My Memories of Troy
The Greeks had battled long and hard, but they could not
penetrate the walls of Troy. Each side’s heroes eventually fought in individual
combat at the foot of Troy’s mighty walls, but there was no final result to come
of that bloodshed either. Then one day the Greeks sailed away, leaving behind a
tall wooden horse. Was it a symbol of Greek acquiescence to the mighty walls of
Troy? —Nay, it was to become an eternal symbol of treachery. I remember it
well.
It was the summer of 1962, and my father was extremely mad
at something I had done, or not done. So infuriated that he picked up my wooden
toy chest and carried it out to the garage. I was banished to my room, alone,
all my toy soldiers were in that toy chest now locked away in the garage on the
far side of the house. My father really knew how to punish me, or so he
thought.
While locked in my solitary confinement, I sought the refuge
of reading. I took out a volume from my Golden Book Encyclopedia set, and it
fell open to the story of Troy. How wondrous, if I only had my toy soldiers,
surely I could find among them two different sets of Hellenistic toy soldiers
to do battle, but they were all locked away, and out of reach.
I slowly surveyed my room, my mind empty except for the
singularity of purpose, that purpose, my thoughts of recreating in my bedroom,
the siege of Troy.
The result of my raw materials survey: The Golden Book
Encyclopedia, twenty-four volumes. A box filled with pennies, and two,
six-sided dice, one red, one gray. I smiled broadly as my fertile imagination
bore fruit.
Let the battle begin!
I laid my encyclopedia volumes on their sides, piled three
high and staggered back about an inch—bound edge from bound edge, leaving
enough room for two pennies to occupy the depth of the steps that the short
staggered piles of books had created. When construction was completed, there on
my bedroom floor stood, “The Mighty Walls of Troy.”
I then set about the task of separating my pennies into
Lincoln memorials and wheat backs. The
Lincoln memorial is a building, so those pennies will represent the Trojans,
the wheat backs will be the Greeks. The
dates on my wheat back pennies ran across decades, but my memorial backs were
fewer in number and most of them were 1959, with some 1960 and 1961 pennies in
the mix. This disparity in dates will work well in my game plan. I set my few
dozen defending Trojan pennies on the walls of Troy, and arrayed before them
two or three hundred, wheat back Greeks.
CHARGE! The clash
was calamitous. As opposing pennies came into contact they were flipped to
their dated side, the dice were rolled, gray for the Trojans, red for the
Greeks. The last digits of the penny’s dates were compared, and the difference,
if any, was added to the higher numbered penny’s dice roll. Then the penny
rolling the lower combined total, stayed on its flipped-over side; the losing
penny was now a DEAD soldier.
At the end of that afternoon’s battle, hundreds of pennies,
most of them low dated Greeks, lay dead before the walls of Troy, upon my
bedroom floor. The carnage lay heavy on
my mind, and the smell of copper was thick upon my tarnish-tainted fingertips.
Then my bedroom door creaked and opened slightly. It was my
Father poking his heads in to see what was up. He quickly closed the door and
walked down the hall to where my Mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner.
Then I heard him say in a loud and exasperated voice, “Son of a bitch, it’s
impossible to punish that damn kid!”
You were right Father. I have always possessed the unique
ability to adjust to, and overcome adversities in my environment. It is a
talent that has served me well for all of my years.
