As a child in small town America one didn\u2019t need a purchased toy in to play.\u00a0\u00a0One\u2019s imagination could often, and did, substitute for the lack of toys. My imagination ran wild.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cWar of Northern Aggression\u201d against the South.<\/p>\n
Andrew Stathis
\n<\/i>March 2015<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a child in small town America one didn\u2019t need a purchased toy in to play.\u00a0\u00a0One\u2019s 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 … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-kstathis","4":"post-399","6":"format-standard","7":"category-andys-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfiers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}