Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist
Cumberland Times-News
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The bartenders at one of our favorite Gettysburg hangouts use a touch-screen computer that’s called “Digital Dining” to ring up bar and food bills.
Considering the American penchant for renaming things so they’ll sound more impressive (i.e., a jail has become a “detention center” and a prison is a “correctional institution”), what we now call “finger food” may someday be referred to as “digital dining.”
One reason the bartenders like us is because we can tell when they are busy and know to leave them alone.
Jess was in that mode when a waitress (which I just remembered are now called “servers”) handed her a glass that was less than a quarter-inch short of being filled to the rim with draft beer and had no head on it. (My feeling is that a proper draft beer needs a little foam.)
“The customer would like to have this topped off,” said the waitress/server.
Without a word, Jess took the glass, held it under the tap, yanked back on the handle and returned it to the server/waitress with close to two inches of foam on top of of it and flowing down the sides.
Jess looked at me with eyes that were flashing.
“I’ll bet that’s the last time,” I chuckled, “he sends a beer back!” That got a smile.
One young woman we met at Little Round Top told us she was “from Mississippi.”
I said Wait A Minute and asked her how long she’d lived there.
She said, “All mah lahf.”
Then how come she pronounces it “Mississippi,” and not “Miss’sippi”?
“If ah’m in a hurry,” she said, “I say
‘Miss’sippi.’”
This year, we met Filipinos, Australians, two guys from Burma and a busload of Italians who wanted to have their pictures taken with us in our Yankee uniforms.
Since I started wearing my uniform coat with leather pistol belt and shoulder strap, more pretty girls are standing on my side of the cannon barrel. Must be the red first-sergeant’s chevrons and lozenge on my sleeves and the bright artillery badges on my forage cap.
A group of re-enactors representing a New York volunteer infantry outfit came to Little Round Top with drummers and a fife player. An older fellow in the uniform of a sergeant major came over to talk with us while they played.
The musicians were young kids, and they were good. It was pleasing to see them and hear them, because they are signs that the American legacy is still being handed down from generation to generation.
Some kids ask us about the Civil War and tell us that what they’ve learned from other sources — including their parents — leads them to believe that what they’re learning about it in school isn’t the whole story.
We tell them the Civil War is probably the most complicated subject in American history. Its roots aren’t just in slavery or state’s rights, but also have to do with cultural differences and economics, and that America may have started down the path to it soon after the Revolution ended.
We tell them where to look, if they want to learn more. The works of the late historian Shelby Foote are a great place to start.
The larger the crowd that has gathered around us, the greater the odds are that Gary’s cell phone will go off.
I ask him, “Sir, do you hear pipes?” and he fusses and fumbles to retrieve it from under his coat, then goes off behind one of the monuments to admonish someone who should have known better than to call him at such a time.
That’s when I explain to the people that it’s a new signaling device the Federal army has issued to us, and we’re still trying to figure out how it works.
On my first trip to Little Round Top, someone pointed to the snow-covered mountain on the horizon and asked us if that was Ski Liberty.
The snow is gone now, but you can see the bare ski trails. I told Gary that if we get asked that question again, I would say, “No, those are giant American Indian petroglyphs. See, that one in the middle is a man with two long legs, and there’s a dog lying next to his feet. There’s a deer reared up on its hind legs next to him. Can you see the antlers on its head?”
Five minutes later a man and a woman come up to us and asked if that was Ski Liberty over yonder.
After Gary and I explained to them why we were laughing, they laughed with us.
I have little in the way of paranormal activity to report this time, although there was the matter of smelling pipe smoke three times on Little Round Top and black powder gunsmoke (it’s distinctly sulfurous) in the car on the way home.
With regard to the matter of a button, a penny, a key and three Vietnam Veterans of America “Welcome Home” coins that had no business being where we found them, I have reason to suspect a friend who — when he was still part of this mortal coil — was a practical joker and likes to lightly swat the hair on the back of my head after I’ve been telling people about him and his nephew.
Also, it simply gets dark too late this time of year to go ghost hunting.
We did, however, talk to a young couple who came in on a motorcycle and already had heard that ours was one of the most haunted motels in Gettysburg.
“I woke up in the middle of the night last night and heard the most gawdawful noise,” said the guy. “It was loud and scared the hell out of me, and I wondered what it was.
“Then I looked over and saw it was her snoring,” he said.
She hauled off and backhanded him on the shoulder and ... as Jimmy Hatlo used to say ... That’s When The Fun Began.
