Having an English Mother, I was saddled with the name Ian (there's a good story about the mechanics of how I got my name - remind me to tell you later). Now, the name Ian was not a common name in Minnesota in the mid 1960's and I suffered mightily for it. I used to run with some older kids - I think I was a first grader (at the Julius P. Barnes Elementary School, no less) and the older kids were second or even third graders. We used to run around the court playing war. At one point, we all had plastic GI Joe bazookas with red plastic rockets. We would pump air into the chamber and then shoot the rockets.
This is probably me and my gun:
Anyhow, being younger than the other kids, having an English accent and an English name, I would get picked on sometimes. I remember one time after school a whole pack of us were running around the court playing war - yeah, back then you would go home from school and then run around - unsupervised - until supper time, when the Moms would yell from the kitchen. In my case, since we had been in Japan a couple of years prior to Duluth, my Mom would bang a gong that they had picked up over there. Point being, we played until summoned for dinner.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah - so we were running around the court playing war, when one of the meaner third graders, (a budding poet, I guess), came up with the brilliant idea to start chasing me. The other kids joined in and they chased me around the neighborhood, shooting red plastic rockets at me, all the while chanting "Let's PEE-on Eee-on". This amused them to no end and really had no detrimental effect on me (except that I still remember it 47 years later. Hmm).
Ahh, good times.
Another time, I'll tell you about how we would run behind the DDT trucks every Friday and play in the pesticide fog. Minnesota mosquitoes are honkin' big!
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