When I Was A Lad

When I was a kid, we had really awesome toys. A great many of which had to do with war. It was the way things were back then. Last I checked, none of my childhood friends grew up to be mass murderers, dictators who spent their time invading other countries nor any other form of criminal. We all grew up to be pretty decent, law abiding citizens.

There were seven of us in our neighborhood, which was in a fairly small town in Vermont. Most of our free time was spent in four activities: playing baseball at the end of the street (where it turned into an old Jeep trail going up into the woods), riding our bikes (yes, we often had baseball cards in the spokes to produce that cool sound, reproduced down further), wandering through the woods (climbing trees, nearly any tree, our little group could take to the trees just like a band of monkeys if we were spooked) and lastly (but not least) we played Army.

But before I go into that any further, check this out -

A throatier sound could be produced by adding more baseball cards. There was a point of diminishing returns however. Too many cards and the bike became nearly impossible to peddle!

Now back to that playing Army thing. It was always World War II. Many of us knew veterans of that war. It was also (at the time) the last "good" war. Good as in everybody felt that the Nazis and Imperial Japan had to be defeated. Still don't understand why no one felt Korea was a "good" war. I mean we do understand that the Communists were just as bad as the Nazis, right?

So we split up into four on three. Of course the Americans always got the four, the bad guys had the three. Normally it was Americans versus Germans. The kids who got to play the Germans simply wore their toy helmets backwards. To us that looked kind of German. And we all had one of these -

Though I don't recall that ours had stripes on the front or that fancy netting. But in those days, nearly every boy had a helmet just like that.

Now when we wanted to fight the Japanese, we still did the helmets on backwards thing. But the three youngest kids had to be the Japanese, because they were smaller. And one of our little group, Pete, actually started to think he was Japanese. He once stampeded two of the bigger kids when he came out of the woods wielding a large branch screaming like a banshee. Startled those boys it did. Then one of our Dads commented that Pete did a pretty good banzai charge. All by himself.

Banzai Charge

Then one week my Dad had to go on a business trip to Milwaukee. When he returned home he brought home three of these - 

Yes sir, toy German Army helmets. We officially became the coolest kids in the neighborhood. Especially after our parents equipped us with these -

Toy Tommy guns, which fired caps. They were beyond awesome. When we had these and our German helmets we looked kind of German. At least to the kids in the other neighborhoods. Then one Christmas, we got upgraded, to these -

That's right, camouflaged Tommy guns (same as the darker ones in form and function). Pretty neat we thought. So at that point we didn't want to be Germans that much anymore. Now we wanted to be Marines! Because we figured that only Marines would have something as cool as a camouflaged Tommy gun.

So the three littlest guys were condemned to be Japanese soldiers for a time. Pete got really scary good at the whole Banzai charge thing. And the two other smaller guys learned from him. Freaked us out! Almost made us give up playing Army!

We had other cool toys. Like this ball turret gun. We'd set these up in the back window of the car and fire at the other cars. Battery operated, they made cool machine gun noises. After a while I think Mom and Dad regretted buying us those. And then one day we weren't allowed to take them in the car with us any more. Go figure!

See,what I mean? A B-52 Ball Turret Gun!
I mean it was electronic!
How cool was that?

When my youngest kid brother, the Musician, was six, he got to go hunting with Dad and his two older brothers. I was 13 and the Old Vermonter was 10. I think we older boys were carrying our toy hunting rifles (yes, they had those back in the day too). Now the Musician was offered a toy hunting rifle to carry. He turned it down. He wanted to bring a ball turret gun. So much to the amusement of the Old Vermonter and I, Dad let the Musician lug this ball turret gun out into the woods. I guess that might have come in handy had the deer had some kind of air support they could call in. The ball turret gun would surely take care of them!

Of course, when my Dad took all three of us boys hunting, we never saw any deer. We made more noise moving through the woods than a platoon of poorly trained infantry. Any wild life that hadn't put many miles between us and them would probably have gone extinct thousands of years ago. If not laughed themselves to death at the three boys, two carrying toy Winchesters, the third lugging a ball turret gun. Still and all, we had fun.

My oldest kid brother, the Old Vermonter and I had these Steve Canyon helmets when we were kids. Totally awesome! Somewhere at the ancestral home my Mom has a picture of the Old Vermonter and I wearing our Steve Canyon helmets, sitting side by side in the living room in kitchen chairs. We thought that was awesome. The fact that we were wearing our pajamas and bathrobes did not dampen our spirits. In our imaginations we were in the cockpit of a jet, high over some bad guy country ready to unleash devastation. (Okay, the bad guy country was the Soviet Union. Sometimes China. When we were kids, those were the bad guys.)

As the Old Vermonter and I often remark, we had a great childhood. With lots of cool toys. Toys that, for the most part, required us to be outside. Enjoying Mother Nature. Outside after breakfast, home when the streetlights came on. Life was good.

I still have the toy German helmet. The Old Vermonter found it at the ancestral home and asked me if I wanted it, otherwise Mrs Old Vermonter was going to sell it on E-Bay! Much to the eye-rolling disgust of the Missus Herself, I did bring the old toy home with me. Some memories are too dear to sell on E-Bay. YMMV.

C'est la vie!