So, Saturday was just weird. Okay? It was just a plain old weird day. Everyone should have known that something was screwed up because at the end of the National Anthem there was no promised flyover (overcast sky), and the Skipper misfired... leaving the captain of the gun crew yanking uselessly on the lanyard. A misfire of a field piece -even a replica firing blanks- is serious and requires some amount of care in clearing.
I think that’s when I got the first sinking feeling that something wasn’t right with the entire day. Later, nature would play a nasty trick on everyone, again.