Dude, Drop Some Diaeresis In “Reenactor” And You’ve Got A Talk Of The Town Piece!

Proof that even New Yorkers love the occasional historical reenactment:

It was soon after 1 p.m. yesterday when a band of Revolutionary soldiers, one of them just 16, emerged from the edge of the forest, muskets blazing. The British navalmen moved into place, taking no casualties, and loaded their cannon.

“Read-ay,” a man wearing a tri-point hat said as he twirled a smoldering charge in the air and touched it to the fuse. The cannon let off an enormous, black powder explosion, sending a five-foot smoke ring barreling down a hill at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

. . .

The muskets, clothing, cannon, and other materials are almost all replicas made by another group of reenactors, who create objects from historical eras using only the kinds of tools and supplies they would have had.

“I love history. I love doing this,” a parks ranger from Staten Island and part-time British artillerist, Michael Callahan, 49, said. Of his entire outfit, only two things weren’t replicas: a pair of small square spectacles he bought at an antique store, and his underwear.

“The truth is, they didn’t wear underwear,” a fellow artilleriest, Richard Cuneo, said. “We have health standards nowadays.”

It was a consensus among the reenactors that New Yorkers had a stronger interest in their hobby than they had expected. Gaggles of Brooklynites and history buffs with digital cameras, video cameras, and camera phones pushed close to the reenactors and cheered with the cannon’s deafening booms.

The field is a short walk from Battle Hill, the highest point in Brooklyn. Viewed in a larger frame, yesterday’s scene was just one part of the city’s tangled history. Looming above the clouds of musket fire were a Citgo gas station sign and a 1960s-era sign advertising “Worldwide Furniture Warehouse.” Behind those was a church steeple covered in black renovation material, the top of a chemical plant, and, beyond them, the Statue of Liberty.

Location scout: Greenwood Cemetery.