Variations outfits Elaine has researched and put together

One young man who saw her at the Poppy Seed Festival, said his grand mother dressed that way til the day she died. She enjoys the trips and is preparing to go with me to Utah and Brackettville. She is looking for an authentic carpet bag and bought an 1866 small bible off of ebay. You know it is refreshing to see her out there with the fellows, roughing it, but then that is what she would have done had she been there long ago. I only insist that she does it for herself and not to please me. I have questioned her on this several times, each time she is adamant about her desires. She has expressed what many of us have, and that is the desire to know about ourselves, the history of us. Of course the books will do, but she has the desire to go a step further and experience it, that part which we can. I once said at a conference many years ago, that same conference attended by Colin Powell; when some one asked me on stage, what was it I felt and what caused me to put on the attire,...could I really speak for them, our ancestors.

I may not be able to chase German ME-109's through B-17 flying Fortress formation with my "Red-Tailed" P-51 Mustang, I will never follow Captain Cailoux and the men of 1st Louisiana Native Guards into the abatis that was the defenses at Port Hudson. Yet where there is a P-51, I can sit in the cockpit and imagine, with their eyes I shall see the German in my site, "I too will not let a single Bomber that I am escorting fall to his guns". If there is an inch of the soil of the Port Hudson Battle field left, I can walk it, my heart will beat and my feet will move to a distant drum and I will rush forward at the double quick in the wake of Cailoux's spirit. The spirits of these men and women still occupy the desperate places where once life stood in the balance and their individual effort tipped the scales. They do not come to us, we come to them and they show us a wondrous view of lives once glorious lived and we with the enthusiasm of one standing on a rise looking into the fertile valley of the promise land, with all excitement, tell it, tell what we have seen, their story. It is a fire that burns hard in ones bosom and Elaine has been "Touched by it". It is long to burn and a light for others to see.

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