Thursday night, we were winding down in the hotel—the kids were taking turns in the restroom, getting their showers, brushing teeth, etc. Eli got frustrated with his twin, and exclaimed, “Geez, Emma. You are slower than molasses.”
He paused a moment, then said, “I really don’t know who this ‘Molasses’ is, but I guess that guy must be super slow.”
“Wait, what?” I said.
Graham looked up. “Are you serious?”
Eli looked at him. “Yeah. Who is Molasses?”
I said, “This would be like saying, ‘Emma, you’re so pale that you’re as white as flour. I don’t know who Flour is, but she must be really pale.'”
Eli said, “I don’t get it.”
This will never be forgotten for as long as he lives. As we climbed Little Round Top Friday, Graham exclaimed, “At least Eli’s friend Mo isn’t along. Can you imagine how long Mo Lasses would take getting up this hill?” Some version of this joke was repeated at every stop.
Speaking of Friday, we were out the door in the morning by eight am. The idea was for the runners to get in a workout at Gettysburg, change clothes, and proceed with battlefield exploration thereafter. The non-runners would go to the visitors center, watch the movie, see the cyclorama, browse the museum, then be picked up for battlefield exploration. The day before, Eli was among the non-runners—he runs cross country, but hasn’t run since last fall and wasn’t enthusiastic about any preparation for this season. Then his mother told me that his cross country workouts at school had already started, which meant that Eli was involuntarily converted to a runner on Friday.
I told Eli he could run with me since he hadn’t worked out at all, but clearly that was unacceptable because he immediately dropped me and ran ahead by about one hundred meters. He then stayed approximately one hundred meters in front of me the whole run, illustrating that his pace wasn’t that different from the overweight old man’s, just that he refused to be seen with said man. At the 5k mark of our four-mile trail, he started walking, and the tortoise gloriously passed the hare, but the hare’s pride was too wounded, and he overtook the tortoise about one hundred meters from the finish.
Meanwhile, Graham was on a six-mile loop, and I got this text from him: I just went up Big Round Top. It was the worst experience of my life. Look, Graham has been through a lot in his short life, so this is really saying something. In fairness, when you run his route, you descend for at least a quarter of a mile, and then at the base of Big Round Top, you stare up at a hill that is angled for at least a quarter mile at a 45-degree angle.
For the next several hours, I drove us around to the main sites of the battle’s first two days. I also showed them the house where their ancestor Sadie Bushman grew up. Gettysburg has so many tremendous human interest stories—love triangles, African Americans escaping Confederates, James Wade being very insane (per the Census) in the Almshouse, a nineteen-year-old lieutenant amputating his own leg, a crazy old man joining the Iron Brigade with his flintlock musket, and on and on. Naturally, over lunch at McDonald’s I asked what they had learned, and Graham said, “That I’m hungry.”
Me: Anyone else?
Eli: Pretty much what Graham said.
Will: Yeah.
Lord, give me strength.
In the second half of the day, I guided the kids to a monument that only one in 76,000 visitors ever goes to. It’s in the middle of the woods, and there’s no marked path to it. I always have a bit of a time finding my way there, so when I thought I saw some telltale landmarks, I led us off the main trail only to discover I had jumped off too early and had to recalibrate. We eventually found a small animal trail that led to the monument, and I explained to the kids, after taking their picture, that they were among the utmost elite Gettysburg visitors, to which Eli said, “Why did you take us off trail? There was clearly a trail, and you didn’t follow it.”
“Well, okay, Meriwether Lewis, my bad. Sometimes, I misread the trail. But you still got to be one of the few people who has ever seen this monument.”
“Okay, I guess.”
After completing visits of day 2 sites, I brought the kids into town for ice cream. As you may recall, Eli was totally unimpressed with the idea of soft serve ice cream. He spent the day telling us, “If you want soft ice cream, why not just get it out of the freezer earlier? It’s so dumb” and “I can’t get over how stupid this whole concept is. Is it made differently? Like, what is it even?” We got to the window at Mr. G’s, he asked for chocolate and vanilla, and they said, “Soft serve or hard ice cream?” Without missing a beat, he said, “Soft.”
I mean, wtaf. His siblings and cousin mocked him severely.
Eli avenged himself by beating Graham in the 1860s ring game.
After ice cream, it was over to the national cemetery where Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. I challenged the kids to find the actual location of the address, and I made them surrender their phones while they looked. Graham has been with me to Gettysburg and knows where it is, so he helpfully directed everyone to the far corner where Steinwehr Avenue and the Taneytown Road meet and where Lincoln definitively did not give the address.
However, I did use my phone and the Gettysburg Augmented Reality app to film the kids “listening” to the address. They really played their roles well. If you turn the sound up, you’ll hear them blabbing to each other through the whole thing. Among the fifteen thousand who attended the event in 1863, I have to imagine more teens than one were doing the same.
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His Smile Lit Up a Room and Other Things to Say at My Funeral 