There is one war I know about which stops on the dot of eight o'clock every night--and ceases hostilities at the ringing of the Good Humor man's bell. It's a game which uses history as a basis, but would astonish any historian at the changes that are rashly made in histories pages.
The combatants are between the ages of six and twelve capturing, ambushing and charging through the neat tree lined blocks of our neighborhood.
The play soldiers wear battered Rebel hats, or large-sized fedoras that slide down over small ears. But the battles are real with toy guns, swords, rubber bayonets, blanket bedrolls and canteens filled with kool-aid. This war has been the biggest thing to hit our block since the end of the Daniel Boone coon skin cap.
Our house is the headquarters. Our garage the ammunition dump for the Confederate Army. Our block--maybe because it is on the South side of town--is strongly behind Robert E. Lee, who is generally speaking our son Tom.
Noel, a friend and eager assistant General on the Southern staff hurt his chin in one of the lively scrambles that developed from the war game. Bravely he faced up to the fact of having four stitches taken in the cut. His only problem and one he worried about in the emergency ward at the hospital was what would the General think of him now.
"I retreated!" he moaned. "I retreated when I should have been advancing. I disobeyed the General!"
Because these are the years of the Civil War Centennial there are books, records, toys and even TV and radio helping to make this period of our history very vivid to imaginative boys and girls.
David, Skipper and Jim are the young enlistments. They run errands, gather more kool-aid for the hot troops, and slip into the places of any regulars called out for dentist appointments or shopping trips.
The girls are right there fighting with their men. One battle had mothers donating all their old sheets for tents and dust rags for bandages. The girls filled a more feminine roll by administering to the wounded who turned out to all be from the Northern Army.
One of the girls, her pig-tails tucked under a rebel hat declared to the assembled army: "You know the South didn't really win. That's how we got this 'tigration--I think you call it. Anyhow, it was the North winning which made the black people free to 'tigrate with the white people."
Threats of missiles and A-bombs. Talks of fallout shelters among worried adults don't seem to bother this group. They're too busy working out the strategy of Bull Run and Fredericksburg.
Grant and Lee head for school these days with arms about each others shoulders. It's easy to change history when you're ten years old.
Written November 2, 1961
This was the first article she wrote for the local paper after ten years away that I have been able to find. I knew at the time she had written it and I criticized her for the embellishments saying: "It didn't happen that way! Noel didn't say that!" She explained to me a writer's viewpoint and to make the story interesting. Being ten, had no idea what or why. It's strange now 60 years later, that this was her first and the one that I really remember which started me searching through years of papers to find this one--and many, many more.