Mumbly-Peg, A Manual of Fun Between The Big Wars

About the Book

The author invites you to hike up your knickers, sleeve wipe your nose and trot along with Bud Pugh and his "Depression Era" street urchins. You might spin tops, play Indian Ball, smoke corn silk, or swipe a melon from a street huckster.

The author uses an unobtrusive device for telling about the fun that small kids made for themselves during the mid thirties of the "Great Depression." With a series of vignettes, accompanied by delightful drawings, he records the fact based escapades of his fictitious friend, Bud Pugh, and Bud's middle class gang from the streets of Harrisburg, Pa. some seventy years ago.

Bud takes the reader into the clubhouse fo the "Cloverly Heights Gang" where they share a corncob pipe and split a cantaloupe filched from a street huckster. On their roller-skates they hitch a ride on a horse drawn milk wagon, with near disastrous results. Our diminutive protagonist fleetingly reflects on somber subjects. He treats the dour economic conditions pretty much out of hand, since they seemed to have little effect upon his pleasures or the pleasures of his peers. The seeds of life's finality were sewn in his juvenile brain one day when, they were told that Carl had passed away. Bud cried that night in bed, but more because he heard his brother, Jim, sniffling, than because he understood that he would never see Carl again. That would only come tomorrow and tomorrow.

They tasted bigotry, but were nonplused by its dangers.

In spinning his tales, now and again, for the benefit of the uninitiated, Bud takes time to explain such things as how to make an "Innertube Gun", or the rules used by the gang when playing Mumblety-Peg.

You will meet Pete Sure, the oldest of the gang and its undisputed leader. There is Tony de Angelo, the only kid in the gang who went to Catholic school. Bill Shell is the reticent representative of the group. He usually goes along, but not always. Sherm Sourbeer enigmatically lives up to his surname by seeing a cloud around most silver linings. Jim Pugh is the gang's outrigger and pensive protector of his younger brother, Bud. Sammy Lipman is an adjunct to the gang and its only Jew. The cross-eyed little bundle of energy known as Tomcat Koser is another part-time gang member. Finally, there is our artless Bud Pugh, consummate tagalong. These are the reader's companions in adventure, the kids of Tom Browkaw's "Greatest Generation."

About the Author

Mr. Roberts has had a sustained interest in children and their activities going far beyond those of his own childhood or those of his five "Boomer" kids. His childhood was split between Harrisburg, Pa. , Havre de Grace Md., and Lanster, Pa.

After serving in the U.S. Navy during the final stage of WWII, he received a B.S. in Education, and went on to teach for several years. He then joined the staff of RCA in Lancaster, Pa., while continuing his education at night. Mr. Roberts worked in a variety of engineering assignments at Marion, Indiana and Puerto Rico as well as Lancaster. He also fulfilled company commitments abroad in England, Germany, Italy and Soviet Union. During his tenure with the electronics giant, he took time away from work to sit on numerous educational boards and committees. Upon retirement from RCA, he was employed as an engineering consultant in The Peoples Republic of China.

The author now lives with his wife, Joan in the Gretna Springs Community of Lebanon County, Pa., where he devotes himself to reading, writing and painting. The author has previously written a book for the general public called "TREMOLO."

Table of Contents or Excerpts

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