yes, we have monuments and tshirts and keychains and .....

gettysburg is the good, the bad and the commercial of tourism all wrapped up into one gaudy package.

we began our extended tour on the 21st with a visit to downtown gettysburg. not surprisingly my first impression was of how disneyesque the area was. pristine building after pristine building. employee's dressed in period costumes. every store selling the same knick knacks from the same overseas sweatshop. just what you would expect from a "tourist destination".

some of the "junk" was more unique than others. many stores have various debris collected from the battlefield. pieces of cannonball's, grapeshot fragments, old bullets. boxes and boxes of the stuff. and all well overpriced.

instead of cartoon characters like mickey and donald the t-shirts all feature your favorite civil war general. anyone from lee to lincoln can be found.

further away from downtown near the national cemetary is where the tackiness is displayed proudly. circa 1890's houses have now become bastions of the bad tshirt and dull postcard. the fronts of most are haunted by the purveyors of gettysburg ghost tours. as featured on a&e or the history channel or the discovery channel or the local channel. every tour has been featured on some channel or another. it may have even reached the point where the tours outnumber the ghosts because i am sure that most of them have left the area in search of peace and quiet.

the big debate in the area is the possible development of a casino complex. the no's seem to carry a lot of weight with their concerns that a casino would take away from the history of the area. preserving historical areas is very important so there are places where future generation can go to learn. yet when the entire area is already commercialized what is left to be preserved.

it is rather ironic that the confederate army moved into the gettysburg area because of a rumor that they would be able to find much needed clothing and supplies. instead they found the turning point of the war and the beginning of the end for the confederacy. if they had only waited one hundred and forty years they would have been able to shop to their hearts content.