As a child in small town America one didn’t need a purchased toy in to play. One’s imagination could often, and did, substitute for the lack of toys. My imagination ran wild.
During the Spring and Summer months, I played on the banks of the Mouse River, imagining I was on a riverboat going from city to city in the Old South. When I listened to the Lone Ranger radio program in the 1940s, the adrenaline would pump so high that after the show I charged out of the house, down the street, and across the footbridge to the park around the corner, imagining I was riding Silver.
In that park stood a huge statue of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback. I climbed onto its pedestal and imagined I was riding the horse towering over me. The park also had old Civil War cannons, and I sat on them imagining I was a Yankee officer chasing the Southern Rebels away. That was before I discovered it was the Yankees who initiated the “War of Northern Aggression” against the South.
Andrew Stathis
March 2015