MUMBLYPEG / K'REANS

    Mumblypeg

    The boys in the project would get together and play mumblypeg with our pocket knives. Whoever among us had a knife would open it. If it had more than one blade, you’d open the longest blade to have a better chance of sticking it in the scrubby lawn between the long, low wooden buidings of the Navy Homes. We’d compare knives for balance, and decide on the best one.

      You’d start low on the body, usually at the knee so the

knife would make a half turn. You’d place the point on your knee, and put the tip of your index finger on the end of the handle. Then you’d flip your hand out so the knife rotated as it fell to the lawn. If you got it right, the knife would turn just enough to stick in the grass. If it stuck but then fell over, it didn’t count. If you were good, your touch was light enough to keep from drawing blood when your rotating hand pressed the point into the skin on top of your knee. But if it drew blood, well, hey.

       Red spots or no, you had to stick it. If you did, you moved up to the hip. If not, you waited for another turn. The winner was the kid who got to the top of his body first: knee, hip, fingertip, wrist, elbow, shoulder, chin. Sometimes you’d even throw in nose and forehead. If there was enough time before dark, we’d do both sides of the body, adding extra points along both arms. It became an art, our bodies becoming launching pads for the knife, our hands learning its balance, just the right amount of pressure and rotation needed from each height to stick the knife in the grass.

K’reans

     We were playing war out in the housing project yard,

Darrell and I and a few other boys whose families lived in the parallel, five-apartment wooden structures. It was 1950 or ’51.

     We were choosing up sides: You guys be Japs, we’ll be ‘Mericans. Wait, somebody said. Aren’t we fightin’ somebody else now? Krauts, right? You be Krauts. No, somebody else. I forget.

     I’ll ask Mom, I said. I ran for the kitchen door of our apartment, the middle one in row 32. I hit the screen door on the run. I still remember the combined smells of dust and rust as my face rushed toward the screen. It had one of those long black coil springs to keep it closed; it slammed shut behind me.

     Mom was in the kitchen. She was pissed. “Son, how many times have I told you not to slam that screen door?”

     I had more important things on my mind. “Mom! Who’re we fightin’ now? Is it Japs, ‘r Germans?”

     “Neither one, son. We’re fighting Koreans now.” Our older brother Lance was in high school at the time, soon to graduate. That had to have been on her mind, as Vietnam would be on her mind ten years later when Darrell and I came of military age.

     But none of that was on my mind. “Thanks, Mom!” I yelped, and again hit the screen door on the run. It slammed shut behind me, and I heard her scolding “Ronald Dean!”  follow me across the yard as I returned, courier bearing important information, to my huddled playmates.

     “K’reans,” I said between gulps of breath. “Mom says we’re fightin’ K’reans now.”

     Puzzled looks. Some faint glimmers in boys’ faces who had heard the word begin to replace Japs and Krauts and Germans in their parents’ conversations.

     “Don’t matter. That’s who we’re fightin’”

     “You guys be K’reans. We’ll be ‘Mericans.”