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Pirates of Paynetown 2010 - Bloomington, IN
(Photo: Mission)
Chapter 3rd: Talking of Saturday afternoon and evening;
including an odd bathing group, an odd sport of ropemaking, an oddly named (pitch-in?)
dinner, the sailor's divvy (another odd name), Chole Black's Coffee House
(Chole claims the name is a good name and not at all odd) and, the oddest name of
all, "paddling after dark." So this chapter is odd. (Ok, it's pretty much like the rest, really.)
(Photo: Freakazoid!)
Sometime in the afternoon, someone in the Mercury camp spotted a blue sash on the
picnic table and asked me who it belonged to. Now, I don't know the general opinion of
your ship's surgeon on the street (nor do I
want to know - most likely), but I seriously doubt it suggests that anyone would
want to turn to me to learn more about the ownership of a
long, baby blue silk sash. (At least I hope the word on the street isn't
indicating that.) Still, since the question was broached, the simple
answer was to put it on and claim it - temporarily (left.
I think it makes me look bright and cheerful,
like Cobra Queen's Japanese lanterns (Freakazoid reference. Go look it up.).)
While I was wandering about the encampment on the peninsula, I happened to notice some interesting activity in the swimming area. A group of people dressed in long white robes were wading out about thigh-deep and being dunked in the water by a guy holding something. This could only mean one thing: it was time for their weekly Saturday bath! No, that isn't the thing at all...apparently there was a baptism going on out there. I must confess (since we're talking religion) that a public beach seems to be a trifle bizarre for a location to have this sort of ceremony. Maybe the church was evangelical in nature and this was an effort to spread the word? I would have gone down and taken better photos, but somehow the idea of a guy in a pirate outfit trooping out and and hollering "Work it, people!" seemed sort of sacrilegious. (I do wonder what the faithful were going to say to friends when explaining the bright orange floaty in the background of their baptismal memories, though.)
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(Photo: Jessica Bagley)
This year John Kleinhien brought a rope-making machine. It looked
really cool. (Right. What can I say? It's the engineer in me.) He
charged $3.50 to people for the chance to make their own rope by twisting the strands together
with his contraption. He had a really good patter to go with this,
explaining how it was done and what was going on. Yep, he
sure did. Nope, I sure didn't pay very close attention or take any
notes. So anything I would say here about the process would be total
fabrication. Regular Journal readers are used to this, and may even
expect it, but out of respect for the whole idea, I'm not going to
tell you things I don't know. (Well, not here, anyhow.) It was a winning
combo, though. Many times when I walked by his display, he had crowds
like the ones you see below. It's really neat that someone can come up
with a historical trade like this, make some coin and still amuse the public.
(Photo: Mission)
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Everywhere I went on Saturday, people kept telling me there was another
surgeon who wanted to see my surgical gear. I finally met Albert Roberts in the
early afternoon and we chatted about being a surgeon. He does a late
18th-century surgeon's impression; about 60 years later than mine. In
fact, he keeps an interesting first person blog on his character
called Tempus Fugit
which I recommend, even though it is much more serious than your own
surgeon's Journal tends to be. He has an English accent that is so good, you're
not sure if he speaks that way normally or not.
Because he was there and I had hauled all my equipment down, I broke everything out for a display in the afternoon - once I was sure the rain had abated. (Much of it is raw steel and thus rusts easily.) He seemed reasonably impressed. We jawed about how trick it was purchasing period medical stuff.
(Photo: Mission)
In the late afternoon, my pal Grace Thatcher appeared with a very nice
wolf head that she had sculpted out of the sand. Grace and her brothers
had spent a large part of the day at the beach. She explained that the
sculpture was actually not a wolf, it was some kind of animal that I
have forgotten the name of (we'll call them Bobs) , which only looked
like a wolf. It seems that Bobs were actually invisible most of the time
and they only appeared sometimes. Grace explained that she had dreamed
about Bobs and some of them lived under water and some of them flew.
It's quite a lot of information to get from a sculpted lump of shaped
sand and I was duly impressed.
As you might guess, Grace is quite creative. She told several other stories about animals she had imagined. Regular readers may recall the leopard sculpture that she gave me last year and the Baby Lion replacement that she gifted me with two years ago. With all the creativity coursing through her, I see her going one of two ways in life: either becoming a creative artist or graphic designer if all goes well in her life or a Surgeon's Journal writer if it doesn't.
(Photo: Mission)
(Photo: Mission)
Something else I saw a lot of while wandering about Saturday afternoon
was people preparing for dinner. A group of kids had gathered around a
poor little crayfish on the beach and were "Eww"-ing it into
submission (left). Bradley caught a fish with his hands (Right.
I suspect he caught it easily because the fish seemed to have already been caught
at least once before.) All of these things being intended to be for the
pot luck dinner. Wait, it wasn't called a pot-luck dinner, it was called
a "pitch-in" dinner. (Those weird Indianians and their odd
terms for things.) Whatever it was, there was a lot of action
going in by way of preparation. Every other site in camp contained
people who were slicing, dicing, basting, ricing, cooking, pasting,
frying, boiling, flying, pooching, broiling and sautéing (if they were
all fancy-like and suspiciously French). The gent in bright blue (below
left) had several spitted chickens going over his fire. Andrea
Logsdon (below center) was making a recipe of sausage,
cabbage and I believe some other things which I don't recall. (Sorry for
the lousy photo, Andrea. I'll make it up with a much cooler shot later
in the journal.) Michael and Kate Bagley were doing the honor for the Mercury
camp (below right). I don't know what is so shocking about
red potatoes, but I'll leave it for you to wonder.
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Like last year, the hour specified for dinner passed (although no one knew
because we don't wear watches - it's not period accurate), yet the psychic vibe or
something alerted everyone to the beginning of the pitch-in dinner and we
all converged on the pavilion (left.) The table was stacked
with food, including many things your vegetarian surgeon could eat, so I
was quite satisfied.
Well, I was quite satisfied with the food. I ended up sitting next to Jay (below left), who ate from a frying pan, and Sam (below center), who ate from a bucket. Ah, yes. Pirate table manners. (Of the two vessels, I'd have chosen the bucket myself. There was an awful lot of good food up there on the table (below right). Fortunately, cool girl Suzanne Larner (also below right in the red kerchief) was sitting on my other side eating from a normal plate like a normal person.
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After such a splendid repast, there is only one thing your ship's
surgeon craves - coffee. (Who said rum? That comes later!) Finding no
coffee on the table, I went to the Widow Black's Coffeehouse and
begged. (When it comes to postprandial coffee, I am not proud.) She said
if I got the fire going again, she would make some. So I started to pick
up bits of stick and stuff from the ground. Chole saw this and had pity
on me, dipping into her secret stash of fire starting stuff. (Chole
roasts and makes coffee all day long, so she's got to be ready for such
emergencies.) She then went through the steps of making coffee, which I
know you're all dying to see in photographic detail. Who am I to deny
you? First you get water (right. Duh.) Then you
look at the monstrous fire the guys have built (Jay Henderson helped me)
and you laugh to yourself and mutter, "Boys!" (Center
left,) Then you place the pot with ground coffee that you have
added off screen onto a bunch of hooks over the large fire. Then you
wait. You explain that you decided to create a coffee house because it
was something other than a tavern as well as being a social center and
source of nectar for the coffee-addicted
Great Lakes River
Pirates. When done, you pour and make the surgeon a happy
man.
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Once I had my coffee, the Sailor's Divvy could take place. (Well, they
weren't actually waiting on me, but that's how I viewed it.) "Sailor's
Divvy" is Indianaese for "Auction to Support the Paynetown
Event."
Like last year, event organizers Nathanael and Jen
were the auctioneers. Nathanael is a very good auctioneer and Jen is a big
flirt. Among the interesting things up for auction was a deerskin (at
left. Move your pointer over the picture to watch Nathan put it on
his head. Seriously.) I believe it went for $90 which seemed like a pretty
reasonable price to me (not that I have any idea what a deerskin is worth.)
This and one of Michael Bagley's cartouche boxes (below left)
were the highest priced items auctioned. (Michael and Kate
seem
to be able to get good prices at auctions.) Several other things were
auctioned off in support of the event including a silk scarf which Jen put
around her waist and danced in. She offered to let the winner remove it,
which he did (below center right). For myself, I won a bag
of Chole Black's coffee for $10 (which you can almost see below
right.) It was a fine fundraiser.
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After the auction, I wandered over to Chole's Coffee House where she,
Kate and Michael were planning on going swimming because it was so hot
and humid. They invited me, but I demurred, explaining "I don't
have a swimsuit." "You don't need one!" Chole answered,
"You can go in your clothes. During period it was called
paddling." "Then my underpants will be wet again." They
all thought this was funny. Thinking on it, I decided it would be
something to write about, so I tentatively agreed. Kate said we first
needed drinks, so she, Michael and I went over to make some yummy drink
with pineapple juice in it (left.) While we were gone,
Chole changed into her period bathing costume (right.)
Drinks in hand Michael, Kate, Chole and I headed down to the beach. With the weather so hot and sticky, a goodly number of re-enactors had already climbed into their swimming trunks and waded out into the lake before us. They were not paddling, of course; they had proper swim trunks and weren't fools. So we waded out with them. The water was like bathwater. I tried not to think of all the kids that had been crowding the lake during the day who thought the bathrooms were too far a walk. Of course, this may have been counteracted by the consecration of the water during the baptism. One can only hope... I ended up making several trips in and out of the water for reasons that seemed most important at the time but which I have already forgotten. Jen was up on the wall chatting with someone in the water when our group went in, and I managed to catch a nice shot of her coming back from her perch on one of my trips (below center). Since we four were the only ones "paddling," I asked Jay Henderson to get a photo of us for the journal (below right).
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Since I had a camera and was not a camera wimp like Kate, Nathan got the idea to take a shot of everyone. They assembled in a rag-tag manner and I got a photo of the lot of us (below). It was a good time. Kate suggested that I should thank her and Michael for getting me to do all sorts of weird things like this. The truth is, thoughts of doing the Journal gets me to do all sorts of weird things like this. So I should thank you, dear reader, for my wet underpants.
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Paddling proved to be a most refreshing sport. Climbing out of the water, I don't even recall worrying about the damp - it was a nice feeling after being sweating in all those period clothes throughout the day. Not wanting to climb into the cloth seats of my truck in soaking clothing, I wandered over to the Thatcher's Mansion, where I found Silas to be a most accommodating host. (below left - A real pirate, Silas. Ok, I didn't take any photos of the night scene because I didn't want to have my camera sitting in wet pockets, but these photos accurately reflect the activity. Trust me.) As I sat there, mellowing out while I dried, Grace offered to give me a back scratch. Connie Thatcher explained that Grace was a champion back scratcher and foot massager. She has even developed her own finger limbering exercises to stay in shape for the sport (below right). Grace told me that she could keep scratching my back "all night without getting tired." (Well, until her parents made her go to bed, anyhow.) I got a good 15 minutes of it, which made me sleepy. So I bid everyone goodnight and went back to the hotel. I shudder to think what the wedding party members in the elevator with me thought of the drip-dried pirate guy. Ah, the heck with 'em.
(Photo: Mission)
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