Days of Glory

I commanded vast armies. Men of plastic and metal spread out before me in the sand and on my bedroom floor. My first soldiers were made of clothespins, the old fashioned wooden kind. I would insert one into the other, and presto! a cowboy on a horse or a mounted Indian brave or a line of cavalry on the move. Wooden clothespin Xs doing battle across the kitchen floor up the hallway and into my room.
Plastic cowboys and Indians would be next. They were three dimensional but kind of flat, and I mixed them in with whatever Uncle Pat would supply me from the junkyard.
There were these old metal soldiers he would bring me, a mixed bag of troops from World Wars I and II. They had feet that ended in round rims instead of bases, an odd collection of men that seemed out of place with their plastic counterparts. You could go to Woolworth's in Woodbury and still buy them. They would be lying in great glass-sided bins for a nickel a piece, but their time had come; the plastic age was upon us.
The best toy soldiers of the time came from Marx. My first Marx set was a space station that Uncle Pat brought to me. It was a fascinating toy. A tin lithographed space station with rockets and missiles and all kinds of control panels and gadgets that would fill any space cadet's dream. There were clear plastic space helmets for the astronauts and all kinds of weird looking aliens for them to do battle with.
Mom and Dad bought me a Robin Hood set complete with a castle, the merry men and silver knights for them to fight with. Robin and his men were green, and there was a Maid Marian figure for them to rescue from the clutches of the evil Sheriff of Nottingham.
You could get army men in cereal boxes, and these were usually made by Ideal and Tim-mee toys. Realistic, but not as good as Marx.
The ring hand soldiers were popular too. I had a pirate ship loaded with buccaneers. The ring hand guys had hands with open holes in them through which you could stick assorted weapons, like swords and guns and clubs. There were safari ring hand sets with Africans in red and yellow and black. There were shields and spears for you to place in their hands. The ring hand men were fun, but they were just toys compared to the troops from Louis Marx.
My friend Tommy Moore had what to me was the ultimate: a Marx Fort Apache set with plastic stockade complete with blockhouses and a tin headquarters building. Cavalrymen and pioneers and Indians. Plastic spring loaded cannons that shot little plastic shells; I couldn't wait to get over to his house for a day of Indian wars.
In 1960 I had saved some money of my own. Birthday and Christmas gifts it was, and I was determined to buy a Marx play set myself. I spent hours looking at the Sears catalog, dreaming of the day when I could have a Fort Apache or an Alamo of my very own. I didn't have much, maybe only seven or eight dollars, so I settled for a Wagon Train set, the basic one with only two or three wagons and a small band of Indians to attack them. There were figures representing the Ward Bond and Robert Horton characters too, so I was thrilled as only little boys can be.
There is no way to adequately describe opening a Marx play set. It is magic time. The cardboard box that you open slowly revealing the different components of the set that are wrapped individually in bags that are labeled with their contents. The excitement is just too much, your heart races as you open each bag and the little men come tumbling out.
I assembled my wagons,put them in a line and set up my Indians for the attack. I added my other cowboys and Indians, and I was set to re-enact every episode of Wagon Train I had ever seen. A day of joy indeed.
These were my early years as a general. My armies were small right now, but they would grow as the years went by. The American Revolution and the Alamo were yet to come; and my favorite, the Blue and the Gray of the Civil War still on the horizon.
Yes my armies would be vast. There would be tanks and guns and forts and wagons. I would fight in World War II and the prairies of the American west. The Civil War would be mine to re-create,legendary battles with Johnny Reb and Billy Yank.
Pirates and natives and knights in my hand.
Wars on the floor and out in the sand.