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Portrait by C. Dey Prescott
D. R. Prescott has written a novel, short stories, a nonfiction book, a collection of essays, a full-length-three-act play, planetarium show/display scripts, two family histories, technical articles and business plans as well as written for and edited several newsletters.
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Recent awards and published work include Writers' Journal, Long Story Short, Taj Mahal Review literary journal, The Orange County Register, Writer's Digest and Writing.com among others.
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Prescott currently writes and explores life in Orange, California.
"Sentience can be annoying."
-DRP Abt. 1990
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My fifth contribution (BENGAY AND PROMISES) to The Taj Mahal Review
Literary Journal December 2010 is available: http://ning.it/ggarW6 ________________________
Don Prescott appears on Episode 7:Colonizing the Cosmos and 8:The God Question of D. Wayne Dworsky's Alpha Centauri & Beyond Blog Talk Radio.
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Available today in most eBook formats from these fine people:
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And, COMING SOON at Amazon.com
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O R D E R T O D A Y !
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Release-the-Peddler
by D. R. Prescott
Release-the-Peddler had its roots in famous games like Hide-and-Seek with elements of Kick-the-Can and Special Forces training. Release-the-Peddler was sophisticated requiring teamwork, strategy, resourcefulness, bravery and cunning. Let’s face it. Not all of us are born with equal talents. In its root games, being fast was a big advantage. This game called for more than speed. It pulled on inner reserves, demanded mental acuity and tore at every fiber of your being.
For the uninitiated, the rules were a bit more complex than Hide-and-Seek or Kick-the-Can. The physical layout of the Release-the-Peddler arena was important. The leader of the streetlight assembly usually went over the basics.
“All right, Dummies, the boundaries are Rigby Street, The Alley, St. Clair Avenue, and Grant Street. Nobody goes out of that area, hear me?” He would threaten, paring away legal jargon and obscenities, repercussions for straying beyond the boundaries which amounted to a severe thumping about the shoulders and head, or worse. Now, that was cool because, for the most part, it kept people honest.
If you were on the Peddlers’ side, you hid. Which side was which after people were teamed up was decided by a coin flip. If nobody had a coin, a rock with one wet side was used and you don’t want to know how the wet side got wet.
Once the teams were established, usually four or five to a team, a jail was designated, normally a deteriorated slab in front of a rundown garage that had not been used to store a car for years.
The other team never seemed to have a name except for the person designated as Jailer. Likely as not, this game was so sophisticated that the nuances were beyond most to fully comprehend (especially big city kids.) For now, let’s call the other side Pursuers. The Pursuers job was to catch the Peddlers, tag them and yell as loudly as possible, “Peddler caught!”
With captured in hand, the Pursuer escorted the Peddler back to the Jail. The Jailer’s job was to ensure that no Peddler released the jailed by running up and sticking a foot in the jail and yelling at the top of their lungs, “Release the Peddler!” There was more to shouting it than met the eye. When other Peddlers heard that there was a jail break, they would likely make adjustments to take strategic advantage of the melee around the jail.
When the jailed Peddlers were released, the Jailer would frantically try to catch as many as possible before they fled off into the darkness. He might get one or two but most would usually run off requiring recapture before the Pursuers could become the Peddlers. Every Peddler had to be captured and jailed before the other team could become Peddlers. Some nights, it never happened, especially if one side had the better players.
I always enjoyed being a Peddler. Why? It required guile, feats of athletic prowess and measured response. Since the game was always played after dark, all sorts of hiding possibilities emerged, making the unnatural seem natural, the real surreal.
I might point out something important here. We hid in peoples’ yards, around their houses and on their porches, even on their roofs. Nobody seemed to mind. Can you imagine kids doing that today and not being rounded up by the authorities for trespassing, disturbing the peace or mayhem. I guess that was in another time and place.
One of my favorite ploys was to get as close to the Jail as possible without being spotted. I perfected a closely guarded maneuver known as the Garbage Can Gambit, only revealed years later in a hometown bar with a couple buddies.
Before dark, I would try to get a dark-colored jacket stashed beforehand somewhere within the boundaries; that is called preparation. I would also secret away a garbage can lid. (By the way, this is the first time I am publicly revealing this secret offensive trick.)
Step one of my secret maneuver involved selecting a strategic location. It had to be close enough to the jail so that I could pounce quickly from out of the darkness. The illumination was critical. I needed the garbage can lid to be about 25% exposed to some light source, usually a streetlight. Then, I would squat down pulling the jacket about me and placing the garbage can lid over my head. This gave the illusion that the garbage can had been there all the time, not an unusual sight on alleys back in those days.
One significant point is necessary to point out: selecting the garbage can lid took some discretion and perhaps a little cleaning before using. They can get kind of rank and make this disguise arduous at best.
Did it work? Every time! The first time I tried it I squatted too long and worked up quite a sweat under the jacket in the humid summer night. When I made my move to release the jailed Peddlers, I got a cramp in my leg and was perspiring like a pig.
Since they couldn’t find me for a long time, some accused me of going out of bounds and wanted to mete out justice. Fortunately, I was in such bad shape that they took pity on me and reluctantly believe my assertions that I never strayed beyond the boundaries. Incidentally, in case you are wondering, before limping out of my hiding space, I stashed the jacket and lid in the bushes. My secret tactic was safe.
In future games, I used this diversion sparingly for three reasons. First, it hurt too much if used for long periods and, second, finding a garbage can lid that stunk very little was tough and, third, I wanted to keep the strategy mine and only mine.
As far as I know, this game was developed, tested, refined and implemented only in my Midwestern neighborhood. If you’re from the big city, you might be saying, “How dumb!” Alas, you have overlooked subtle brilliance and extraordinary sophistication of a game that honed survival skills and was intrinsically satisfying, especially when you won.
The bottom-line is it was just plain fun! I hope that children today are having that much fun, the kind that fosters pleasant memories and forms bonds for life.
Unfortunately, I don’t see many kids having that kind of fun today. Maybe I am too old or have become too much of a big city-person, unable to appreciate, for that matter, even recognize, what our youth are doing to have fun. As children bow over their cell phones frantically texting, shuttle from one organized event to another or intensely hunch before a monitor as they maneuver their high performance mice at blinding speeds, it is difficult to tell if they are having that kind of good old-fashioned fun.
I suspect that there is a difference. I wonder if it is better.
© Copyright 2010 D. R. Prescott (UN: donprescott at Writing.Com).
All rights reserved.
D. R. Prescott has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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