Huh. We didn't foot race. We actually "shot" at each other with toy guns, sometimes with actual caps. Sometimes we just said "bang."
Oh, and I didn't live on anything you could refer to as a "block."
I think every boy in our neighborhood had one or two cap guns. Btw, in addition to cowboys and Indians, we also played cops and robbers and war with Americans versus the krauts and japs. I guess we were a bloodthirsty bunch.
Yeah, we did plenty of role playing with WWII including all kinds of military items we thought we knew all about including Tiger tanks, Sherman tanks, half-tracks, bazookas, pineapple grenades, potato mashers, grease guns, corsairs, P-51s... Anything to kill the bad guys. And we were sure about which guys were the bad guys.