As a boy Faulkner did not need to study the history of the South; he lived in its shadow and experienced its decline. There were still many survivors of the war for whom it formed the dominant point of memory: aging veterans whose years after the surrender seemed drab and diminished. Faulkner would later recall that during his childhood he and his friends had played Civil War games under the guidance of old men who set out "the rules" by telling them exactly how the famous battles had been fought. It was inevitable that the figure of his great-grandfather should come to loom splendid in his boyhood mind and that he should saturate himself with legends of the past: a past that may or may not have been more virtuous but certainly seemed more spacious and vigorous than the present.