Can we Gettys-burger please?

Can we Gettys-burger please?? – The first full day of our married life together, Mark and I spent driving to Gettysburg.  The second morning, we were ready for battle!  Mark set the alarm at the crack of dawn to tour the battlefield while the dew was still fresh on the plain.  We had a continental breakfast in the hotel and hurried off to the Gettysburg museum for our day of history fun!  Woo hoo!  The girl behind the counter told us that there were a couple options.  We could join a group tour and travel around by bus to see the battlefield with a narrator, or we could take a self-guided tour with a cassette tape and listen to the narration in our own vehicle.  Both tours were approximately 45 minutes long.  I opted for the tour bus with the fun people that could laugh and chatter with us along the way.   Mark decided his own “self-guided” tour would be better.  And so we set out.  I snuggled in beside him on this crisp and chilly September morning and he drove.  He put the cassette tape in the portable tape player they gave us.  We began to slowly, and I mean SLOWLY drive.  The car was a stick-shift and I’m pretty sure he never got out of first gear.  We listened to 60 seconds on the cassette.  It was something like, “Welcome to the Gettysburg tour.”  And then Mark stopped the cassette and the car and got out.  He looked right and then he looked left.  He stood there for a long time.  I wondered if he was already lost, but it was pretty simple to drive straight on this boring road surrounded by grass and trees, so that couldn’t be the problem.  He knew exactly where he was.  He just wanted to get out of the car and breathe in the sense of the Gettysburg battle or something.  I also got out of the car and took his arm and leaned in.  I smiled up at his beautiful face and said, “it’s really cold out here.”  (hint, hint!) 

Mark came back to the car and I am serious when I tell you, the entire tour with Mark driving took over FOUR hours!!  He literally drove 10 feet and would get out.  You know those plaques that are all around historical sites with tons and tons of words on them and nobody ever reads them??  Well, Mark read them.  All of them!  He would stop the cassette, get out of the car, and read the information.  Then he would walk in the middle of this field and just stand there for what seemed like forever.  He would point at a tree or ridgeline and say “can’t you just see the troops marching over that tree line?”  And then he would stand there and stare longer.  I wondered if he was getting delusional because I didn’t see any of that stuff.  He was engrossed.  He talked about the battle, the weapons, the uniforms, the weather, the food, the commanders, the infantry, the boots and the equipment.  He talked about the strategy and what worked and what could have worked better.  I continued to get out of the car with him at every stop for the first 20 stops.  The rest of the 25 or 30 stops, I let him get out on his own.  By now it was very warm and I had the window rolled down in our non-air-conditioned vehicle with my feet sticking out of the window.  I was hot, bored and hungry.  He was in battle fatigues in his mind and not allowing himself to think of his wife back home.  He was certifiably nuts and he was all mine!  As the years went by, I realized that his love of history and the zillions of hours he spent researching battles and wars and ships and aircraft carriers and on and on and on, would be the one thing he held onto after his disability took hold.  His last day here was spent working with Andrea on a game for some Russian and French army.  He was an Armchair General, but he could have been Secretary of Defense for our country with all that knowledge in that big ol’ round head of his!  I miss you Mark Searle and all your quirky behavior!