Years ago, I worked with the American Battlefield Trust to create an augmented reality app. It’s a free download on the app store. We returned to Gettysburg on Saturday, and while Graham ran ten miles, the rest of us hiked Pickett’s Charge. Before we started, we assembled at the step-off point of the Virginians just beyond their monument, and I read them the eternal William Faulkner quote. Of course, I had spent the previous day helping them to understand that Pickett’s Charge was over-mythologized, that it was not the high point of the Confederacy nor the turning point of the War nor the worst spot on the battlefield (Wheatfield aficionados, I see you), that most of these beliefs were post-war storytelling, etc. And that was actually why I read the Faulkner quote—to help them understand how the myths had been created.
You can tell from the picture that my instruction had profound effects and that all had gained a new appreciation for our history and the tensions we have today.
When we finished Pickett’s Charge, we broke out the app and got the kids mixing with historical figures. This was, of course, riveting for them . . . for almost two minutes or so. Of greater importance was finding Pokemons because apparently Pokemon Go is still a thing, which is sort of beautiful in a way because the inspiration for the Gettysburg AR experience was Pokemon Go. I’m not quite sure why capturing a 2500-point Pokemon is better than getting your picture with a soon-to-be-killed Lewis Armistead, but I’m old. We also mixed in some time with the 20th Maine on Little Round Top, and then, the kids’ brains were exhausted. It was a saturation of history for four straight days and was, according to Will, “More history than I learned in my life in school.” It was time to head to Lewisburg to see Grant and Katy.
Alas, I did not let the kids escape the stories. I turned on the famous podcast “In the Red Clay,” all about Dixie mafia hitman Billy Sunday Birt. (Never heard of the Dixie mafia? Listen to that as well as season 2 of Gone South.) So the kids got that for three hours to Lewisburg.
When we met up with Grant and Katy, we packed up some fishing stuff and headed to Grant’s favorite fishing spot nearby. He kept warning me that “there’s no cellphone service, just so you know. Like none at all.” I felt fine, not paranoid at all after hours of stories about Billy Sunday Birt murdering people in obscure rural areas and burying their bodies next to bodies of water where no one would find them.
Well, no one and nothing got killed—not us and not the fish. Both Will and Graham got bites and had their bait taken several times. Will got the best bite but was too busy trying to capture a Pokemon and missed the bobber diving. Meanwhile, take a look at Grant. What’s he doing?
Dear readers, he is leaning over the pond begging to be pushed in while trying to capture live crawfish barehanded. Naturally, I snapped photos of this idiocy for posterity, and when he came back across the pond, I said to him, “Why would you think you could catch a crawfish with your bare hands? You know they spend their lives running from bass, right? If they can survive bass, they sure as hell ain’t gonna be fooled by you ‘creeping’ up on them.”
He laughed. “I almost got one.”
“In your own mind. Not in reality.”
What works much better is bacon or fish guts on a string. Knowing that, Eli and Graham tried getting one with bait, and it did indeed grab onto the bait and get pulled onto shore, and then somehow, Eli and Graham lost it. That was probably for the best, but Grant vowed to return with a pack of bacon to try crawfish fishing in the future. If he succeeds, we’ll give him his bayou stripes.
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