FRIDAY MORNING SAW him pulling the crappy gray car into the designated visitor lot at the fort’s welcome center. He paid for his admission ticket and in turn received a map of the fort’s layout, along with a much-too-perky “Enjoy your day!” from the blond teenage girl manning the ticket window.
He scanned the map briefly before he stepped back outside.
This is not what I expected, he admitted. Not at all. For some reason the word ‘fort’ conjures up big, thick, tall stone walls in my mind. If they ever even existed here, they didn’t last.
Directly in front of the visitor’s center, a small group of men were erecting several oversized canvas tents in the open field that the map identified as the parade grounds, presumably for the week-long festivities kicking off on Monday. Looking south a
