Fife and Drum Miniatures Challenge Coin

 

Since it is the 250th Anniversary today of the Declaration of Independence I want to introduce the Challenge Coin that I will be handing out to players in my games at Historicon. These are 1.75-inches in diameter and are colored in enamel. The front side features the Fife and Drum logo and the reverse mentions the anniversary of the United States.

Post-Historicon I plan to give away free coins to Fife and Drum and Minden customers for all orders of $50.00 or more. If these are well received then I will make another challenge coin with the Minden logo.

Happy July 4th Holiday to all of my blog readers.

Jim

Happy Fourth of July

"Traffic Jam" at the Battle of Cheraw.
Fife and Drum Miniatures and photo  editing by Chris Gregg.

I want to wish all of my blog readers and customers a happy Fourth of July holiday. I hope that you have time to spend with your family and friends today and enjoy some fireworks tonight.

We are having 22 people coming to Schloss Seewald today for a party and yours truly is taking the role as head grill master. I hope that part works out well as I'm still a bit of a tenderfoot at the grill station.

Lelia and I usually start the day by going to the Lake Bluff July 4th Parade. Here are some pictures from previous years' parade to give you a general idea of how this all goes down:

Union Civil War colour guard always leads off the parade.

The world famous Lake Bluff Precision Lawnmower Team now in their 47th year.

Americans love Pipe and Drum bands

Nathaniel Greene sends his regards for a happy holiday.

The Father of Our Country, George Washington

Happy Fourth of July - US Independence Day

The American Legion war veterans always lead off the parade with the carrying of the national colors.

The Fourth of July holiday is when Americans ostensibly celebrate and honor the founding of our country on July 4, 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. What the holiday really is is pure American schtick, fun with family and friends, and above all, remembering that for one day we are all Americans rather than Red State or Blue State partisans.

Der Alte Fritz and Princess Lelia at the parade today.

My daughter Lelia and I will now give you a quick look at the types of things going on in the annual July Fourth parade.

Here in Hesse Seewald (or Lake Forest for today), we begin the day by attending the Lake Bluff annual Fourth of July parade. This is a fun event full of community groups, individuals, real estate companies advertising their services, and a few politicians walking the parade route to shake hands with future voters. It's kitschy, it's silly, and it's a lot of fun - pure Americana.

Civil War re-enactors in the parade

The Blues Brothers joined in on the festivities

The group of about 20 Pugs are always a parade favorite.

Part of the marching Pugs group?

Planters Peanuts Mobile

The parade winds its way through the city of Lake Bluff and attracts quite a large crowd wearing their red, white and blues.

The Midlothian Pipe and Drum band. Always one of my favorites.

Chick Filet's Cow, saying "Eat more Chicken"

Star Wars Re-enactors too?

There were lots of individual marching bands in the parade.

As well as some sitting bands playing some Ragtime tunes atop of fire engine.

One of the dance teams in the parade.

Mr. Peanut was throwing bags of, what else, peanuts to the crowd.

The Wells Fargo stage coach was a new entrant to the parade.

The wargamer in me took this picture so that I could examine the harnesses and traces more closely to copy on my own wagons and artillery limbers.

This guy was part of the old High Wheeler bycycle group - he was a "mid wheeler" perhaps. Love the pith helmet.

A flag drill team that was part of one of the marching bands.

Part of the same band, as in the picture above.

---and here comes the marching band.

After the parade, we head home and get ready for our relatives to visit and enjoy a cookout on the barbeque grill (hamburgers and hot dogs). This is the time we share with our family.

Later in the evening, we will end the day with a viewing of the fireworks in our town.

Happy Fourth of July

ACW re-enactors traditionally lead off the Lake Bluff parade with Old Glory.

This morning I took Lady Emma Cuddleston-Smythe and her friend Lady Cecily Penshurst to the annual Lake Bluff, IL July 4th parade. It was a very hot day with the morning temperatures in the mid 80-degrees Fahrenheit, but it sure beats getting pelted by rain. The parade typically is lead by a company of Union ACW re-enactors, who stop at every intersection of streets and fire off a volley. Very stirring stuff for both wargamers and non-gamers.

Lady Cecily (left) and Lady Emma (right) enjoy the parade

Methinks that the Ladies Emma and Cecily only pretend to enjoy the parade, as they seemed to be more focused on gathering up all of the candy that is thrown from the passing parade floats. There was a company in the parade advertising their fitness club and they were handing out free bottles of water, which proved to be a Godsend since we had not brought any water of our own.

The parade always includes some of the rediculous:


Shriners motorcycle patrol


A bear riding a Segway cycle.


The famous Lake Bluff Precision Drill Lawn Mower team ( a parody of the Shriners's motor cycle routine).

The annual theme of the Lawn Mower team focused on some of our wayward politicians in the US Congress. Ahem.


The lads were wearing plastic pig snouts. Note the newspaper headline on the lawn mower.

And it always includes marching bands and Pipe Bands, which I particularly like. It almost makes me want to go home and paint some Black Watch Highlanders.

One of two Highland bands that participated in this year's parade.

We had a fun time, but we finally had to bug out after about an hour, as we were baking in the hot sun and wanted to find some cool water for refreshment. Sometimes a small cup or bottle of water is the greatest treasure that one could find.

Afterwords, we headed home and Mrs. Fritz offered to take Ladies Emma and Cecily to the beach for the afternoon, meaning that yours truly will be heading off to the basement to paint figures for awhile.

A view of the clutter on my painting table today. It's not very tidy so I will have to do something about that soon, as I'm running out of space. You can see the first company of the 83rd Regiment of Foot in the middle of the table, with the second company in the foreground, waiting their turn to get their uniforms from the quarter master.

I am off to the painting table now. I will post some pictures of the first company of the 83rd Regiment, later this evening. So do come back later.

BTW, we are within a thousand page hits of reaching the 300,000 milestone. Thank you everyone for your continued support of my blog. I only wish that there was some way of figuring out who the 300th thousand person was.

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