Friday, November 14, 2014

Flint Hill, '64 Chapter 3: In Which Our Heroine Oversleeps and Everything Goes Downhill from There

Read Chapter One here and Chapter Two here.

As I mentioned at the end of Chapter Two, the house was much warmer Saturday night than it was Friday night. As a result, I slept much too soundly and didn't get out of bed until 7:30! Breakfast was not done on time and the poor children were sent off to school with nothing but applesauce and a single piece of French Toast shared between them in their bellies. Mr and Mrs Craig got a slice each as well but that was all - the fourth had sat too long in the batter and fell apart and that was the last of the bread. The ham that we were going to pretend was bacon took ages and ages to cook and was never eaten. I certainly wasn't figuring that I was going to be a cook for much longer.

The Aid Society tea was at ten thirty and my suffering only grew when I opened the jar of apple pear chutney, thinking that it would be something sweet to serve with the cider cake, and discovered that it was in fact a PICKLE! A pickle cannot be served on top of cider cake! So I ran to Hosmer's Inn where I pleaded with the cooks there to give me some sweet preserves to serve with the cider cake and plain bread to serve with the chutney. I was prepared to drop to my knees and sob, if necessary. Thankfully, that wasn't necessary, my friend Allison (who was Clara for the weekend), gave me the last of their bread and some apple butter and strawberry-raspberry preserves. I ran back to the farm and did my best to plate our Savory and Sweet as nicely as possible. Perhaps it was a little too haute cuisine for the period, but I was feeling desperate. Actually, I wish that I had a camera so I could take a picture of the two plates and show off my biggest success of the weekend.

The cider cake I sliced and arranged in a fan on the platter, with dollops of preserves alternating between the slices and a dollop of each preserve right in the middle of the fan. The chutney was put into a bowl and placed in the middle of the other platter, with slices of bread arranged fan-like (again) around it, topped with sage leaves. The coffee pot, tea pot, creamer, and sugar went in the middle between the two platters. It was all deemed very good and my self esteem was a little boosted. All's well that ends well.

After the Aid Society tea disbanded, all that was left to do was clean up, go to Thomson Tavern for the group picture, and go home. The event's main theme was actually the presidential election of 1864 and the men in the village had been given ballots in order to vote. Lincoln won by a landslide in our town, but the election part of the event was very insignificant to me - there was far too much to worry about that had nothing to do with some stranger in a city very far away for me to sit around and worry about who was going to be president.

Another aspect of the event was mail service - we were each to contribute two letters to the mail service that weekend. I wrote one note to Allison/Clara, and one letter to myself from a fictionalized version of my very dear boyfriend. In truth, I Googled Civil War love letters and plagiarized one. It was not a very good result, really - I knew that I had mail and I knew who it was from and what it said, because I had written it. I also failed miserably at writing in a masculine hand. In the future, I think my mail contributions will all be to other people.

All in all, I enjoyed the weekend. It was hard to stay in character when we weren't around other people, though I did my best, and I didn't have any moments where I felt like it was really 1864, but that I contribute to being in a building that has become something of a second home to me rather than anything else. I'm looking forward to more opportunities to be in First Person in the future!

In the meantime, I'm preparing for a trip to Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts on the 18th - I'm getting my hands-on training from their shoemaker there. Very exciting!

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