This post happened because of something the Cleveland Clowns and Indianapolis Sneakers did at 1 PM Eastern Time Sunday 9-24-17.
I watched as many on both teams knelt or linked arms instead of saluting the Flag.
Click. Off.
I turned on the laptop and found many other players had done something equally stupid and disrespectful around the NFL.
In fact, many of the Jacksonville Jaguars, owned by a Pakistani Moslem, and the Baltimore Ravens, stolen from NE Ohio (much like the Colts were stolen from Maryland), in London to play a game before a British audience, knelt during our anthem and stood during theirs. I guess someone forgot to tell these MENSAs most slaves brought to America came in British ships, and the British were the most avaricious of the colonial powers in Africa (if you don’t count all the Moslem slavers).
The millionaire kneelers and the parasite billionaire owners who back their posing around the league (with the honorable exception of Carolina’s NFL vet owner Jerry Richardson) also don’t mention the hideously expensive facilities where they play came out of the wallets of millions of small taxpayers, leaving the cities that have them with less money for police protection from criminals and other projects that might help the working poor in these cities. NFL owners basically blackmailed cities for decades to get the free cribs. Perhaps they should lose their anti-trust exemption and the cities should take back the stadiums by eminent domain.
Instead of watching NFL football yesterday, I decided to write about real heroes and those who commemorate them.
Those of us who love the country by and large love the exploits of our fighting men and their womenfolk as they built up this nation. Many of you might enjoy historical re-enactments and historical sites in your areas.
99 and I have seen re-enactments and historical sites in half the states of the Union. We have visited the resting place of Good King Wenceslas inside a church in Prague Castle, the Battle of the Bulge Museum in Belgium (where my division, the 101st, held out despite being surrounded by Germans during World War Two), Charlemagne’s Cathedral in Germany, Tara in Ireland (a hill where St. Patrick preached to the High King and his court outside at night inside a perimeter of torches and armed warriors), and the house in Lorraine in which Joan of Arc lived. We went to Mass in the little church she attended also … the little home parish of a saint and a warrior patriot.
Believe it or not, there is now a group in New Orleans called “Krewe d’ Jeanne d’ Arc” which features Joan and medieval history re-enactments and history lectures. Joan’s group seems to be a mix of devout Catholics and non-religious people. Even those with few beliefs but good hearts will honor someone they respect in their own way.
I’ve been on the Battle of New Orleans site, where Andrew Jackson, a bunch of Southerners and Kentuckians, free blacks, Creoles, and French privateers beat a British invasion force. Joan and her men freed Orleans, France, and Jackson and his men protected the city named after Joan’s first big military victory.
At the politically incorrect Gettysburg re-enactment in 2013, I saw a Texas buddy in action for the Rebs one day. The next day I photographed a firefight involving the son of my oldest friend and other Union re-enactors against Johnnies coming thru the woods. Many of the re-enactors’ ladies were charming in period costume. And a few girls got into uniform to add to the ranks.
Black powder smoke makes its own fog of war. The Rebs are about to try to rush the Union troops, shown here on the defensive. In tan or gray uniforms, they blend in with the trees and the smoke. Even the Southerners’ red battle flag is only a flash in the center of the picture. I took this picture mid-morning on a very sunny day.
At an Antietam re-enactment, 99 and I saw a full-on simulated clash with some injuries and men thrown from horses and wagons. These things happened back in the day. And we witnessed some Christian espionage. A teenage girl dressed in Civil War era dress and boots slyly gave out invites to her church along with info on the battle.
I braved the sleet one Christmas morn, after going to Midnight Mass, to see Washington and his men cross the Delaware River. Except for his “Joisey” accent, the man who played Washington was totally believable. He was tall, in good shape, commanding, a bit blunt and harsh, and very businesslike. One woman asked, “Why is Washington’s hair brown and in a ponytail?” I said Washington had brown hair and it was only later that he started to have bad hair and facial wrinkles like Hillary. Everyone within earshot roared with laughter.
Washington was great because he owned and learned from his mistakes and had the character to get people to do what they didn’t want to do. He held an army together at Valley Forge (and drilled them in the snow so they would be able to fire and maneuver better in battles). As a military cadet, I watched the drilling in the snow some re-enactors did at Valley Forge. About a generation before Valley Forge, Washington as a young Virginia militia officer had to surrender to French troops who surrounded his men at Fort Necessity, in southwest Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1754. From there, there was no place for Washington to go but up. (We were there, too. Ironically, the closest church to the Fort Necessity site on US 40 is a Catholic Church named for St. Joan of Arc.)
Before I met 99, I saw a re-enactment of the Fenian raid into Canada in 1866. Irish vets of the Civil War, both blue and gray, united in the year after Appomattox to invade British-owned Canada and swap it for Ireland’s liberty. They crossed into Ontario from Western New York, and beat the Canadian militia and British regulars at Ridgeway. Since some in Andrew Johnson’s administration wanted to seize Canada in retaliation for Brits building warships for the Confederacy, the Irish were a complication. The feds sent US Grant and an army to cut off the Fenians from resupply and reinforcement. The Irish Fenians had to come back to the USA. The Brits gave Canadians some more rights, and gave us $15 million to settle the shipping claims, double what we paid for Alaska, to stave of an invasion of a US Army under the command of a Grant or a Sherman or a Sheridan or a Pap Thomas.
The womenfolk at the Fenian re-enactment put on classes for the tourists also. One redheaded 
Irishwoman in black showed how women dressed, and dressed for proper mourning back in the day. I’m guessing a widow who looked like her wouldn’t remain without suitors for long.
99 and I have seen at these history events a lot of young people of both sexes who are well above average in smarts, physical conditioning, personality, and looks. Don’t say Sherlock doesn’t give tips to those in need.
Speaking of looks, bombshell Raquel Welch (maiden name Raquel Tejada) got her first big role in a history pageant. She played Ramona in the outdoor epic of the same name in far Southern California. Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Ramona” is a story of how greedy people killed American Indians and broke our nation’s promises to the Spanish landowners in California after the Mexican War. I’m a patriot, but I don’t hide the truth because it doesn’t support my narrative. “Ramona” is a tragic romance story based on the ugly truth.
Many of the Spanish supported America during that war because of the corruption and greed of Mexican authorities. Spanish and American Indian people south of Mexico had earlier seceded from Mexican rule (do you ever hear about that?), then killed each other con mucho gusto. After we beat the Mexicans, we still paid them $25 million for the land and cancelled their debts to American people. Did you ever hear about that? We had offered them that much for the land before the war, and still paid the money even though Mexican officials had started the war by sending soldiers across the Rio Grande into Texas, where they killed scouts of Zachary Taylor’s outfit in cold blood. A few years later, we would give Mexico another $10 million for the Gadsden Purchase of far southern Arizona and New Mexico because it held the best railroad route over the Rockies. Bet you never heard about that either.
Zachary Taylor tried to treat the Spanish right who pledged loyalty to the Union and stayed within the new borders of the United States. He tried to bring California and New Mexico into the Union as states. He protected the Spanish in New Mexico from the brigandage of Texans with Regular Army soldiers. Taylor had even paid out of his own pocket for the medical care of abandoned sick and wounded Mexican soldiers his men had defeated during the Mexican War when the Mexican government and the War Department refused to do so. Taylor also tried to abide by treaties made with the American Indians.
When Taylor died in 1850, the trio of punks who followed him (Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan) into the White House cared little about our nation’s integrity. The British routinely broke their word on treaties, so these three imitated the Brits. Lincoln and US Grant, subordinates of Taylor, had to save the Union. Sadly and ironically, Taylor’s own son Dick was one of the South’s better generals. Taylor’s younger brother wore Union blue. And the younger people in the Taylor family were split in loyalties. That war was often a war between brothers.
Here’s something else re-enactors and those who maintain historical sites can share with you that you don’t hear about or read about much. Blacks were in uniform in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the taming of the West, and the wars of the 20th and 21st Centuries. On Defenders Day at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, we saw black artillerymen for the American side (including the artillery leader) fire projectiles into the bay. We also saw and heard a black ladies’ choir singing spirituals from the 1800s. (What? Singing spirituals? At a federal installation? Call out the ACLU!) We have seen blacks in uniform at Civil War re-enactments also. And one retired black DC police officer put on a great display of battlefield minesweeping and related skills at a World War Two airshow and Army and Marine re-enactment in Reading, PA. Tuskegee Airmen were at that event giving talks and selling books.
American Indians dominate in outdoor pageants like “Tecumseh” in Ohio and at the Little Big Horn re-enactment in Montana. One of my brothers and my sister one year drove out to Little Big Horn and hung out with the redskins and palefaces on their way to handle some family business.
Tombstone, Arizona, and Virginia City, Nevada are among many Western towns that celebrate their mining pasts with characters in period gear. Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento is a great place to visit when the pioneer re-enactors are there. Every now and then, Columbus, New Mexico commemorates the Pancho Villa raid of 1916.
Many towns with Spanish missions in California and Arizona have Mission Days. Hannibal, Missouri celebrates Mark Twain. And Springfield, Illinois celebrates Abraham Lincoln.
California and Pennsylvania have historic railroad parks. My brother Bryan (God rest his soul) and I went to the California park in the Gold Rush country one chilly January day, and the tour guide showed us old engines and another cultural landmark … the water tower the Bradley sisters skinny-dipped in on the TV show “Petticoat Junction.”
Elko, Nevada has a festival nicknamed the “Basquo Fiasco.” The people commemorate their Basque sheepherder ancestors the US imported in the early 1900s from Basque Country in Spain and France to tend flocks so our military and civilians would have wool for warm clothing. Basque families traveled in wooden wagons taking the flocks to places in the sparsely watered West that would feed the sheep. If you want to run with the bulls or OD on red meat and red wine, this is your festival.
Ellis Island is a historical site worth seeing for those of you whose people came here in that era. Presidential residences can be interesting too, even when there are not events going on there. We have seen the homes of Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Lincoln, US Grant, McKinley, and Teddy Roosevelt. We also saw the Reagan Library, where an Air Force One plane is, and where Ron and Nancy are laid to rest.
99 had a unique insight when we went to the place in Kentucky where Abraham Lincoln was born. The female park ranger said two different times his father and mother cleared land for farms, only to lose them to swindlers who took them to court on spurious land title issues. 99 said, “Maybe that’s why Lincoln studied surveying and the law, because people cheated his parents!” You don’t get that out of a textbook.
Cincinnati is the home of a museum for the Underground Railroad. We went to a black church near the Mason-Dixon line in Lancaster, Pennsylvania whose pastor had a bit of a re-enactment of slave patrols – and a killer soul food dinner afterward. Ripley, Ohio, where former slave John Parker lived, made plenty of money as a foundry owner, and rowed across the Ohio River to Kentucky more than 100 times to bring runaway slaves out of Kentucky, ought to have a re-enactment of that hero’s work. Maybe some day they will.
Re-enactors show the public how the Revolutionary War started in Lexington and Concord Massachusetts, and how it ended in American victory in Yorktown, Virginia. If you want to see Old Ironsides, one of our most legendary men-o’war, it’s still there in Boston Harbor. Its decks are painted blood-red (so spilled blood wouldn’t unnerve crewmen) and it is cramped because people were smaller back during the War of 1812. But we don’t measure a man’s heart by his coat size or inseam. When our Navy had wooden ships, we had iron men.
We saw a monument to the fishermen of Ireland in Cobh, who dared to rescue the victims of the Lusitania, a British ship carrying munitions and using passengers as shields. A German submarine crew sunk the ocean liner off the southern coast of Ireland in 1915, and British naval authorities considered it too risky to save the victims. So the local fishermen went out instead and rescued hundreds of women and children and some men from watery graves.
Just like the real heroes of the recent hurricanes were neighbors helping neighbors, and low-ranking policemen and firemen and paramedics, and linemen from various power companies across the country, the real heroes of history were common men and women who did uncommon things when they were needed.
Re-enactments and historical sites celebrate these common men and women who did great things despite the hardships and risks. This is your heritage. Enjoy it, be proud of it, and learn from it.
HOW DO YOU FIND OUT ABOUT LIVING HISTORY AND HISTORICAL SITES?
Check the Internet for historical sites and history re-enactments in your state, and in nearby areas in other states. Or check on these things elsewhere if you’re up for a road trip.
Check the Net for names of battles or other historical events. Then add the term “re-enactment” or “museum” or “historic site” to see what comes up.
Or put in the word “festival.” Watch the screen overload. Pick out those that matter to you.
Check for names and re-enactors. For example, there are women who take the roles of Dolley Madison, Civil War spy Belle Boyd, Annie Oakley, Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Amelia Earhart. A lot of the re-enactors do great jobs impersonating the great and the notorious.
You don’t have to be a history buff to enjoy these places and events. The exhibits and shows the volunteers and performers put on are usually much better than prime time shows you’ll see on TV. Just show up and enjoy yourself. And ask the re-enactors, volunteers, and guides questions if you’ve got ’em. They’ll know the skinny about the history behind the site or the event.
This is off the beaten path as far as detective work goes. But seeing how people who came before you built the nation you enjoy is never a bad thing. You and your family will get a learning experience they don’t give out in the public schools.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
