Well into my so-called “adulthood” (sometime in the early 90’s so I was in my early 30’s) I remember watching (and yes joining) my younger friends from my second college experience in River Falls, Wisconsin (they were of course still in their 20’s) as they/we put together, played with and eventually terrorized the town with…

Potato guns. (the bane of any nice community)…

Well kids, back in MY day… (switching to a fake, old man voice) back when we were little kids in the neighborhood, we made them things too. Only we called em…

Polish cannons.

Of course it makes no difference what you call it. Ballistics is ballistics and once the boys learned about it, there was no stopping its inevitable use. We had a fort and we needed weapons to defend it from the enemy. Again, this is my adult self using these terms of warfare. And again, I’m saying “we” as if I felt any camaraderie with the boys who built and fired “our” weapons. I didn’t. I only really remember my child self as being fascinated by the spectacle of a flaming tennis ball, shot down the street. Yes, I also remember building and firing my own cannon as well, but I never fired it at anyone. I was still a good boy.

I also remember clearly, huddling in our bunker-style fort (which was not much more than a hole dug in the alfalfa field covered by plywood) but I don’t at all remember being involved in building it, or any of the planning that must have taken place for the Smith boys to have organized the attacks on the neighboring cul-de-sac’s fort. I also was never involved in any of the attacks. Especially the one that led to everything being shut down by the adults. The one that resulted in a kid losing (or nearly losing) his eye.

The neighboring gang of boys had a tower fort. I seem to remember it being quite high but that is probably just my child self/adult self skewing the scale of things. I do remember though, finding a pingpong ball filled with BBs and a Black Cat. This was one example of the bombs thrown at us from the tower. I also remember, seeing bottle rockets fired from our bunker into that enemy tower. But I have no memory of the pitched battle that must have taken place. The way the adults shut it all down, my adult self can’t help but imagine scenes of the two gangs of boys (all quite older than me) going at it with the reckless abandon I had come to expect from anything the Smith boys were so involved and invested in.

My adult self also imagines that, by the time I was the same age as the boys who fought in that war, I had already been overwhelmed by the best weapons adults have over such things as childish wars.

More on that tomorrow…