Swamp

  As mentioned previously, our neighborhood kids were a little mischievous.  It was time to move on to something bigger.  Our parents had bought us walkie-talkies to play with.  We used them to play war in the backyard.  They worked off of a frequency, and the range was about 500 yards.  We didn't need it that far, but they gave us options.  

 One thing we noticed early on was that we could pick up pilots in planes talking to one another and to airports.  It was interesting to hear these people talk about where they were going.  Of course, we devised a plan.  We put together a scenario that our small plane had crashed in the Wateree Swamp between Columbia and Sumter, and we needed help.  It was the first "play" that I wrote.  

 The story went that our plane had crashed into the swamp.  Everybody had died except for us kids.  My friend Bruce played a kid on the walkie-talkie using it as the plane's radio.  His sister Patty was the screamer yelling "help".  I was the director.  As Patty was in the background screaming, Bruce was yelling "Mayday".  Most of the play was improvised.  Bruce said that our plane had gone down in a swamp between Columbia and Sumter, but he didn't know where exactly.  Patty was "bleeding" and needed help.  I chimed in that there were snakes and alligators around.  

 One plane responded and said that he was sending help.  That night on the news, there was a report that a plane had crashed in the swamp with deaths on board.  The Civil Air Patrol had been out searching for the plane but found nothing. They decided it was a hoax. This was before GPS, so they never found out it was us.  We got scared after that, and we broke the walkie-talkies.  That was 55 years ago, more or less.  I am sorry for any problems we caused, but boy was it fun.