Okay, the holidays are over and winter yawns before us. What to do with all that time? Freeze your butt off outside? Not me. After you repair your tent loops and replace the glass in that candle lantern, how about working on improving your impression before spring gets here? I submit for your consideration, a variety of suggestions along this line. First, some ideas from Neil Randolph which pertain particularly to the Civil War period, but the general tenor can be extended to other periods as well.
Things to improve;
- get rid of extraneous goop on hats for a more generic look (feathers, kerchiefs around necks, excessive brass and don’t bend hat to look like baseball cap.
- wear leathers at 1860 waist level (at the navel area, instead of our”waist”)
- ditch the heavy, unlined Pakistani fatique blouses, get a Martin or Schuykill jacket from a more authentic vendor.
- get both kinds of canteens, bullseye good from 1863 and later, smoothside should be used up to mid war at least. Same with keepers, leather keeper belts were used a lot till 1864, brass keepers were later war items.
- get in better condition, get a backpack (blanket roll) and go do one campaign-style event to get a better grip on what actually happened 99% ofthe time. Assault on Allegheny is in our backyard and there’s already a website up, good folks running it.
(You might check out the Authentic Campaigner website for more info along these lines:http://www.authentic-campaigner.com…Ed.)
Neil
I would like to add to Neil’s comments with a few of my own.:
1. If you wear glasses, get some that are period or wear contacts. How sensible is it to spend a small fortune on weapons, uniform and accouterments, then ruin the whole effect with some modern, trendy eyewear? This can be done cheaper than you might think. I got a pair of wire rims from The Winchester Sutler a few years ago that work for mid-ninteenth Civil War to mid-twentieth century Russian. As I remember, I only paid about $20.00 at the time. You can also find some pretty amazing stuff in junk stores for a few bucks.
2. Research your impression and try to wear the clothing as did the people you are portraying. If you are doing a period predating photography, check out period drawings and paintings. Take some pride in what you are doing!
3. For main-stream reenactors: Lose the non-period items around camp at least until the tourists leave. They didn’t come out to our camps to see you drinking out of a 20-oz. Pepsi bottle. Non-period includes anything obviously made of stainless steel. It wasn’t perfected until the years just preceding WWI. If you have to use a plastic tarp to keep the inside of your tent dry, then spread straw around your tent to hide the edges.
4. Spend some time this winter putting repro labels on period bottles for use around camp. Find a wood-working project that will contribute. Give the rest of us something to envy!
Take the concept of “if they’d have had it, they would have used it,” and stuff it in your knapsack, right beside “the public won’t know the difference.” It’s our mission to educate the public, not mislead them even more than they already are. Americans don’t know crap about history as it is. We are the last line of defense!
To conclude, I’m not saying that everybody can be a CW Campaigner (or the equivalent for other time periods.) I am simply too old for that myself, and I am considering going to a civilian impression for that period, just because I can’t keep up any more. I also know that sleeping on the ground just doesn’t cut it for a lot of us old coots anymore. But whoever you are, you can do your part, by putting a little work into your impression and help to spread the word about history.
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