The Day We Attacked The White House!

In 1953 I was in the 3rd grade going to Radhost School. During recess time we usually played a ball game plus we had numerous other games. This one day it had rained the day before and the ball field was too wet to play on. The land this playground was on was sticky black land.

If one ventured off the grassy part of the school yard the wet black dirt would stick to the shoes and bare feet and naturally the classroom floor would be a mess.

On this wet school day we boys went to the nearby cane pole patch located on the side of the nearby gravel road. We proceeded to strip the cane poles of their leaves and each boy would cut a stick about a yard long. We then would roll up a piece of mud into a ball the size of a baseball. Then we’d stick this mud ball on the end of the limber stick and in slinging this stick with a whipping motion the ball of mud would fly off.

Naturally we ended up slinging these mud balls at each other. It wasn’t long before the fighting got pretty fierce. After being attacked by one group of boys we were outnumbered so we took refuge inside the boys’ outhouse. The boys’ restroom consisted of a small house or “one holer” as we called it. This outhouse had a board fence around the opening of it. So we all huddled behind this board fence and used it as a fort against the barrage of mud balls coming in. As we regrouped and reloaded our mud sticks we sounded the attack and proceeded to push the other team back. They had no choice but to hide behind the only available shelter which was of all things the girls out house. Naturally as both forts were peppered with mud the mud balls flattened out and stuck to the walls of the building and turned the white boards black. Once the teacher found out about the mess you know what the next recess hour had in store for us: cleaning up and whitewashing the two rest rooms. But the fun was well worth the toil.

PS: I always considered the nun or sister teaching us to be a super human cause we never saw her using that country out house.