All God's Children Got Guns

We fought with more than toy soldiers. Children were provided with an endless array of weapons with which to play. Hubley, Mattel, Marx, Daisy and Nichols meant as much to us as Colt, Smith and Wesson and Remington did to adults.
War was my favorite game. I led many a charge at Gettysburg, swept the plains as the cavalry and the Sioux. The woods around the lake were the jungles of Guadalcanal; the great woodlands of the French and Indian wars. World War I was fought in the field behind the Gerbers' yard; the woods in my back yard the scene of battles throughout history.
Hubley would provide us with some amazing hand guns. My most prized set of Hubleys were two matching flintlock pistols which I carried aboard my pirate ship on the Spanish Main, and I used them to shoot down the Mexicans in those last few desperate minutes at the Alamo.
Mattel came out with some of the most realistic rifles and pistols in the 50s and 60s. The Shootin' Shell series that fired bullets. The tip of the bullet was plastic which you pressed down into the cartridge. A Greenie Stick-M cap was stuck on the back of the shell. You were provided with a weapon that sounded out as you fired, plastic slugs flying towards your enemy. The Fanner 50 was a prized posession, with a real leather holster you could strap down to perfect your gunfighter's quick draw. I had the Mattel Derringer belt buckle. It looked like a large buckle with a Derringer pistol engraved on it. Looks can be deceiving. When you puffed out your belly the derringer would pop out of the buckle, firing a plastic Shootin' Shell at your unsuspecting target. Too cool, too cool. There were cowboy weapons of every type, including replicas of all the guns we saw on our favorite TV shows.
The Daisy air rifle was coveted by everyone. Only a few lucky souls had them. You could jam the gun into the ground, plugging up the barrel, so that when you cocked and fired your victim would get smacked with a wad of dirt.
My friend Robbie McWilliams had a Marx World War II machine gun mounted on a tripod. That thing was amazing, with realistic sound and an ammunition belt that fed the gun while you fired. Mattel and Marx put out Thompson machine guns, and there were plenty of plastic M-1 Garands to round out our arsenal for re-creating the second world war.
Plastic Civil War sabers and Roman short swords, rubber daggers and tomahawks for those of us who preferred the up close and personal thrill of hand-to-hand combat.
The Alamo was fought in Woodbury Heights. The kids from my side of town collected their arms and flags and marched across Glassboro Road to do battle with the other side of town. St. Margaret's Church and the Southwoods housing development were being built, and the huge mounds of construction dirt became the fabled mission of San Antonio. Those of us from The Lake side of town were, of course, the hated Mexicans. We dragged our Johnny Reb cannons, waved our banners made from railroad signal flags, and marched through the streets to the imagined strains of our military band.
We assaulted the heights of that earthen Alamo, repulsed time and again by a hail of dirt bombs and the tenacity of its brave defenders. A fistfight or two broke out, with claims that someone was tossing dirt bombs with rocks in them. Tempers were cooled, the arguments cut short, this was war, there was no time for fighting!
The defenders would taunt us, and push us back several times, but at the end of the day the Alamo was taken and the dirt bombs brushed off. The bugles sounded, and the field of battle was cleared. We marched in triumph back to Walnut and Glenwood and Lake Avenues, stopping off at Trackie's store for Tastykakes and sodas.
It was a day of glory.