Day Fifteen: History

The month of November is National Blog Posting Month. This is my 5th year participating. This year, for thirty days, I'll be telling stories from some point in my life. Enjoy!

I love history. I love history like birds love to fly. Like bears like to eat fish. Like football players love to tackle.

History is in my bones. My dad is a historian. The guys knows everything about American history. The Civil War? He's your guy. The American Revoultion?  He's read more books than anyone I know.  My dad's "thing" growing up was George Armstrong Custer. When I was about 12 years old we went on a marathon trip to Bismark, North Dakota. We drove. My mom had a conference. I think the drive to Bismark lasted about 4 years. I remember listening to enough Elton John "Crocodile Rock" to drown a river of crocodiles.

As part of the trip we ventured to the other Dakota - South. We spent the night in Custer, South Dakota. Custer is the only town really close to Mt. Rushmore (or, Rount Mushmore as we called it then) and the only thing in Custer was a strange little miniature land of "the flint stones", like the cartoon.

Custer is important however. That was the theme of the trip. Or, the only thing I really remember from the grand adventure in the Northern US. Sure, we visited Devil's Tower in Wyoming, and hit a corner of Montana (I think). We went bowling in Bismark and even visited the zoo - which I think only had some deer and a Yak (don't talk back).

The thing I remember about the trip is our visit to a battle field. We were deep in my dad's "Custer phase" and the Battle of Little Big Horn, in the Black Hills, was my dads history obsession. At the time anyway.

The battle, also known as "Custer's last stand" was epic, to say the least. The Native Americans won, Custer was killed (and scalped) and it was tragic.

Epic and tragic.

Epic and tragic.

What was really epic however, just as big of a deal as the battle itself, was our visit to pay memorium. Now, it's my memory and I'm sticking to my story, but we were there for HOURS!

Maybe even days.

It was hot.

My dad got out of the car and walked out into the middle of a field. My mom and sister got out of the car and listened to the ranger. I never got out of the car.

There were 1.67 billion grasshoppers. They were everywhere. Grasshoppers and I are not friends. They were so thick that you could see them jumping like fountains.

Fountains of creepy jumpy grasshoppers.

My skin is crawling just thinking about it.

I melted in the car.  It was so hot.

My mom and sister listened to the ranger over and over and over again tell the story of Custer's Last Stand.

My dad? He was standing in the middle of a field of grasshoppers.

Reliving the entire battle, I'm sure.

When he finally made his way back to the car he was sweaty and drained. He'd fought the war.

Like Custer, he probably lost. But he got to keep his head.

I'm sure that the whining from his three girls ruined the moment.

The heat and the grasshoppers were just too intense.

Back in the car. Back to crocodile rock.

The moral of the story?

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I had no idea what my dad was doing in that field. I didn't get it. It was strange and crazy.

Until......

My sister and I went on our wonderous roadtrip across America. We paid a stop to the city, cemetery, and battle field of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

We drove in to town on a dark and probalby stormy night. I think we stayed in the only available room in town in a pink motel run by a family from India. We really had no idea where we were in location to the historical sites and just dumped our stuff, found some dinner and went to bed.

The next morning, while Haley was in the shower I stepped outside of the pepto motel.

There was a thick fog on the ground and as I looked up from the fog and across the street I realized we were yards away from the Gettysburg Cemetary. Where Lincoln stood. Where brave men fought and died.

It was awesome.

I stood there, on the stoop of our room for what felt like a long time. The serenity and the gravity of the scene hit me hard.

At that moment I thought back to when I was a little girl trapped in a car in South Dakota. At that moment I figured out what my dad had been doing. He wasn't torturing us. Well, maybe he was a little. We were there for HOURS.

He was living history.

He was loving history.

He was having a moment.

And at Gettysburg, I had one too.

There have been many opportunities since to soak in the history and live the moment.

It's one of the coolest things there is.

History is awesome!