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THE boy held the Brown Bess musket on his lap and ran his hands over it, lovingly. He had never played with guns as a child, never played Cops?and?Robbers or Cowboys?and?Indians.
Even now, he had no desire to hunt, but he had saved his money and bought the Brown Bess himself. Because with the Brown Bess, it was different.
This was the gun that had won freedom for the country.
“In Trenton,” he said, “they fought with a bayonet on the end. The powder got wet when they crossed the Delaware.”
He knew about Trenton, the boy did. Although only 15½, he had crossed the river twice on Christmas Day in the Revolutionary War re?enactment. He worked part time as a tour guide at the Old Barracks in Trenton, and had volunteered his time at the Washington Crossing Museum (across the river in Bucks County, Pa.) and at the Thompson Neely House down the road.
The boy is one of the 5,000 people Charlie Stone talks about.
“In a matter of minutes, I could raise you an army of 5,000 that I know of alone,” he said. “The Governor could have an army in this state if he wanted one. Well?regulated, too.
“Every man who goes into a re?enactment would die on the sands of Beach Haven, if he had to. They are that dedicated. I know doctors, lawyers, even Indians in re?enactment groups who are so dedicated that they'd really fight if they had to. And their wives and children with them.
“We always had them, the camp followers. The army couldn't have existed without its women.”
At 8:30 on a raw March morning, the pot?bellied stove is already going in Charlie Stone's shop in the old Jersey Central depot in Neshanic Station, just off Route 202 a little north of Flemington. Charlie Stone has had his shop in the depot for the last 12 years. He has been selling guns for 25 or 30 years, and so it was to Charlie Stone's that we went when my son, Ron, wanted his Brown Bess musket.
Charlie Stone has supplied 2,500 people in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware with guns, uniforms, cartridge boxes, leather pouches, hats and all the other trimmings that re?enactment groups need.
“Twenty years ago, the reproductions started when the originals started to disappear,” he said, picking up a Jager rifle stock. “This is the beginning of the Kentucky rifle. I sell this and the blueprints to go with it. People make the gun themselves.”
On another wall are the originals —the Colt Springfields and others, including some dating to 1863. They come mostly from private homes and they sell for 20 times what they went for 10 years ago.
And in his office upstairs were the uniforms (stacked in boxes), the wonlen's long capes and the cotton blouses and skirts that Charlie Stone was supplying for a re?enactment at Washington's Headquarters in Morristown. Also upstairs, Charlie Stone has his mail?order business; with the help of his wife, two daughters and sons, he supplies Revolutionary War groups from Connecticut to Florida with uniforms and accessories.
But Charlie Stone sells more than guns and shoe buckles and cartridge boxes and powder horns. He sells 200 years of the history of a people— the romantic, colorful, pure?wool history, the clean, gleaming shiny?as?shoe?buckles history, the ingrained?in?lovely?wood part of it, a history far removed from death and destruction.
And for that history, there is more demand now than ever.
The Revolution went from 1776 to 1787,” Charlie Stone recalled. “In June, we have the Battle of Monmouth. The Battle of Saratoga is in two years. There is more interest now than during the Bicentennial. The National Park Service puts on the winter encampents at Jockey Hollow in Morristown in April. I'm very busy.”
Charlie Stone is no longer a young man, but he would like to be. Beneath a whiskered face and beat?up old hat, he wears a jacket that says “Neshanic Station Volunteer Fire Company.” (The little town of Neshanic Station, which boasts mostly of big, old houses, tall trees and a famous flea market, dates to the early 1700's.)
But the eyes on the man are old, too old for a man no more than middle?aged. And Charlie Stone is the first one to tell you that he believes in reincarnation.
“My mother's family was here since the 1500's,” he said, “and my father's side are Connecticut Yankees — French Hugenots. They were sutlers — purveyors of guns, ammunition and food for the Revolutionary Army. That's what I am now. A purveyor. I supply the re?enactment groups.
“That's my great?grandfather up there on the wall. He went to California for the Gold Rush. Went by mule and canoe across Panama before the canal was built. When he got there, he discovered that his money would be in leather, the harnesses the mules would use to haul the ore out of the earth.
According to Charlie Stone, the Brown Bess that my son bought was made in Japan. “Others are made in Italy and Spain,” he said, adding that for several years prior to the Bicentennial “you couldn't get any American arms company to make a reproduction.
“When we went to them back in ‘69 to ask, they told us we were crazy that nobody would buy the reproductions Now, the Ithaca Arms Company is making a reproduction, and in one year they are backlogged with four years’ work. And Winchester is finally coming out with its 1894 Bicentennial carbine.”
I asked Charlie Stone why the growing interest in re?enactments.
“We're not at war,” he replied, “so we can play at it and feel good about it. Mankind loves war, even if we are only playing at it.”
It was a noteworthy commentary, one worth thinking about. I thought about it when Charlie Stone, who is in the Essex County Brigade and the Middlesex Militia, showed me the medallion he got for partaking in a re?enactment of the Battle of Princeton.
“It means almost as much to me as the Purple Heart,” he said, and there was a look in his eyes when he said it.
I had seen that look someplace before, but it was not until I was outside Charlie Stone's shop that I remembered where. It was in my boy's eyes when he held the Brown Bess musket in his arms. ?
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