Truthful Lies of my Childhood

This time it was springtime 1946, I was six years old, and I was feeling really good – maybe cocky would express my outlook better.  I had found that shooting marbles was my game, a game that I was good at and getting better every day.  We didn’t play the way you see kids doing in the big cities, or on TV, using a popsicle stick and a string to scribe a circle and then trying to knock the other kid’s marbles out of it.  Instead, we would make a slick straight track with our shoe, the further end being slightly higher, and use our “bully,” a large marble equal in value to 15 or 20 regular sized cats eye marbles, to inscribe a target hole.  Then the competitors would take turns from six or eight feet away, rolling a marble up the track, hoping to land a hit inside the target hole.  If you did, you would inherit all of the previous misses.  And have bragging rights.

As I already stated, I was obsessed with the game and proud as a strutting peacock at my new found skill.  My Mother had sewn me a white cloth bag, equipped with a drawstring, in which I placed my bakers dozen of the prettiest marbles in all of  and my lucky bully, which was as ugly as homemade sin and black as a Halloween cat. My expertise soon became obvious, as now the bag was stretched, bulging with gifts from not so good classmates.  Only one competitor remained, that egotistical freckle faced strawberry blonde headed kid named Jimmy Maynard.  I challenged him that April Fools Day to what I knew was for the championship, or as the old cliché states, for all the marbles!

The last class of the day was spelling, and if I had known what a omen was, when the teacher returned my test paper marked with the big D, I would have immediately struck out for home.  Freckle Face had received, as you probably already guessed, an A.  But I had no worry for marbles was a game of skill, which was in my favor, and had nothing to do with brains.  At last the bell rang and 29 students whooped and headed for the door, down the hall, and down the 19 steps to the outside door, then out to freedom.  I had retrieved my bag from the shelf underneath my well worn and name carved desk, and was ready for action.  I headed for the battleground and was delighted to see that I was the first to arrive.  I put my jacket on the windowsill and arranged it so that Blackie could see my victory from his vantage point in my jacket pocket.  Confidence invaded my body, emerging as a smirk on my face.  I was ready.  I was more than ready.  I was thinking that my mother would have to sew me another bag that could hold more marbles.  Out of gold colored material, that was it!  Gold for a king!  Me, Edward John Emanuel, the Marble King!

My thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the shoulder and a voice that I could learn to hate, saying “Get ready to lose!”  Here we were on the southwest corner of our old red brick school building where my name was soon to go down in history.  World War II might have been over, but this more important battle was soon to begin.  My smirk once again emerged as I made the track to fame with my right foot and carved a hole in its dirt with “The Bully.”  Sometimes to make the game more exciting, the two combatants would ante up an equal amount of marbles, sort of like in the game of poker.  Today I suggested 20, and my suggestion was met with approval.  The stay behind line was scratched in the dirt, and I rolled my first miss.  That miss was followed by his success and my bag was getting lighter, much lighter.  I then managed to win a few times but I was still far behind, and so I suggested another ante of 25.  Blondie connected on his first roll, and it was all down hill from there.  Soon the contents of my bag evaporated, and so I urgently asked him to stick around, which he gladly did.  I ran the 400 feet to home and sneaked out my brother Dave’s marble bag which held exactly 41, more than enough to win back my losses and wipe out Freckle Face for the champion-ship, or so I thought.  This dream needed a happier, better ending, but to no avail.  I not only lost a total of 108 marbles that belonged to my brother and myself, I also lost face.  I got whipped, I whimpered, I sulked and gave up marbles for good…..in a few years it would be checkers.  But that is another story…..

A month of mornings later, when I was eating a breakfast of cream of wheat, milk, and white sugar, I asked my favorite playmate if he could recall the marble incident.   He answered that he had not thought of that day in a long while, and was sorry that I had brought it up as he was trying to blot it out of his memory bank.  It was probably because I had left him and my jacket there on the windowsill at the schoolhouse, not remembering them until after I was in bed.  And there they stayed, for I knew that my parents would not allow me to retrieve them, for it was after dark.  I had slept very little, blaming myself for this bout of stupidity.  I left for school extra early the next morning.   When I arrived at yesterday’s battle scene, a lump as large as Bob Larson’s goiter filled my throat.  They were gone!  Sheer panic swept over me for not only was my best friend missing, but also the new denim jacket that I was so proud of.  What to do, what to do?  I was at an all time low; everything I had was dragging as I crawled up to the first grade classroom.  With grief and despair in my heart, I forced myself to change my focus from the floor to my hook in the cloak room, and wonder of wonders, they were there!  Luckily for me the Marble King had taken them home the day before and brought them back in the morning.  Much to my relief, he had hung them both in the cloakroom without saying a word.  Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all, even if his mother was a teacher.  Maybe, just maybe, I had found a new pal!