cars, tour busses and RVs.
They entered through the park rangers’
entrance into the blessed air conditioning and found Mike Darcy
pouring over his day’s itinerary while sipping a cup of coffee. He
seemed surprised to see them. As if anticipating his question,
LouAnne said, “T.J has to get used to the course. We figured we’d
cut it off here for the first day.”
“I’m okay,” said T.J., though he was
obviously quite the opposite.
Mike looked at his watch. “Come on, I have
just enough time to drop you home and get back here for my first
tour. You guys must be dying for some breakfast.”
“Great, Dad.” As they hopped into Mike’s red
Dodge Durango he asked his daughter what she’d be up to that day.
“Well, I’m babysitting at Mrs. Spath’s at ten. I don’t know what
T.J.’s got in mind.” They both looked at him.
“Um,” said T.J., who might’ve been perfectly
happy depositing his aching body in bed for a few hours, “I think
I’d like to come back down to the Visitor Center like LouAnne said
and check out the place, get a better feel for the area and the
story of the battle.”
“Super idea,” said Mike. “If you want, you
can tag along on my noon cemetery tour. And if you’re really
adventurous, my friend Arlene is giving a small group of visiting
college professors a minibus tour of the entire battlefield at one.
This’ll give you a good overview. If anything, it’ll help you lay
out some alternate workout routes so you won’t get bored when you
run. There are many miles of paved roads that wind their way
through the battlefield.”
“Sounds good,” said T.J., who was just happy
to be off his feet for a little while.
Once home, T.J. and LouAnne quickly showered,
arriving at the breakfast nook table within seconds of each other.
He ravenously attacked Terri’s bacon and eggs, while his cousin
settled for a bowl of Total with sliced strawberries from the
garden. Then she was off to babysit while T.J., using his aunt’s
in-town trolley card, rode over to the Visitor Center again.
“Why don’t you poke around here for a while,”
said Mike, who was manning the information desk, “and meet me back
here around 11:45 so we can ride over to the cemetery.”
At last, on his own, T.J. had a chance to
wander about the immense facility which had been completely
redesigned and rebuilt a few years back. It was, he decided, one of
the best museums he’d ever visited, with some twelve galleries
loaded with artifacts, interactive exhibits and hands-on displays.
He was especially taken with the variety of uniforms of the
soldiers from both sides, though he felt the Confederate cavalrymen
got carried away at times with the gold braid.
And then there was the firearms display,
entire glass-encased walls of rifles, pistols, and other munitions,
many of them recovered from the battlefield in the months and years
that followed.
Perhaps the most touching were the personal
effects retrieved from the field and the corpses: Bibles, playing
cards, love letters to and from those left behind, the slips of
paper some soldiers pinned to their tunics before the battle
listing their name and home address so that their dead bodies could
be shipped home correctly.
But it wasn’t until he viewed the cyclorama,
a massive 360 degree painting depicting the battle in its entirety,
with a lifelike diorama included, that he had a true sense of the
magnitude of Gettysburg. In fact, it almost made him cry, and he
didn’t cry easily. The contrast between these graphic images and
the peaceful fields he’d jogged through this morning was both
stark and disturbing.
Finally, he visited the theater and viewed a
film about the Gettysburg Address narrated by the actor Morgan
Freeman, whom he remembered had a major role in the Civil War movie Glory that Mr. O’Neill had shown at school.
There was so much to process that T.J
realized further visits would be necessary. It was clear to him
that even if he’d aced
They entered through the park rangers’
entrance into the blessed air conditioning and found Mike Darcy
pouring over his day’s itinerary while sipping a cup of coffee. He
seemed surprised to see them. As if anticipating his question,
LouAnne said, “T.J has to get used to the course. We figured we’d
cut it off here for the first day.”
“I’m okay,” said T.J., though he was
obviously quite the opposite.
Mike looked at his watch. “Come on, I have
just enough time to drop you home and get back here for my first
tour. You guys must be dying for some breakfast.”
“Great, Dad.” As they hopped into Mike’s red
Dodge Durango he asked his daughter what she’d be up to that day.
“Well, I’m babysitting at Mrs. Spath’s at ten. I don’t know what
T.J.’s got in mind.” They both looked at him.
“Um,” said T.J., who might’ve been perfectly
happy depositing his aching body in bed for a few hours, “I think
I’d like to come back down to the Visitor Center like LouAnne said
and check out the place, get a better feel for the area and the
story of the battle.”
“Super idea,” said Mike. “If you want, you
can tag along on my noon cemetery tour. And if you’re really
adventurous, my friend Arlene is giving a small group of visiting
college professors a minibus tour of the entire battlefield at one.
This’ll give you a good overview. If anything, it’ll help you lay
out some alternate workout routes so you won’t get bored when you
run. There are many miles of paved roads that wind their way
through the battlefield.”
“Sounds good,” said T.J., who was just happy
to be off his feet for a little while.
Once home, T.J. and LouAnne quickly showered,
arriving at the breakfast nook table within seconds of each other.
He ravenously attacked Terri’s bacon and eggs, while his cousin
settled for a bowl of Total with sliced strawberries from the
garden. Then she was off to babysit while T.J., using his aunt’s
in-town trolley card, rode over to the Visitor Center again.
“Why don’t you poke around here for a while,”
said Mike, who was manning the information desk, “and meet me back
here around 11:45 so we can ride over to the cemetery.”
At last, on his own, T.J. had a chance to
wander about the immense facility which had been completely
redesigned and rebuilt a few years back. It was, he decided, one of
the best museums he’d ever visited, with some twelve galleries
loaded with artifacts, interactive exhibits and hands-on displays.
He was especially taken with the variety of uniforms of the
soldiers from both sides, though he felt the Confederate cavalrymen
got carried away at times with the gold braid.
And then there was the firearms display,
entire glass-encased walls of rifles, pistols, and other munitions,
many of them recovered from the battlefield in the months and years
that followed.
Perhaps the most touching were the personal
effects retrieved from the field and the corpses: Bibles, playing
cards, love letters to and from those left behind, the slips of
paper some soldiers pinned to their tunics before the battle
listing their name and home address so that their dead bodies could
be shipped home correctly.
But it wasn’t until he viewed the cyclorama,
a massive 360 degree painting depicting the battle in its entirety,
with a lifelike diorama included, that he had a true sense of the
magnitude of Gettysburg. In fact, it almost made him cry, and he
didn’t cry easily. The contrast between these graphic images and
the peaceful fields he’d jogged through this morning was both
stark and disturbing.
Finally, he visited the theater and viewed a
film about the Gettysburg Address narrated by the actor Morgan
Freeman, whom he remembered had a major role in the Civil War movie Glory that Mr. O’Neill had shown at school.
There was so much to process that T.J
realized further visits would be necessary. It was clear to him
that even if he’d aced
Similar Books
