Was Jackie’s Waters just character they came with as a old friend of Beavers’s? I don’t remember him from the earlier episodes. He seemed be bookish by the time 10 or 11. Would playing war really been boring for 10 or 11 year old?

By the time I was 10 we were done playing war.

We had the trash can lid wars and that was until age 13, but that was simply throwing lemons and oranges off of the fruit trees at each other.

The kid who played Jackie Waters was a one-off.

I agree, playing war and swinging on a tire would be on the edge for an 11-year-old.

When this episode has come up before, I thought they should have brought Rusty Stevens in for a one-off. Then they could have put some comedy into the script. "Beaver, let's take the tire down and use it to go out on Miller's Pond." And they fall in. Beaver: "Man, I've been thru this before."