The Picnic

        It was a monthly ritual my family when I was growing up: the lunch picnic at the local suburban park on the third weekend of every month. The park contained what seemed to be acres upon acres of grass, nestled against the hills for those who wished to go hiking. There were pine trees sprinkled throughout to provide shade and a smattering of bushes along the edges, but for the most part, it was well-kept grass. The park was spacious enough to where it would be impossible not to find a spot for a family picnic even on the most crowded of days, absent a special event such as a concert or fair, which rarely coincided with the picnic weekends.            

               This particular day was the type of spring weather one imagines when they think of the term “perfect weather.” There was not a single cloud in the sky, yet the temperature could hardly be considered anything more than balmy. There was a gentle breeze to keep the atmosphere around us cool, but nothing strong enough to pick up any of our plates and utensils and toss them several feet.

               The parking lot was busier than normal, which was weird because we couldn’t see anyone as we entered the park. But it wasn’t unheard of. Sometimes a running club or cycling group meets at the park and would exercise on various streets, much to the chagrin of drivers who came across the club. (I still remember the words my dad would use when he came across one of these groups, but the words are unfit for publication in this story.) Despite the parking lot being busier than the park’s actual population would suggest, my family thankfully found a parking space approximately eighty or so feet from our usual picnicking spot. The usual spot was, like most of the park, wide open grass without a tree in sight- my dad said he likes the spot because then he didn’t have to worry about “squirrel droppings” falling on him or the food. Yet we knew where the spot was due to its distance from a pine tree close to the parking lot.

                Dad parked his 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air. He stretched his arms in the air as if we were on a long road trip instead of a ten-minute drive. I also exited the car and mimicked my dad’s stretch. I was happy to not be crammed in the back seat with Grandpa anymore. Looking back after all this time, I understand why he needed it, but as a seven-year-old kid, I could not stand the smell of Grandpa’s Ben-Gay ointment. He also had a nasty habit of spreading out his legs- in modern parlance, manspreading -minimizing the amount of leg room I had.

               My mom also exited the vehicle, holding her beige leather purse in one hand, while using her other hand to grab her light yellow dress to make sure it would not be caught on any of the car door’s various latches. “Sunscreen time!” she yelled in a calm, motherly voice designed to get the kid’s attention and bring the kids to her.

               “Oh, I almost forgot!” I responded meekly, yet instinctively. As a lighter-skinned person, the ritual of Mom applying sunscreen to my skin was an important one. Without that application, my skin easily turned tomato red. Since my mom and I had both exited the right side of the car, I just spun around without my right ankle leaving the ground. She pulled up my turquoise blue polo shirt and applied the sunscreen to my bare back. Then she pulled my shirt back down to my cargo shorts and rubbed the sunscreen on my neck. This part always made my neck feel ticklish. She then rubbed up behind my ears. I then spun around. Her sun hat’s brim was touching the top of my head as she dabbed the last bit of sunscreen on her hands on my nose. “There we go,” she said calmly. Then, she loudly shouted for my little sister “Emily!” in that same motherly voice, although I wish she hadn’t screamed so close to my ear.

               “I DON’T WANT TO!” Emily screamed as if possessed by a demon about to be christened by holy water. I never understood why Emily was so adamant about not having sunscreen applied to her. But it was time for the next part of the ritual: corralling Emily. Emily was still on the right side of the car, near the door, putting a flower in her own sun hat. I jogged around the back of the trunk, trapping Emily between Dad and myself. Dad, however, was not paying attention to Emily. He was standing on the left side of the hood of the car, blocking Emily’s egress towards the park, but he was attentive to whatever story Grandpa was telling him. Emily made a run for it. Dad caught her with his right arm. Despite his scrawny arms, pocket protector, and thick glasses, he had a surprising amount of strength. He held Emily in place, lifting her off the ground with only his left arm wrapped around her red dress and waist, all while she was thrashing her arms and legs about, without breaking concentration from Grandpa. Grandpa didn’t even stop speaking during the whole episode. This was the routine every month, so why would anyone treat this like it was some sort of anomalous behavior?

               After the sunscreen was applied to Emily’s cheeks, our family walked the approximately eighty feet to our spot. If we somehow thought the park’s emptiness as we drove up was due to our view somehow being blocked, the walk to the picnic spot disproved that theory.  There was still a lack of people are in any direction from us, yet none of us paid attention at the time. Once we reached the spot, Dad asked me to unfurl the ten-foot square blanket, which I readily obliged. The blanket, sown by Mom, was a pattern of approximately one-inch squares alternating white and red. Once the blanket was unfurled, we all sat in a circle, although us kids were more laying down with our bellies on the blanket compared to sitting. Dad placed the white ice chest on the blanket towards the corner. As soon as he did that, Mom distributed the sandwiches she always made for the situation: ham and cheddar on Wonderbread, slightly slathered with mayonnaise, cut diagonally. As I began to nosh on the sandwich, Grandpa regaled us with a lovely story about how he once gouged out the eye of a bear who tried to steal his “pic-a-nic” basket- although I think he was conflating the show Yogi Bear with one of the war stories he loved telling. Mom was attempting, yet failing, to pre-empt the story by talking about her trip to the stylist that previous Tuesday, yet Grandpa continued with his story unabated.

               Somehow, my dad, Emily, and I managed to finish our sandwiches as Grandpa told his grotesque story. Once Grandpa finished, Mom opened her mouth to talk about the process of making her hair look like Jaqueline Kennedy’s hair, but Dad interrupted, “Junior, why don’t you go to the car, get a couple gloves, and we can play catch. We keep playing, maybe someday you can play for the Washington Senators and be the next Whitey Ford.” Why Dad mentioned a team that had been defunct for decades and a player that had been retired for decades is beyond me. However, being the perfect, dutiful son, I responded “Golly gee, dad! Of course!”

               As I stood up to grab our gloves, there was a loud bugle horn tone echoing across the park. The sudden noise caused me to stop in my tracks. “Was this the famed trumpets in the Book of Revelation that my Sunday School teacher was always talking about?” I thought aloud, too shocked by the thought of the end times to move. I had only made it a couple of steps towards the car before the horn.

Suddenly a volley of a couple dozen arrows came from the bushes in the hills south of us across the park towards the bushes on the north end. Given the distance between the hills and bushes was several hundred yards, the arrows fell well short of the bushes, yet still safely past our family’s picnic basket. From behind the bushes came a retaliatory volley of arrows towards the hills that also fell well short of their presumable targets in the hills, yet beyond our family.

               “Charge! For House of York!” bellowed a loud, deep voice from behind the bushes.

Then, out of the bushes rushed a couple dozen bodies in two lines of twelve dressed in steel plated suits covering their entire bodies. While the people looked as if they were attempting to run, their speed was at a pace from a jog, presumably due to the weight of the plates. Some were holding in their right hand approximately two-and-a-half-foot foam broad swords spray painted to be silver. Others were holding similar sized foam molded into the shapes of lances in their right hand, also obviously spray painted. On each person was a circular wooden shield approximately three feet in diameter. On each wooden shield was an upside-down pentagonal design with what appeared to be white rose petals emerging from a yellow pistil within the pentagonal shape; each corner of the pentagonal shape had a small, green, leafy protrusion. In the middle of the lines, there was a large wooden banner approximately five squared with the same design as the shields painted on it.

At approximately the same time, another volley of a couple dozen arrows came from the hills towards the white rose shielded group. Most arrows overshot or undershot the charging lines by several feet, but there were a couple arrows that hit the middle of the group, but the targets were able to put up shields in time to avoid damage. 

               At this point Mom and Dad were scrambling to get the blanket packed up, but Grandpa refused to get up. “He he,” Grandpa chuckled, sitting there while Mom and Dad were trying to pull the blanket out from under him. “Oh, how I miss seeing the lines of German men charging towards our trench getting mowed down in a line!” Grandpa then held his hand up as if he were holding a machine gun, moving left to right, and sputtering his lips to imitate the bullet fire.

               Grandpa wasn’t the only objector. Emily refused to move from being prone on the blanket stomach down. As the parents waved the blanket to wrestle it free from Grandpa and Emily’s weight, Emily kept yelling “I want to watch the robots play!” in between fits of screaming.

               As the family drama unfolded, a yell bellowed from the hills: “CHARGE! House of Lancaster!” Two lines of people were running down the hiking path on the hill. Once the lines reached the bottom of the hill, the lines split into two lines of a dozen people wearing similar garb to the lines that emerged from the bushes. The only differences between the two were that the hill peoples’ shields and banner were instead of a white rose design, the rose design was colored red, pentagon pointed up, and emerging from a white pistil. As soon as I took the entire scene of these phalanxes rushing towards each other, I ran to grab Emily off of the blanket.

               When I began to start running towards the blanket, one of the white rose shield people sprinted to my family, yelling “TIME TRAVELLERS ON THE BATTLEFIELD!” He approached my family, rushing past Mom and Dad, shoved Grandpa off of the blanket and grabbing Emily and placing her down off the blanket in one smooth motion. He then turned to Dad and immediately yelled words that I only heard when Dad drove near cyclists or from my Sunday School teacher when she stubbed her toe or stepped on a Lego. But, if we clean up his profanity every other word, he screamed this to Dad: “Can’t you see the signs?! Are you an idiot! We booked this spot months ago! You didn’t see the signs for the War of the Roses Reenactment Club?! We do this every year!”

               As this apparent War of the Roses re-enactor read Dad the riot act, I looked in the background and saw the two rushing figurations met each other about ten feet behind where the man in the steel suit was yelling in Dad’s face, pointing for him to leave. In that background, I could see people moving their bodies back and forth, dodging the swords or using the shields to block the blows. One could have imagined overly dramatic, sad music, such as Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” playing in the background. I saw a person fall to their right when a sword hit the right oblique. Another person fell backwards as soon as a sword pierced them in the chest.

               Emily began to run towards the battlefield, but the man in the steel suit berating my dad picked her up, handed her to Dad, and then spoke softly to Dad, “Time to go.” He then turned back towards the battlefield and yelled “ENGARD!” He then ran at full speed only to be immediately hit from behind by a sword. The man then fell forward onto his knees, then his chest.

               Mom had finished folding the blanket and engaged in a conversation with Grandpa. I picked up bits and pieces of the conversation and it seems he was bemoaning the rise of feminism, a favorite topic of complaint by Grandpa that would keep him distracted until he got the car. Yet, this conversation died surprisingly quick. The entire family was walking slowly and silently towards the car, not looking at the battle engaging behind me despite the yells emanating from the field. Even Emily wasn’t thrashing about while being held by Dad. It was as if the carnage behind us affected the mood of the family.

               Dad opened up his right rear door and place Emily in the seat. Grandpa entered the right rear door and then I did. Dad entered the driver’s front door and Mom entered the front passenger’s side. We all clicked our seatbelts. As Dad turn his head to reverse the vehicle out of the parking lot, he muttered “Well then,” as if attempting to start some conversation to take our minds off of the picnic interruption.

               We drove away from the parking lot and to our right and left were two massive boards, possibly eight square feet, with the sign: “PARK CLOSED DUE TO SPECIAL EVENT! WAR OF ROSES REENACTMENT CLUB MEETING!” To this day, I still am not sure how all five of us missed these signs, but it led to one interesting picnic.