Keeping It FUN!

by Judi McWilliams

Chris Robins - Part Seven

"The Ten Foot Rule..."
I asked Mr. Robins if he knew about “the ten foot rule”. I wrote about this in my article dated October 20th, 2010 called "Do You Pass the Ten Foot Rule?". Chris had not heard of this, but tells me that his uniforms are mostly accurate for the time. His hunting frocks, as he says, “look kind-of cool". They are made out of linen, which was authentic to the time, but, during the summer re-enactments, are a whole lot more comfortable! I asked him if spectators were critical of either the authenticity of their uniforms, gear or the actual battles themselves that they re-enact. He states, only twice, once being a re-enactment of the American Civil War in Norwood, where a spectator wanted to see the War of 1812, not the American’s. Chris was ready with a great response to this criticism by inviting the gentleman back next year to watch the 1812 battle! And, sure enough, the gentleman showed up that following year! The other criticism that Chris immediately fixed was that of an incorrectly labeled musket on his website. In doing so, he came to see the actual Baker riffle, when a gentleman took the time to bring it along to show him. This leads me right back to where Chris started, when he said he loves the live of re-enactments and living history. He tells me that “it just was the way they did things”. His final story of the day was a time when he was in a re-enactment. There was no wind at the time and many cannons went off leaving a thick mass of smoke in the air. He was portraying a British soldier that day and they did not know how many folks they would be “battling”. Suddenly jackets started to appear coming right through the dense smoke, hundreds of jackets, hundreds of men. Chris tells me that he said out loud “ that’s so cool” (and I saw the glimmer in his eyes even though we were just standing in his classroom as he remembered) … then he said out loud “we’re so screwed”. Chris does re-enacting for the love of it, but, mostly, as I’ve witnessed, he does it for the FUN of it!