Re-enactors portray Christmas on the frontier

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — Christmas at Old Fort Concho could be called a big tent event.

It’s a holiday season celebration with Santa Claus and miles of decorations. It’s a weekend for education with hands-on activities from sewing to soldiering for children. There’s dining and entertainment. And running inside and beside all this is the Winter Rendezvous on Saturday and Sunday.

For the nation’s community of re-enactors, the Winter Rendezvous is the weekend’s big draw.

“A lot of us only know each other by our re-enactor name,” said Lil Grizz, a hat maker from Hill City, Kan., who refused to give another name.

“When you think of it, we are in that persona,” he said. “In a sense, we’re all actors or we’re playing the same games we did as kids.”

Lil Grizz was setting up his canvas workshop on the Sutler Row side of the parade ground. A sutler was a trader who sold provisions to the Army during Fort Concho’s heyday. The fort was active during the Indian Wars era, after the end of the Civil War, from 1867 to 1889.

Chris Morgan, education director and living history coordinator at Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, said vendors such as Lil Grizz are full-time re-enactors, while some of the living history participants “have day jobs.”

During the Winter Rendezvous, many of the participants will stay in their canvas tents, part of living the frontier lifestyle. The fort provides a field kitchen tent to feed the participants, with dining hall tents provided and set up by troops from Goodfellow Air Force Base.

Staff Sgt. Amanda Otero said Goodfellow troops will staff barricades and ticket booths.

“A couple of NCOs will just be out perusing the area, making sure everything goes OK,” she said.

Re-enactor groups from Fort Chadbourne and Fort McKavett state historic sites will participate, as will a group from the 1st Cavalry Division Museum based at Fort Hood, an active Army post, Morgan said.

He said civilian contributions will include soap-making demonstrations at a laundress tent, Texas Rangers and families doing such activities as grinding corn and cooking over open fires in iron pots.

The Winter Rendezvous is also an opportunity for the fort to display its collection of tents.

“We have representations of all the canvas of the 19th century,” Morgan said, including a Sibley tent, a design used extensively by the U.S. Army before and during the Civil War, and an Indian lodge.

“Indian tepees are the way to go,” Morgan said. “They had a few hundred years to figure it out.”

Lil Grizz said he and some of his buddies got interested in history re-enactment in high school in the 1960s. He also worked for a hat maker and later started specializing in historic hats.

“I don’t make a modern hat,” Lil Grizz said. “When I say modern, the Stetson and that type came later with the Wild West shows in the late 1880s. They got flashy back then.”

Lil Grizz stays in costume: a black, wide-brimmed hat with a round crown, a blue scarf tied around his throat over a collarless striped shirt and black vest with brass buttons, his dust brown pants tucked into tall black boots.

He has a shop in Kansas and travels to weekend re-enactment gatherings, most recently from Fort Smith, Ark., to Natchez, Miss., then to Texas for a Civil War re-enactment event at Hempstead and an 1840s event at Glen Rose, before arriving for the Winter Rendezvous at Fort Concho.

“I have been everywhere,” he said.

Between two of the fort’s permanent buildings, members of the Concho Cowboy Co. were putting up the facade of an Old West town.

“We re-enact the Old West from the 1870s to the 1890s,” said Richard Porter, also known as Will Killem. “We’ll be doing skits and shows. We have some other groups coming down from Abilene.”

The group formed in 2006, but Porter said he’s been re-enacting since he bought his first toy gun in the 1950s.

Member Karen Smith, also known as Madam Sunshine, said she does tours of Miss Hattie’s for the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce.

“We do a lot of entertaining in town but this is our premier local event,” she said.

“We’re recreating the original town but we don’t have enough saloons or brothels,” Porter said.

Morgan has been working at the fort since 1990 and frequently participates in living history events as an Army captain.

“I’m distantly related to Sir Henry Morgan, the original Capt. Morgan, the privateer,” he said.

Re-enacting an era is a hobby for most people, he said.

“First you have to decide what era of history really tweaks your fancy,” Morgan said. “You start with the basic stuff, the clothes. The uniform, if you do the military stuff, has to be right. Then equipage. Then weapons, original or reproductions.”

He said a “good, shootable rifle” for an Indian Wars soldier will cost from $800 to $1,200. The uniform could cost another $800 for a good reproduction.

“If you’re a cavalryman, you can easily add a thousand for the saddle, a thousand for the horse, then there’s the truck and trailer to haul ’em. Artillery re-enactors, it could be $40,000.

“It all depends on what the wife and the bank account will let you do.”

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