Historical Doritos

Here is a little-known "historical" fact: Abraham Lincoln ate Doritos! :-) Last Friday Greg and I went to the Old State Capitol for the annual Civil War Encampment. Who did we find there--but Abraham Lincoln himself. Of course I had to get a picture. The man's real name is Fritz Klein, and he has to be the best Lincoln re-enactor in the world. He looks JUST like him!!! He is the one who plays Lincoln in the film we show at the visitor center. When we first ran into him he was eating a bag of Doritos. I said, "Mr. Lincoln, you eat Doritos?" He smiled and said, "Oh, yes, it's a rather new thing I discovered." I told him that I work at his house, and he said, "Are they taking good care of it these days?" :-)

Then for the last few days I've gotten to do a little historical dress-up myself. Our living history program is now in full swing, and our superintendent has requested that at least half of the staff be in living history clothes at all times. It's a lot of fun. Kids especially love seeing us walking around, and it adds to the historical ambiance of the neighborhood. As you can see, I'm sporting a green dress with a small pink and blue flower pattern, along with a sun hat and some fake hair :-) My hair isn't long enough to be historically accurate, so I have a bundle of fake hair that I stuff into my snood--which is basically a glorified hairnet. I actually look pretty great--if I do say so myself.

This morning I encountered my first truly terrible visitor at the Lincoln Home. I was the ranger at the front visitor center desk, and a bus group of senior citizens came in while the other rangers were still at the morning meeting. One of the group members came up to the desk and was asking about the film we show. It was about 9:03 a.m., and the group was scheduled to go into the house at 9:20. I told him that our film had already started and that it wouldn't be finished in time for them to go on their tour. But then he kind of freaked out and started swearing, wondering why we couldn't wait a few minutes for them to finish the movie. Finally after some unsuccessful negotiations I put on my mean face and said, "Fine, go watch the movie." Then he started worrying that the group would leave before he was done, so he talked all of them into going to the movie. Needless to say, by 9:07 a.m., I was fed up with people all together and was ready for the day to be done. The other rangers were very upset with the man, and he got a lot of angry looks from people. He was very nasty. But luckily there were a lot of nice people at the park today too, so my mood progressively improved throughout the day.