Friday, November 14, 2014

Flint Hill, '64 Chapter 1: In Which Our Heroine Battles A Mattress

As promised, my post about my very first immersion event. An immersion event is a progressive reenacting event where there is no public wandering around ogling, taking pictures, and reminding you that reenacting is not entirely for reenactors to have fun and experience the mid-19th century. Other than certain unavoidable modern features (like bathrooms - I keep telling people that chamber pots are no more disgusting to deal with than a diaper, but no one seems to be converted by that), everything is period-appropriate. On top of that, not only are the material objects period-correct, but, as you are acting as a "persona", your brain is also period-correct. At least, it should be.

My hopes were that I would just copy down the diary entries I had written during the event, but I had no time to write any! At all! I was just that busy!

My persona for the weekend was that of Lydia Scriner - a young hired cook. Poor Lydia was included with the house (like a piece of furniture.... with her wages listed in between the costs of firewood and lamp oil in the contract....) by Mr. and Mrs. Jones (harrumph) when the house was offered up for rent to the Craigs.

In real life, even though I don't know very much about them, I love the Joneses - I call them Mr. Harry and Mrs. Harry, as their given names were Henry and Harriet. I have a tendency to bond with the buildings I work in at the Museum. It's strange, I know; I call Dr. Frederick Backus of the Livingston-Backus house Freddie and am of the opinion that his only daughter, Wealtha, and I would be very good friends. I have yet to bond deeply with the Shoemaker's shop, but soon enough, soon enough.

Read a Really Long Story After the Jump:


Anyway, I arrived at the Museum early (around 3:40, as opposed to 4), so that I could put things to order and light fires in the hopes that it would warm up the house before the Craigs arrived from Connecticut. After organizing where the food should go, lugging my trunk (with its new handles - hooray!) up the deadly staircase, and laying fires in the cook stove and hearth, I went over to Hosmer's Inn to check in and get my little envelope. In it was a dollar and fifty cents (which at first confused me, as the cents were printed on squares of paper), two stamps for my letters, and two little slips of paper. I forget what the one said, but the other informed me that I am Lydia Scriner and that I am trying to make a good impression on my new employers, the Craigs, as my former employers were horrible. I used both slips as paper-kindling in the fire. In hindsight, perhaps I should have saved them to put in the scrapbook I don't have.

Chuck, one of my superiors, came by and offered up a pre-stuffed mattress tick that was laying unclaimed down the road in Kieffer. So, bundled up in my newly finished coat, bonnet, mittens, and scarf, I walked over. I stopped to say "hello" to the oxen, who I love dearly every month of the year except July and August, when I do not appreciate that their pasture extends directly behind Jones.

I struggled to find the stairs in Kieffer, as it was getting dark inside the house and I don't get out much at work so I don't see the interiors of buildings I don't work in. After opening every closed door on the main floor, I finally found the stairs and promptly tripped right up them, letting loose some rather unladylike phrases - those stairs seemed to be even deadlier than the Jones stairs! I found the bedroom that Chuck had described to me and...muttered some more. The tick that was unclaimed was described as being small, and too small for his son. In this room there were two ticks; one that I would consider to be small, which was all made up nicely, and a naked tick that was roughly twice its size. It would seem that it would be common sense to take the naked tick, since it was naked. Why would an unclaimed tick have bedding on it? Well, Dear Reader, at the Museum we have a number of beds that are kept perpetually made, so that the house looks more lived in. The Legitimately Small tick could very well be one of those - remember, I don't get out much and had never been inside this building. I knew that someone had been in the building already, as there was a fire burning in the hearth downstairs, but I didn't know if moving-in had progressed any farther than that. I took a chance and picked the naked tick.

I only half-exaggerate that I nearly died lugging that ungainly thing down the stairs (in my defense, the tick was twice the width of the stairwell). I had to stop along the way to Jones a number of times, to prop the tick up against a fence and adjust my handholds as the straw kept shifting and throwing off the weight distribution. I rebuked the oxen for looking at me as though I were crazy, and then realized that I had just rebuked a pair of oxen for looking at me like that and decided that they probably had legitimate cause.

At last I had it in Jones and near the hearth. I took off all my outerwear and was about to start making it up when I paused and studied the tick. Then I decided that I had, in fact, picked up the wrong tick, as it was roughly twice the size of the other one and I would rather go with the plan and borrow the tick that the Craigs had so generously offered than risk being That Person that goes and steals someone else's bed.

So I took the tick back to Kieffer's. The oxen most definitely had cause to look at me as though I were insane and I was very determined to get the tick back to its original place without anyone but myself and the oxen witnessing. Getting the tick up the stairs was even worse than bringing it down. I could not pull it up, I could not carry it up, the house was even darker, it was just not a good time. So I pushed it up. I stood underneath it and pushed it end over end. Surprisingly, this time the straw filling cooperated by shifting so that the tick got rather spherical. I dragged it back to the room where I found it, tried to flatten it out more, tripped down the stairs, and speed-walked back to the farm.

The naked tick ended up being the one that Chuck was describing after all. Before you wail in sympathy for me having to go back to Kieffer to lug it to Jones, Chuck's son and another boy were kind enough to bring it over.

Read more adventures in the next installment!

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