During the cold war it was 'common knowledge' that Russian spies were everywhere, seeking out the weak and the vulnerable, constantly on the alert to gain a foothold on American soil. It was also common knowledge that when the Russians mounted their first strike they were going to hit the area of San Jose, California first, as this would be the most crushing blow they could deliver anywhere on the continent. This entry describes a game played by a few kids in one neighbourhood of San Jose.

A girlfriend and I invented the game of "Russian River" sometime in the early 1960s. It was played in a sprawling old orchard that marked the upper boundary of our neighborhood, and hadn't yet been razed for the next housing tract, school, or strip shopping center. The real focus of the orchard was a shallow gully that wound through the trees, yielding an occasional stream or bed of mud depending on the rare precipitation in the area. This was no ordinary gully and no ordinary orchard - this was the site of the Russian River, a crucial cold war battleground on the home front. The orchard was an obvious choice for the Russians - it offered endless opportunities for hiding troops in the midst of the nation's most powerful military area.



The basic game was simple. We jumped over the river, and if we fell in, the Russians got us. There was often discussion about how high the Russians could jump up in an effort to grab an ankle, this being dependent on the condition of the river. For instance, the Russians couldn't jump very high in muddy conditions, but a dry river bed gave them a better spring. As the game progressed, plain jumps over the river lost their appeal, and variations were incorporated into the game with each new sessions. Some jumps were made from longer distances, over wider parts of the river, or carrying someone's (critically injured) little brother or sister on our backs.



We felt safe in the orchard despite the obvious danger of facing the Russian Army by ourselves. If we fell in the river, which happened only occasionally to keep the Russians alert, we would be rescued. The rescue might involve a bold brute-force escape with possible loss of life or more probably, an intricate plan to trick the Russians into letting down their guard. The Russians were easily outwitted. If a larger war broke out as a result of our skirmishes, we were confident that our fathers would be called up immediately and deal with the Russians just as they had earlier whipped the Germans and the Japanese. Through children's eyes we could easily identify the enemy; engage them in combat, trick them, conquer them. Though the Russians were camped in our orchard, they came from far away. When we finally prevailed, as the United States always did, they would be blown off our continent.

Today's children can still find a piece of land with a meandering river, still play jumping games, still picture hands reaching out to grab a vulnerable ankle. But what would the river be called, and who would be in it? The river of drug dealers, serial killers, child abusers, neighbors, babysitters, strangers? The bad guys are hard to spot, and hard to isolate in a river these days. They no longer come from across the ocean, but live in our neighborhoods. The confident children of the cold war are today's parents, and can't let their children play by themselves in an abandoned orchard. So how are these kids going to know how to win a war?