Alright, today's the one day out of the year that I get to be even more narcissistic than usual and (hopefully) get away with it! So please forgive these few goofy subs, and I'll return you to your regularly scheduled furry arts pronto!

I'm not usually too big on memes, but I found this on  randomonlooker's page and couldn't pass it up! Here's the rule:

"Take a photo of yourself dressed in the style of your favourite era/years/etc. Also try and match the photo of those days (if they had cameras)."

Back in high school I volunteered monthly at a WWII museum in Wolfeboro, NH, which was well worth the drive two hours each way. The museum is focused on the Home Front, but its owner had quite a vehicle collection as well, and I got to work with all sorts of artifacts up close and personal! It was a great experience, but I remember this day particularly well. A nice old fellow, a veteran tanker of the war, had come in asking for a period-style photo of the museum's Pershing tank for the cover of his memoirs. Well, nobody else was young enough to look the part, so they dressed me up and threw me in the turret! The publisher didn't let the poor guy use the photo in the end (they chose some stock photo of someone in an Abrams tank, instead *rolls eyes*), but it's something I'll never forget, and I figured the picture fit the meme perfectly.

So that's ugly ol' me in that undersized helmet! I honestly didn't feel very comfortable in the clothes, and it wasn't only because back then they were made for people several sizes smaller than me. Although I sure respect reenactors, I'm just not cut out to be one myself! :3

But the tank itself here deserves the spotlight - it has quite a history! The museum's owner had saved it from being missile target practice on a Rhode Island Naval Station because he noticed that it had a very early serial number. The Pershing heavy tank was a late US response to Germany's powerful Panthers and Tigers, so only 310 made it to Europe before war's end. Of that, only 20 saw action, and (after some research) it turned out that this was one of them! What's more, it's also the only surviving tank to have crossed the Ludendorf Bridge, made famous by the film classic The Bridge at Remagen. The museum's owner used several other Korean War-era Pershings and a Sherman to restore this one to running condition, and in the past he drove it in the local July 4th parades. The town put a stop to that a few years back, though, when they grew tired of repairing the ruts left in the road by the 46 ton tank. Now it sits idle in the museum, a one-of-a-kind testament to the struggle to liberate Europe.