Imagination, then and now

A three foot long piece of one by two, borrowed from the woodpile, and a cross piece nailed for a hilt was an extension of a boy's imagination when I was a child. With this hand-forged implement in hand one could be Robin Hood or one of his Merry Men, a Roman centurion guarding the cross, or part of Jeb Stuart's cavalry, riding down on unsuspecting Yankee infantry. A pirate loomed there in the bushes or hanged from the riggings of an oak tree. A garrison of Spanish soldiers, dressed in their metal helmets and armor, were waiting behind the split level ranchhouse in Indianapolis for the arrival, by sea, of Sir Francis Drake and his Sea Hawks.

It didn't hurt that every old black and white movie seemed to hold a story with Errol Flynn fighting Basil Rathbone or Leslie Howard spying on the French as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Even Clark Gable took the Bounty from the hands of the overbearing Captain Bligh at swordpoint. Its no wonder my imagination was so easily caught up by the simple wooden invention rescued from the woodpile.

Oddly, my ability to define and transform the simplest activities into something grander and historical continued on into adulthood. Could it be easier to transform a football game in 1978 between Washington and Lee University and Gettysburg College, played on a grassy football field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, into a replay of the third day of Gettysburg in 1862, W&L throwing line after line into the Union horde, only to die (figuratively), with a loss in the end. Only the time of year (early November) would detract from the imagination's charge of Pickett's legions. Only the measure of our injuries and losses would alter the slow, sad ride back home to Virginia from the retreat of the Army of Northern Virginia. It might cause one to wish we were marching among those Southern hosts, trying desperately to save a campaign of losses, rather than just a bunch of undersized football players, trying to wrest a victory from a season of losses.

Even in my professional life, the sense of quiet moral outrage and calm compassion for one's client as was exhibited by the actor Gregory Peck in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' sometimes charges your presentation before the court with something the everyday facts might not easily inspire. It is no wonder that many lawyers first see themselves as lawyers at least partially due to an early viewing of that movie.

It makes me wonder if soldiers, casting about in Iraq and Afghanistan, doing their duties, sometimes see themselves as famous soldiers from years gone by. In the movie, 'Patton', George C. Scott, playing General Patton, talks about "being" in ancient battles as a Carthaginian in North Africa or other soldier in other times. He is depicted in the movie as believing himself to be the reincarnation of soldiers of earlier times.

Does it inspire us to imagine our place in the dirty, dangerous jobs in which we find ourselves as something more noble than normal? Does it help us or delude us?