Skip to main content

Frontier Day

The weather is warming up and outdoor events and festivals are mushrooming. We moseyed on up to the Stockyards to find out what Frontier Day was all about and plunged into a melee of Civil War soldiers, Indian dancers and longhorn cattle.


I was somewhat puzzled by the preponderance of Civil War re-enactors, and at first just put it down to the fact that this is a very popular period to recreate. In my head the frontier movement west across America happened way before the Civil War. Then, thinking about it later, I realised there wasn't so much of a time gap after all. The original army stockade at Fort Worth wasn't built till 1849, and the Civil War started a mere 12 years later in 1861. Recorded history is compressed into a pretty short space around here.

That still didn't explain why most of the soldiers were dressed in Union blue, here in this most southern of states. Probably the northerners just had better uniforms. One guy kindly lent me his cap and gun.


An army doctor gave us a detailed explanation of how to amputate a leg back in the day, complete with appropriately mutilated model. As he talked about making flaps of skin and flourished a hacksaw to cut through the bone, one of the audience hurried off, groaning loudly and looking somewhat green. At least chloroform had been discovered by then.


Graham says when a car has all the options you can get, it's known as "fully loaded". This pioneer wagon was certainly fully loaded! Axe holders and water-barrel extensions were the modifications of the day, though I'm sure they would have appreciated air con and surround sound.

Just in case you haven't seen them yet, here's the obligatory photos of longhorns and cowboys.

The ones living here have a cushy life, they only have to walk along the street twice a day. Their predecessors of not so long ago trekked for miles across the open plains, through heat, storms and prickly plants. Our lives are also much softer than those of the people who settled this place, and it's good to be reminded of that too.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

A mini-pilgrimage to Derby Cathedral

On a sunny day near the end of June, I set out to walk from my village of Findern to Derby Cathedral. If this had been 1826 or even 1926, this would have been a perfectly normal activity. In 2026, no one spends two hours walking to the nearest city. They drive, or catch a bus. It feels faintly subversive to ignore the more obvious modes of transport and to set off on foot. Priory Way, the footpath north out of Findern, is on the Six-Inch series of OS maps from the late 1800s. It has probably not changed much, give or take a few electrical pylons. The fields and farms are still there. Butterflies flew over bright yellow flowers of lady's bedstraw; a hare paused to look at me; a squirrel panicked and almost ran over my toes. After a few miles I came out at Heatherton Pond, greeting its more manicured path with relief. This is now the edge of Derby city; the boundary runs just south of the lake. However, I was surprised at how much more green space I encountered. A cycle path took me ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sheffield Cathedral: dogs and lions welcome

Earlier in the day I had caught the train up from Derby and visited Rotherham Minster . The Supertram from Rotherham brought me to Sheffield Cathedral just as the clock struck two. I realised as I left the tram that I had totally forgotten my cathedral passport until now. Rotherham may not have had a stamp anyway, though I probably could have got the vicar's signature or something, but I dug the passport out of my bag to be sure to remember it. The shop had a stamp, I was told, and so it did. Formalities completed, I went to explore Sheffield Cathedral. It's a strange jumble of a building; "one of those forever unfinished places" as an architectural journal  describes it. This view along the church towards the east end makes it look pretty standard - a medieval chancel and a Victorian-renovated nave. But if you turn ninety degrees to the north, there is another long axis - a regimental chapel that leads through to the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. At one point in the 193...
Post a Comment
Read more