his numerical advantage, and was so convinced he'd be swamped that he kept two entire corps out of the battle as reserves - with the result that, on the field, he was actually out numbered. (or close to it, I'm not positive). He pulled back, and pulled back, and there was fierce fighting on the 4th.
The pressure was relieved on the 5th, though. The Corps placed in front of Fredericksburg by Hooker had broken through the skeletal Confederate defense, and had taken the heights, and were now pushing in on Lee's flanks. Lee detached most of his army to meet this threat, and if Hooker would have only attacked, could easily have demolished what was in front of him. Instead, he stopped and caught his breath, and Lee drove back the flank attack (which he outnumbered) and prepared to resume fighting with Hooker...who decided to retreat.
So all in all, after a great start, it was a complete debacle; most consider it to be Lee's greatest victory.
Early on in this trip, I commented that Gettysburg was different than any other battlefield. Then, I completely crippled this comment when I then went to three other battlefields which, if not as carpeted in monuments, were still pretty heavily built up with signs and such. When I made that comment, I was clearly remembering Chancellorsville.
It's a pretty hard battle to follow anyway, because the positions of each army keep changing, and because the terrain is, as described, a Wilderness. However, to make it harder to envision the battle, there's hardly a marker or monument to be seen (I saw only one monument on the whole battlefield, plus a marker which showed where Lee's HQ was) and all through the thick woods, only occasional signs tell you anything, and little of value (this was Jackson's line, but no talk of which day, which brigades, or what they did, for example). On the flip side, the battlefield (as much of it as could be preserved, anyway) is very much as it was: still second growth forest, still thick undergrowth, and still the original trenches that were built by the soldiers - which is pretty remarkable, when you get right down to it; the whole forest is filled with lines of trenches, some shallow, some deep (some maintained, and some not) but all clearly made by the hands of man. At once point, there's even an original strip of fencing. (at another point, the sign makes it clear that unlike all those other trenches, this one trench that it marks was actually dug as part of the Wilderness battle, not Chancellorsville)
It's a very different experience, all in all, and much more challenging. I'll talk about Wilderness later - that's today's destination, once I stop writing - but though it took place on basically the same ground, it is a different battle, fought in 1864).
Oh, and I still haven't told the horrible thing. Set the scene in your mind...rows of men dug in, thrashing through the underbrush. Often, they don't know who is friend or foe, and open fire indiscriminately (hence how Jackson got shot by his own men). It gets dark early, and stays dark late, first because of the underbrush and trees, later because of the smoke. As the fighting goes into the night, there's nothing to see in the darkness except for the muzzle flashes and cannon flashes, brief bursts of flame followed by silence and darkness once more. The yells of the fighting men, sounds of the forest twigs breaking and trees shattering, and the screams of the wounded fill the air.
Wait, flame? Flame in the second growth forest? Sound like trouble? It was. At both battles, unknown numbers of wounded men were burned to death, unable to escape as the woods caught fire. It's one of the most awful things that happened in the war. When Wilderness was fought a year later, the charred bones were still there to be seen - except that the second battle was fought in an even more thickly forested area, so the same thing happened, only worse.
It makes me shudder just thinking about it. What awful things we do to each other...and this one largely unintentional, which I think might only make it worse...
Right. On to better things.
I wanted to get this post up and updated, because I expect to have a lot to say today. It's a big anniversary for me, and I've been thinking about it a lot this past week, but rather than right about it in bits and pieces, I thought I'd just tackle it once. But I'll stay cryptic for now, and right about it later or tomorrow morning.
On to Wilderness! :)
There wasn't much to that day. After a lot on my mind the previous day, it was raining again on Saturday, and I decided to do not much but drive. My only stop was at a small museum in Winchester - the Old Court House Civil War Museum. This was a very different sort of place than the others I've visited (more in line with the random small Civil War museums I talked about, but nicer than the average one of those) and had a strange but not-uninteresting collection. It was mostly made of scavenged items, and in small quantities it would not have been interesting, but in bulk it was fascinating - like, 20 buttons all used by NYS, all basically the same but slightly different because they were made by different companies. They also had a large collection of cannon shells of different sizes and shapes.
The neatest thing, though, was the building itself. Used as a hospital and containment facility for prisoners during the war, by both the Union and Confederacy because Winchester kept changing hands, they had removed 150 years of crap from the walls only to find that there was graffiti made by those who were there. It was really neat.
Other than that, I didn't do much; I drove to an exit in PA called Jonestown and spent the night.
I drove steadily and reached Dad's a few minutes before I was expected. I'd talk about Sunday, but in truth there's little to say. I spent the day relaxing at dad's; went for a walk with him and Paula, hung out with the dog, ate a tasty Easter dinner, talked with dad a whole lot and Paula a little less, and read.
I did have the funny experience of realizing that I've come full circle on a couple things. As a child, I developed interests in a small list of things, most of which I'm now interested in again: collecting baseball cards and stamps (I mostly liked collecting the cards, which is more a sign of how much I like collecting things than a sign of how much I liked baseball), science (specifically paleontology, later ecology, then marine biology, then astronomy - in succession, never simultaneous), crafts (taught by my mother, and by crafts I mean mostly thread crafts, sewing and knitting and such), and history (which is to say, the Civil War). I had other interests of course, especially as I got older - fantasy novels, anime, Star Wars, Star Trek, the Beatles, all make an appearance by the time I'm in middle school/late elementary school, but in elementary school, the list was simply paleontology, crafts, history.
Now, looking at that list, I've got one interest from my mom (crafts), one I came up with on my own (science), one from my dad (history), and one joint - for my mom encouraged the stamp and my dad the baseball cards.
I find that I've come back to most of these things (except the stamps, which is mostly because collecting stamps is time consuming and expensive; I suspect if I actually sat down and looked through my old collection, I'd find myself tempted). The baseball cards have transmuted into full-blown baseball, the Civil War remains, and the science has been making a strong comeback. With this in mind, it was fun and rather nostalgic to spend a great deal of the time at my dad's chatting about the Civil War. He knows SO MUCH MORE than I do, mostly because he's had 50+ years to learn it (his 68th birthday is tomorrow), but also because I've forgotten most of what I ever knew, for I remained interested until about 10 years ago, and then got distracted by other things (first anime, then gaming; first high school, then college; etc.) and made space in my brain. Thus, I find that I have this vague sense that I know more than I think I do, but it's completely vaporous - when I reach for a fact in that ancient suppository of knowledge, it vanishes before I can get hold of it. Thus, all too often, I had to say....no, I don't remember! - but he always did. For someone who has told me his whole life he has a lousy memory, he has an amazing capacity for remembering how things went and who was involved - something I've no knack for; I tend to tell such things as, "it went basically like this, and I'm pretty sure these people were involved..." until I get to the point that I know it very well, and even then I often get details wrong.
All in all, it brought me back to being 13 and trading Civil War trivia at Pizza Hut...except that I had much less trivia than I used to.
It also tied in to my attempts to understand the Civil War as an adult rather than a child. But I've already talked about that in my stuff about hero worship and the like (at least I think I did...) and am not going there again.
On Monday night, of course, was the game! Opening night, Citifield, Mets v. Padres!
ultima_baka wanted to get there a couple hours early and wander the shiny new stadium, and with that in mind, dad and I left his place at 3 in the afternoon to make the approximately 2 hour trip (less if all goes well), to meet G at 5:30. We made two stops - one for gas and the other at Picatinny, where I needed to close an old bank account (I know have a check that will go immediately into a CD when I get home, the money I think of as my nest egg and future core of a deposit for a house). This took approximately 10 minutes. But as we approached the city at about 4:45, we hit dead-stopped traffic about 10 minutes from the GWB, and everything went to hell.It took 45 minutes to get to the bridge, guaranteeing that we'd be late - that's 45 minutes to cross approximately 4 miles - maybe less. I hate driving in traffic, but I did my best, and ultimately managed to save a little time over how it might have been. On the way, we passed at least two other people clearly going to the game, which was pretty funny.
Things were free and clear as we took the Major Deegan to Triboro (wait, RFK) Bridge onto Grand Central Parkway, and we approached LaGuardia at about 5:45. And then everything went to someplace worse than hell, as we got within sight of the stadium and then proceeded to be in stop and go - but primarily stop - traffic for the next hour and change. I could have walked to the stadium in about 20 minutes from the point where this started, but no one knew where to go, and no one knew what to do, and everyone wanted to park. The worst part was the people who needed reassurance - concerned that they were in the wrong place or the wrong line, they'd stop and ask EVERY COP OR PARKS DEPARTMENT PERSON THEY SAW what was going on. In so doing, they of course forced all of the traffic behind them to a dead stop. Then, once they'd had a 30 second or more conversation to ease their mind, they'd drive on...AND THEN THE NEXT PERSON WOULD DO IT. The people I hated most DID THIS EVERY TIME THERE WAS A COP. One bitch in front of my pissed me off so badly that when she went to stop for a third time I honked at her.
Personally? I stopped at ONE cop, got told to go to Flushing Meadow Park lot E or F, and then did nothing but try to get to those lots (not that I actually knew where they were, but the line of stopped traffic seemed to be going in the right direction) for the next almost hour and a half. Meanwhile, people are acting like dicks because obviously their need to get to the game was greater than that of everyone around them, and G was sending me increasingly irate text messages (I don't blame him, I was upset to, and he had it worse, standing just outside the stadium waiting for me, holding tickets, it must have been torture). This hit one of my irrational problems square - the same one triggered by my inauguration experience - I'm constitutionally incapable of taking it easy and accepting that this is how things are and I can't help it, but of course...this is how things are and I can't help it!...so I get increasingly irate and frazzled and helpless feeling, which then cycles it to be worse. I'm doing better at this, though, and managed to keep myself relatively calm. Dad and I even flipped on WFAN (the radio station) and listened to the intro stuff, because what else could we do? It was 5:45 when we arrived, and the opening stuff began at 6:30, with me still squarely in traffic and no end in sight - though it was of course made worse by the occasional very promising moment when it seemed things were about to be okay, but then weren't.
In the end, we parked at about 10 after 7, or just as the first pitch was being thrown. In all, our parking spot that had taken so long to reach was less than a 10 minute walk to the stadium, right by the US Open, and we hustled and made it just as the top of the first inning ended. We didn't even miss the first Mets at bat at the new stadium - but we did miss the first home run by a visiting team, which if I've understood the comments alluding to it correctly, was hit off the very first pitch thrown by Pelfrey. Even if that's not right, though, it was certainly in the first inning.
After that, things got better. G was of course pissed, and I was pissed back (I'd done everything I could to get there early, I could not have predicted that it would take 4 hours to make a 105 minute trip), but we both managed to keep pretty cool and not rip each others heads off, and after about an inning we settled in together to hope desperately that the Mets would win. After all, I pointed out, we were still THERE, and in 50 years we'd get to bore our grandchildren to death...
"You know, Jimmy, I was at the very first game at this stadium, I was sitting up there with your grandfather and my friend, and it was amazing, this is what happened..."
"I know what happened, grandma, you've told me this story every time we come to the stadium..."
And then you get to tell it anyway! I'll be boring people to tears with this story for years to come! And that just makes it worth it. (Dad added to this theory of things when he pointed out that the simple fact that we sat in 2+ hours of traffic to get to the game only enhances the story - hence why you all had to read through a long description of my traffic woes! Blame him, not me.) ;)
It was an okay game, in all, though we didn't win. The crowd went NUTS when Wright hit his homerun, the first Mets homerun in the stadium, and I was satisfied because I was wearing the right (Wright) jersey. We lost on a lame play, but I guess it happens, and either way....we were there. :)
After the game, G and his dad had to head out immediately, but in an effort to avoid sitting in EVEN MORE TRAFFIC, dad and I decided to wander around the new stadium and explore. This we did for about 45 minutes (until they chased us out, basically) and I must say I really like it. True to advertising, it's possible to see the field from basically anywhere, even standing in line, and for the first time ever I was in a place where there was a huge line for the mens room and and none for the ladies. (The men I talked to didn't seem to appreciate this nearly as much as I did. ;) ) People were excited (though the crowd was shockingly dead for most of the game considering how many of us were there...)
Though I just had a funny thought - reading all this Civil War stuff, routinely huge numbers of people in one army are thrown around - 15,000 men charged; 135,000 men in the army; etc. and I've been trying to picture that many men, and I just realized I have a point of reference - there were about 45,000 people at the baseball game. God, 135,000 is a lot...
And we avoided the traffic on the way home.
Actually, there's not much to say about Tuesday. I hung out at dad's in the morning and then got a very nice lunch with him and Paula, and then drove down to Frederick, MD, and that's basically it. I seriously considered just going home, but the more I thought about it, the more it didn't seem like the thing to do, so I decided to go with the original plan, and swing into MD and VA to see the battlefields out there I hadn't seen. The first destination? Monocacy. I'd never even heard of Monocacy, but I spotted it on the map, and asked dad, and he says to me, "remember when Early invaded the North?" seeing my look, he added, "in 1864?" Now I remembered, but still no glimmer of Monocacy - "well, that's where the Union slowed him down a day."
Wednesday was another very rainy day, and I headed out to the Monocacy battlefield, wondering if I was wasting my time.
A short history of Monocacy: In early summer, 1864, things were looking grim for the Confederacy. Grant was pushing Lee hard in Virginia, and Lee desperately needed the pressure let up. He realized a critical thing, though: In order to grow his army, Grant had grabbed every able bodied man he could find, including the vast majority of the almost 60,000 men who, up to then, had done nothing except guard Washington DC. As a result, the capitol was almost defenseless, and if it could be taken, well, that would change everything. With this in mind, Lee sent one of his divisions under Jubal Early up to swing north and then east into the Yankee city. Even just 15,000 could do it, if they moved fast enough.
The Union got wind of this almost immediately, of course, and set about to reinforce the capitol, but just as Early had to move fast, the Union had to somehow move even faster, but with less notice. They began to load soldiers into transports, but they needed time.
In Baltimore, General Lew Wallace (who, later in life, wrote Ben Hur) gathered up his small force, then gathered up as much local homeguard and militia as he could find, and took about 5000 men with him to try to stop Early's 15,000 men. This 5,000 was reinforced by a brigade of veterans from Grant who managed to make it in time - so about 6,000. They made a stand at the Monocacy river crossing (primarily, the B & O Railroad bridge), which is just outside of Frederick, to delay them as much as possible.
Of course they got their butts kicked, but the point is that they got their butts kicked valiantly. Early was approaching from the North; at one point, troops on the north side of the river, pinned in by Early, burned the bridge behind them - thus cutting off their own avenue of retreat - rather than allow the Confederates to cross. All in all, there was lots of heroics, and when Wallace finally pulled back, he'd bought the Union a day. Early pressed on, and literally just as he got within sight of Washington, Grant's veterans marched into the trenches - and thus, the capitol, and possibly the war, were saved.
However, this might not have made for a national park, but for the influence of a judge in MD, who, as a 6 year old, watched the battle from the basement of his families farm, which was located smack dab in the middle of the Union line when the line crumbled (And thus the farm was overrun by the Confederates).
It made for a funny experience, because plenty of other battlefields that are of similar size and relatively similar importance have not been made into National Parks, but this one was. The rain made it hard to really visit, unfortunately - the main parts of the battlefield are accessible only by foot - but though I did one walk in the rain, I couldn't bring myself to do more than that one, so I didn't see much. I figure it's a reason to go back; it's a pretty spot, far enough from Frederick to feel slightly isolated, looking out over the Monocacy river...I'll walk it some other time.
I spent a lot of time considering what to do next. I wanted to go to Manasses, but not in the rain, and I didn't want to have to keep switching hotels, so I sat down with a map, and finally decided that if I stayed outside of Fredericksburg, I could be reasonably well assured of not having to switch hotels for a few days. Within about 30 mile radius of that city, there are no less than 5 major battlefields (Chancellorsville and Wilderness, which would overlap if the Parks department owned all the land, but as it is they border each other; Fredericksburg, at which there were actually two battles; Spotsylvania Court House; and Manasses, which might be slightly farther than 30 miles); extend the radius to 60 miles, and you can add in Monocacy itself, Cold Harbor, Brandy Station (which isn't a terribly important battle, but which is marked on my map nonetheless...), Ball's Bluff, and, at the extreme, at about 70 miles (I'm guessing) is Petersburg (which is south of Richmond...). Thus, I figured that from here I could definitely find enough to do to kill the rest of the time I've got.
Yesterday, I went to Chancellorsville battlefield, and got a bit of a funny surprise: basically everything that I remember is from here. I walked up to the visitor's center and thought, "gee, I remember this," I walked around the battlefield and thought, "hey, I thought this was at Wilderness!" and generally all of it was very familiar feeling, with a few glaring exceptions.
First, the road leading there, 3 - I have no memory of it being a suburban wasteland. I don't mean that it's desolated. No, I mean that it is the most horrible, built up, strip-mall laden place I've EVER SEEN. It's disgusting (though pathetically helpful to me, since it means I have no trouble finding the things I need) - across from my hotel is at least a square mile of nothing but huge chain stores and restaurants. And no, I'm no exaggerating that distance. This continues until shockingly close to the battlefield (about a mile and a half away) and has completely overrun Salem's Church, which is an important site in it's own right.
Second, the devastation of the forest. Apparently, a few years ago there was a major storm (a hurricane? it's not clear to me) that ripped big swathes of the forest to pieces. The parks department doesn't have the money to clear the land, and the result is that, particularly on the eastern end of the battlefield, there's hardly a tree older than about 10 to be seen, and the entire forest floor is so covered in fallen trees that one could walk on them without touching the ground. It was very sad to see. Of course, the distinctive thing about the Chancellorsville and Wilderness battlefields is there in the name to be seen: this is the Wilderness, second growth forest and the thicket beneath, which made it utterly unsuited for the battles that took place. And that, I suppose, leads to a short description of the battle, and the promise I made some time ago now that I would describe the horrible thing that happened here. (cause I know you all want to know about horrible things...)
Lee maintained a strong position at Fredericksburg after the battle their in December of 1862. Burnside had botched the battle so badly that he was removed from command, and in his place, Lincoln appointed Joe Hooker, who was known as a fighter. Hooker proposed that rather than attack Fredericksburg (which was tantamount to suicide) he would instead feint towards the town with one Corps of his army, and move the rest of his army around to the west and threaten Lee's flank. This was down with great expediency, but Lee caught wind of it just in time, and so he also split his army, leaving a skeleton force in the trenches at Fredericksburg and marching the rest of his army west. He was badly outnumbered - almost 2 to 1 - but he made up for it in daring, and Hooker helped by being exceptionally cautious after his initial advance.
I won't go into the details - mostly because it's a shockingly complicated affair - but Lee, confronting Hooker, decided to split his army AGAIN, sending the bulk of it to flank the Union position. On May 2nd (or 3rd? I'm not positive and don't feel like looking it up right now), 1863, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, storming into the Union's extreme right and starting a rout that nearly swept the whole of the Federal force. Unfortunately, the price was high: Jackson had led this charge, and that evening, as he was scouting for a way to make the most of it the next day, he was shot three times by his own men while returning to his lines. It cost him his arm immediately, and, within 10 days, his life, as he caught pneumonia and died. This was a severe and irreplaceable loss for Lee, and some think it cost the South the war. (I think things are never that simple and we'll never know how things might have been different so it's not really worth theorizing...Jackson wasn't always that great...)
The battle was engaged in full swing the next day, but Hooker was beat before it began; he insisted on taking the defensive despite his numerical advantage, and was so convinced he'd be swamped that he kept two entire corps out of the battle as reserves - with the result that, on the field, he was actually out numbered. (or close to it, I'm not positive). He pulled back, and pulled back, and there was fierce fighting on the 4th.
The pressure was relieved on the 5th, though. The Corps placed in front of Fredericksburg by Hooker had broken through the skeletal Confederate defense, and had taken the heights, and were now pushing in on Lee's flanks. Lee detached most of his army to meet this threat, and if Hooker would have only attacked, could easily have demolished what was in front of him. Instead, he stopped and caught his breath, and Lee drove back the flank attack (which he outnumbered) and prepared to resume fighting with Hooker...who decided to retreat.
So all in all, after a great start, it was a complete debacle; most consider it to be Lee's greatest victory.
Early on in this trip, I commented that Gettysburg was different than any other battlefield. Then, I completely crippled this comment when I then went to three other battlefields which, if not as carpeted in monuments, were still pretty heavily built up with signs and such. When I made that comment, I was clearly remembering Chancellorsville.
It's a pretty hard battle to follow anyway, because the positions of each army keep changing, and because the terrain is, as described, a Wilderness. However, to make it harder to envision the battle, there's hardly a marker or monument to be seen (I saw only one monument on the whole battlefield, plus a marker which showed where Lee's HQ was) and all through the thick woods, only occasional signs tell you anything, and little of value (this was Jackson's line, but no talk of which day, which brigades, or what they did, for example). On the flip side, the battlefield (as much of it as could be preserved, anyway) is very much as it was: still second growth forest, still thick undergrowth, and still the original trenches that were built by the soldiers - which is pretty remarkable, when you get right down to it; the whole forest is filled with lines of trenches, some shallow, some deep (some maintained, and some not) but all clearly made by the hands of man. At once point, there's even an original strip of fencing. (at another point, the sign makes it clear that unlike all those other trenches, this one trench that it marks was actually dug as part of the Wilderness battle, not Chancellorsville)
It's a very different experience, all in all, and much more challenging. I'll talk about Wilderness later - that's today's destination, once I stop writing - but though it took place on basically the same ground, it is a different battle, fought in 1864).
Oh, and I still haven't told the horrible thing. Set the scene in your mind...rows of men dug in, thrashing through the underbrush. Often, they don't know who is friend or foe, and open fire indiscriminately (hence how Jackson got shot by his own men). It gets dark early, and stays dark late, first because of the underbrush and trees, later because of the smoke. As the fighting goes into the night, there's nothing to see in the darkness except for the muzzle flashes and cannon flashes, brief bursts of flame followed by silence and darkness once more. The yells of the fighting men, sounds of the forest twigs breaking and trees shattering, and the screams of the wounded fill the air.
Wait, flame? Flame in the second growth forest? Sound like trouble? It was. At both battles, unknown numbers of wounded men were burned to death, unable to escape as the woods caught fire. It's one of the most awful things that happened in the war. When Wilderness was fought a year later, the charred bones were still there to be seen - except that the second battle was fought in an even more thickly forested area, so the same thing happened, only worse.
It makes me shudder just thinking about it. What awful things we do to each other...and this one largely unintentional, which I think might only make it worse...
Right. On to better things.
I wanted to get this post up and updated, because I expect to have a lot to say today. It's a big anniversary for me, and I've been thinking about it a lot this past week, but rather than right about it in bits and pieces, I thought I'd just tackle it once. But I'll stay cryptic for now, and right about it later or tomorrow morning.
On to Wilderness! :)
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Date: 2009-04-20 12:53 pm (UTC)I'm sorry getting to the game was so stressful, but it sounds like you had a great time anyway.