The pair, led by the bolder Schulz, engage in a series of pranks, gags and general mischief around town involving local businesses; the police are summoned but the boys at first evade them.
[2] Literary critic Vivienne Kock notes the comedic elements that emerge in the story: "'An Old Time Raid' reveals a special attempt to come to grips with character as it responds to or stems from American social habit and values.
When the character is treated on a humorous, anecdotal level as in 'An Old Time Raid,' the story becomes essentially a study in manners…The social environment is reported, but it is also questioned.
The result is comedy…" Biographer Thomas R. Whitaker considers the story a negative critique of a bygone era in which a degree of lawless individualism was condoned and even applauded: The accurately heard speaking voice is a key to greater intensity in "An Old Time Raid," where the first-person narration stylistically renders the theme—a vacuous violence, without self-comprehension, born of hidden frustration.
[4] Literary critic Robert F. Gish writes: It is a fitting outcome for Dago’s life, another aspiring roamer, a free-spirited hobo whose freedom and daring led to death.