The Prairie Street wars started reliably every spring, before the
heat of summer drove us to the shade of our porches and the elm trees
along the parkway. They had to be fought in the early spring because
the combatants had to be reunited by baseball season to form the Prairie
Street Rangers, that fabled nine that ruled the sandlot league and
put and end to the pennant hopes of the Eades Street Tigers and the
Southside Supermen. We had to declare a truce between the warriors
because the Prairie Street home diamond was in our big backyard and
the Rangers’ best pitcher was Kenny Warmbier who was the leader
of the enemy.
Who knew what incident would touch off the conflagration. A too rough
tackle perhaps in a game of “touch” football; a shoving
match under the hoop hung from Johnny Jacobs’ garage. The Warmbiers
were Catholic and the Hagans were too. They went to Holy Cross. We
were Protestants and so were Johnny Jacobs, Dave and Billy Geist and
Ronny DuFrane. We went to Lincoln, the neighborhood public school.
The wars weren’t religious at all. It was just that the school
connection produced Coalitions of the Willing who were ready to contest
with anybody. When the wars were over we were fast friends again –
until the next time.
The Warmbiers lived next door and so the boundary between the warring
factions was down the middle of the common driveway that separated
our two properties. One or the other of us would issue the ultimatum,
”You can’t come on our property”, and the battle
would be on. Our weapons were sling shots and homemade “rubber
guns” that shot circles cut from our fathers’ blown out
innertubes.
Warmbier had a logistical advantage – they had an apple tree
that produced a reliable crop of one inch hard green apples in the
late spring. Propelled by a sling shot those would sting. They always
had a supply of ammunition under that tree. My father’s bad
luck with tires evened up the odds. We always had a supply of ammunition
and the advantage that our garage gave us a fortification commanding
the base of the apple tree and Warmbier’s ammunition dump.
Time has passed us by. Dave died of a heart attack at 63. Ron was
killed in a car wreck. So was Johnny. Kenny Warmbier is retired in
Florida. You have seen Billy on CBS Sunday Morning roaming the nation
with his sardonic humor.
In recent years I have reflected how much the conduct for foreign
affairs resembles those pre-adolescent conflicts. The posturing, the
sloganeering and indeed the causes for war are all so familiar. We
were never sure what the reason for the fight was other than that
they were the Warmbiers and we just wanted to fight and no apology
or excuse was going to be good enough.
Well, that’s the way it is in the real adult world. First it
was “Regime Change”? That did not sound right. Then it
was “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, But we couldn’t
find any and that did not sell either. Then its “They must destroy
those missiles that fly 30 miles farther than they are supposed too.”
But the President says he doesn’t care if they destroy the missile,
that isn’t good enough. The truth is that it is Saddam, and
George just wants to fight. There is a difference though – George
won’t actually be doing the fighting and Dick is hunkered down
in his undisclosed location.
Me? I’m going out to duct tape the garage.
