Civil and Revolutionary War Cannons Pound Mokena: VIDEO

Wearing a Confederate Army uniform and clutching an iPhone, Mike Acuff, 59, of La Moille, Ill., laughed at the heat.

"I've been doing this for 38 years," the wool-clad Acuff said. "You get used to it."

Acuff and his Chesnut Light Artillery (named after Gen. James Chesnut and not the chestnut tree) were among the Civil War and Revolutionary War re-enactors brought to Mokena's Main Park on Monday to give a cannon-laden kick-off to the July 4 patriotic concert by the Encore Concert Band.

In addition to a pre-show cannon sound-off, the re-enactors also provided the percussion to the group's rendition of the 1812 Overture before the fireworks show, .

Check out "Kids, Vets and Jedi Hit Mokena for July 4 Parade: PHOTO GALLERY" to see more faces of Mokena's July 4 extravaganza

For the Acuffs, re-enactment is a family affair. Mike's son Bruce, 22, started at the age of 5 or 6 running gunpowder to the cannons as a "limber man" (what on a naval cannon would have been called a "powder monkey").

"Because everyone else had bad knees and couldn't run as fast as I could," joked Bruce Acuff, who recruited his fiancee Keisha Twardowski, 20, into re-enactment a few years ago.

While Bruce Acuff was a boy when he started fighting the Civil War, "Grandma Helen" of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry re-enactment group was well into her 80s when she started re-enacting.

Helen Wilwers, 90, of Brookfield, started in re-enactment in 2004, after her niece was married in the 19th-century museum Naper Settlement. Wilwers eventually was recruited into the group, in large part due to her sewing skills, she said, clad entirely in a period costume she made.

While some re-enactment groups portray general soldiers, the 2nd Kentucky members choose actual historical figures to portray. Wilwers plays "Mrs. Perkin," the wife of British chemist William Perkin, the inventor of mauveine, the first synthetic organic chemical dye.

Husband and wife Richard Hargreaves, 73, and Val Parris lead the 2nd Kentucky, portraying husband and wife Basil Duke and Henrietta Morgan Duke.

But they didn't start out that way. Originally, the group portrayed random Civil War soldiers. It was only in the mid-1990s Hargreaves saw a picture of Basil Duke and realized the similarities. Then, about a year later, a Southern nun unaware of the couple's re-enactment hobby remarked on Parris' resemblance to Henrietta, Parris said.

Read "Mayor's Breakfast for Veterans Kicks Off Patriotic Day" for a Mokena event paying tribute to real-life locals who served their country

So after years of representing the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, Hargreaves found he had an eerie resemblance to an actual officer with the group, then about a year later his wife found out she had an eerie resemblance to the actual officer's actual wife. In addition, Hargreaves was born May 25, 1938 and Duke was born May 28, 1838.

"It was kind of freaky," Parris said.

Parris has been involved in re-enactment for more than 45 years, she said. During that time, she has seen the evolution of the pastime.

The original re-enactors were the children and grandchildren of veterans and would use the actual uniforms, Parris said. Once those wore out (and improvements in nutrition meant people were growing too tall for Civil War uniforms), later re-enactors wore the most similar uniforms they could find, she said.

The Union soldiers wore gas station attendant unforms. The Confederate soldiers wore post office uniforms.

In the 1960s, Parris was approached by a re-enactor who wanted something more authentic-looking.

"This guy that wanted to be a Yankee heard I could sew anything," Parris said.

That first uniform brought Parris more business from re-enactors.

"Within three days of him picking that up, I had 40 guys on my door. Within three days of that, I had 40 of their wives and children on my door looking for the dresses and underpinnings," she said.

Re-enactments eventually led Parris to a career as a costumer and production designer for TV and movies, she said.

But the celebrities of the night were the cannons, the smallest of which were 12-pound Mountain Howitzers.

"Basically, it's a shotgun on wheels," Mike Acuff said.