When I was a child, one of my favorite go-to toys on a Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon was toy soldiers. I had a vast collection of small plastic army men that I could array all over the kitchen floor of my home or parade through the dining room, much to the chagrin of my poor mother. The armies I had acquired over the years ranged from simple green army men to Civil War soldiers of blue and grey. I even had a “Rough Riders” set that included Teddy Roosevelt and numerous charging infantry of the Spanish-American War.
At my Grandad’s house, he had a box of Alamo figures, complete with a vast army of Mexican soldiers parading towards the humble Texas defenders. I would spend HOURS on the floor of my home or my grandparents’ engrossed in linoleum combat across wide swaths of American history. Gettysburg would be fought in the dining room, the Alamo played out in Grandad’s sun room, Teddy Roosevelt charged repeatedly through the kitchen, and vast invasions of green army men would take over the living room on various afternoons.
The one glaring historical inaccuracy of my plastic recreations was that at the end of the day, the soldiers would be collected and simply returned to the box, bucket, or whatever Tupperware container my mom had provided. The rooms would be cleared, the armies contained, and I would simply move on to the next game.
