Thursday, March 27, 2008

Final musings from the road

After taking care of the funeral and divvying up pictures, Jess, son and I headed down to Aurora, Illinois to see her aunt and uncle (and get all sorts of food). On one day we went to a zoo (the name eludes me now) and while there I happened upon this pair of cannons. Truly big guns. I didn't see anything saying from what war they were from and the plaque nearby says it was dedicated to the local marines in 1957, so that doesn't clear up anything. I tend to lose focus in events past 1876 so someone with a better knowledge of overall history might instantly say, "that's obviously from WW2, you can tell by the banding" but I have no idea.

The zoo itself was pretty small but actually a good size for a four year old. I think this alligator was thinking of a little boy lunch.
The night before we left I told my fiance that we could be at Shiloh in one day's drive, maybe 8-10 hours, but she was having none of that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hard to gauge it from the angles, but using the benches as a reference, these look like 6in, pre-World War I guns. Possible some of the early mark numbers dating to before the Spanish-American War.