WHEN I WAS A KID

WHEN I WAS A KID

When I was a kid age about age 8 through 11 we had no video games or computer chess. Heck, we did not even have TVs

I remember asking this of my parents: "Mommy, daddy, can I watch TV?  They would respond: "There's no such thing as a TV"

I would ask: "Mommy, daddy, can you get me a chess engine?"  They would respond: "There is no such thing as a chess engine."

So we listened to the radio at night. Fibber McGee and Mollie, The Long Ranger,  The Shadow, Roy Rogers, and Amos and Andy.

In our neighborhood we were divided into two groups. We called ourselves "gangs" but nothing like the "gangs" of today.

We would attack each other in groups.  We would have sling shots, bb guns, dust bombs etc.

What was a "dust bomb"?  It was newspaper with a lot of dirt and dust wrapped up inside. It could be thrown and when it hit the newspaper would break open and create a cloud of dust.

 Sometimes we would go down to the Sangamon River and attack each other in that area.We were lucky that nobody got seriously hurt or had their eye put out.

One day the other gang decided to build a "fort"  this was a small area where they would be behind boxes and there was a partial overhead covering.

They could shoot nearby kids at will.

However, this "fort" was a very bad idea!  Our "gang" could hide behind trees and keep a distance and use our bb guns and slingshots to shoot into the very confined space of he "fort" We could also lob rocks and stones into the area of the fort.

But most of all we could use dust bombs.  A couple of us would get as close to the "fort" as possible and throw dust bombs.  This created a cloud of dust in the fort and we could hear the kids yell.

Soon they started abandoning the fort and we would chase after them. 

[now before I go on--I know we were very bad kids and what we were doing was wrong-but it was fun also] 

 A couple of us were chasing after one of the kids. He could not get away and ran into a very small garage. [I think it was a garage]

We threw dust bomb after dust bomb into that garage. [again what we did was very wrong]  Finally we let the kid go. But that garage [or whatever it was]

was really messed up.  We were very lucky that we did not have to clean out that garage.  [on the other hand--it would probably have been better if we had been caught and made to clean that garage]

What can I say? We were stupid kids...