The drinks are on me

I swear to you, this is how it went down:

Our cluster of six Civil War buffs were enjoying our last night together dining at the historic Mansion House 1757 Boutique Inn in Fairfield, PA, just a skedaddle away from Gettysburg.

As it can sometimes happen, when six guys get together, our voices might carry just a bit in a restaurant. This time, they carried to the husband and wife sitting at a table across the socially-distanced aisle from us.

"Excuse me," said the gentleman there. "Did I hear you're from North Carolina?"

We told him that four of the six of us were. 

"Oh," he said. "I worked in Charlotte for 25 years."

We told hm that we were from Lexington, and isn't that amazing?

"Great barbecue there," he said. "By the way, do you know Ted Royster?"

 Ted was a District Court and then a Superior Court judge for our area and who recently passed away. He was also our former neighbor who lived on the block behind our alley.

So my head exploded. I mean, we're 400 miles from Lexington and we run into a guy who knows Ted Royster? Incredible.

Turns out, this gentleman worked with Tad Royster, Ted's son. I believe I covered Tad at some point in my sports writing years at The Dispatch when he played basketball at Lexington Senior High School. Gosh.

We talked with him for a while longer, and then when he got up to leave, he came over to our table and said, "Gentlemen, your next round of drinks are paid for." And then he left, walked out the door and faded into the early evening twilight like a Gettysburg ghost, presumably never to be seen by us again.

This would have been remarkable if nearly the same thing hadn't happened 48 hours earlier.

Wednesday was the day the six of us assembled for our annual three-day weekend in Gettysburg. We gather together at the Appalachian Brewing Company, arriving from points in North Carolina, Arkansas and Pennsylvania. We're usually a bit travel weary, in need of a nap, and hungry. Four of the six of us are in our 70s, and the other two are in their 60s, and we've made this trip to Gettysburg for more than 30 years, either on our own or as students at the Civil War Institute on the campus of Gettysburg College. We were dorm-mates when we attended the CWI each year for a week of seminars and field trips. That's how we met. A band of brothers.

But all of us showed up on Wednesday within an hour of each other, glad to have coalesced again after missing last year due to the pandemic.

While we're catching up at the bar, a gentleman comes in to order beer to take out (Pennsylvania liquor laws are archaic and defy explanation) and he notices that one of our group, Paul Becker, is wearing a Vietnam Veteran baseball cap. Paul, a Navy man, served on a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin for two years during the mid-1960s.

Anyway, this fellow comes up to Paul and thanks him for his service and they start a conversation. This guy, it turns out, is a former Marine who put in 30 years, mostly as a master gunnery sergeant, and he's been deployed at various locations around the world. There's a little bit of good-natured Navy vs. Marine trash talking that ensues between the two of them, but no fisticuffs. (That might have been fun to watch, though).

He talks with us for nearly an hour and then, when he leaves, he pulls out his debit card and tells the barkeep that the next round of drinks are on him. I tell him, "Thank you, sir, but I didn't serve."

"It doesn't matter," he said, pointing to Paul. "You're with him."

Holy smokes.

I suppose I could have had my entire weekend paid for by others if I was devious enough and knew how to manipulate the circumstances, but as my wife pointed out when I told her these stories, "You know, this shows you that there's still good people in the world."

Indeed. Maybe even better than good.

 

Another blog about our Gettysburg experience will follow tomorrow. There's just too much to talk about for one entry. At least there is for me.