Lore and skill of early days preserved

By Damian Gessel
The Daily Item

May 04, 2008 04:00 am

— NORTHUMBERLAND -- Five seconds. That's all it took Neal Sheptock to make fire from flint and steel Saturday at the sixth annual Northumberland History Day.
Sheptock, of Montgomery, and two others -- Gary Ent, of Bloomsburg, and Andrew Kester, of Benton -- held court Saturday in one section of the History Day celebration. All three wore 1750s-era period dress: deer skin coats, beaver fur hats. They were reenacting life as it would have been for some of Central Pennsylvania's earliest Western settlers.
"There are a million crazies out there like us," Sheptock, an elementary school teacher, joked. There wasn't anything fake about the trio's commitment to reenactment, though. They cooked bacon and apples Saturday in a little pot over a fire pit in the ground. They displayed their black powder rifles, tomahawks and knives, all of which they say they actually use to hunt.
The 1750s-period "long hunters" comprised only a part of Northumberland's annual History Day on Saturday. Confederate flags, Civil War buffs and memorabilia, local history junkies, authentic tea party food (all delicious, as this reporter can attest), music courtesy of Danville's own Van Wagner and other festivities rounded out the day.
"It grows a little each year," said Mark Gulliver, a Northumberland resident and member of the History Day Committee. "People really get into it."
Gulliver said the day's goal, other than bringing tourists to Northumberland, is to arouse in residents an excitement for history.
"Ultimately, we want people to get excited about history. It's nice to come down here and see what it was like," he said.
For the record, making fire from flint and steel isn't as easy as it appears. One sadly inept reporter's repeated attempts to make sparks from stone failed miserably.
n E-mail comments to dgessel@dailyitem.com.

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