Local historian Lester Goggin, one of the head organizers of the reenactment of the American Civil War Battle of Chickamauga, scheduled to commemorate its 150th anniversary, was facing a crisis several weeks ago.
“We were looking at the number of participants, and we were nowhere close to having enough authentic-looking reenactors to properly stage the Battle of Chickamauga,” said Goggin, speaking of the event that will be held this weekend at Mountain Cove Farms in Chickamauga, GA.
“The unusually low participation rate among the local bearded community was totally unexpected,” said Goggin. “Apparently, much of our base this season is either following around ZZ Top on their latest tour or engaged in intense Duck Dynasty viewing marathons.”
Then, Goggin got an idea while walking past the Flying Squirrel Bar one evening, which changed everything.
“I saw this young man standing outside smoking a cigarette, with an outrageous beard, wearing skinny jeans, plastic neon-green rimmed sunglasses and a trucker cap that had a rebel flag and the words ‘Heritage not hate’ on it,” said Goggin. “There were dozens more like him inside.”
“At first, I thought, ‘What a douche,'” said Goggin. “Then I thought, ‘These hipsters just might be the solution to our Civil War reenactment problem.'”
With the promise of free Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Goggin recruited around twenty bearded hipsters for the Battle of Chickamauga reenactment before encountering another problem: word spread quickly on Facebook and Tumblr that doing Civil War reenactments was becoming too mainstream.
“I had to think fast and not lose this pool of hipsters,” said Goggin. “So, I planted the idea that although doing Civil War reenactments was becoming mainstream, a hipster could do it ironically and still keep his hipster cred.”
It worked, and Goggin was able to successfully recruit thousands of local bearded hipsters for this weekend’s reenactment.
