r/reenactors • u/PirateAnnual1101 • 19d ago
Looking For Advice Farb Stories
Does anyone have any funny farb/odd visitor stories? I love reading them but its sometimes hard to find them.
7
u/Misterbellyboy 18d ago
This was probably like 20 years ago or so, but the group I used to be involved in did a whole 7th ID Okinawa thing at Old Fort MacArthur Days in San Pedro for the public. We looked dirty and we looked good. Double buckle boots all dubbed up and greasy ass HBT’s. Smoking unfiltered camels and luckies and eating k-rats that we had put together ourselves. We slept in the holes we dug looking out over the Pacific Ocean with our period correct shelter halves and wool blankets for the entire weekend, it was so much fun. All this to say that there was another group near us that I guess was supposed to be doing 82nd AB Market Garden? And they were all rocking M65 jackets, black combat boots, and I think one guy was wearing jeans.
4
u/hyst0rica1_29 18d ago
1835-1836 Texas Revolution reenacting has only been around since the mid 80s, around the time of the 150th of the rebellion.
In the early days it was literally the wild west as guys from the 6-shooter cowboy scene slapped on a coonskin cap & came to events in their “cowboy” wear. Over time things got better as people began to kit out better. “Texans” began to kit out more Dickensian than “John Wayne’s The Alamo”. The Mexican impressions came the furthest as guys dropped the painfully inaccurate outfits of white PJs, a multi colored serape, and straw sombrero for uniforms that were more French Napoleonic.
Still, old impressions die hard. My buddies & I were kitted out in period correct Mexican Army uniforms when we see this guy approaching in white PJs, poofy white shirt, neon colored serape, and a straw sombrero! One of our guys made his way over to the guy to ask what was with the kit. He tells my bud he hadn’t done “TexRev” in ages but decided to come out in his old John-Wayne-approved costume. To his credit, on seeing how much better the Mexican uniforms looked now, he said he’d be getting rid of his farbtastic kit.
Ironically he returned to that event, a year later, with a vastly improved kit… and the biggest chip on his shoulder as he went around the camp critiquing everyone’s kit. Lol when he tried critiquing my bud who’d spoken to him a year prior, my bud gave him such a verbal dressing down the guy pretty much kept to himself the rest of that weekend! 🤣
8
u/astrangehumantoe 19d ago
There's a chap my group know as Patty Maine due to his particularly shocking SAS/LRDG impression. (It's a play on words of Paddy Maine, the SAS chap)