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Not Today !!!
gesshots
Member Posts: 15,678 ✭✭✭✭
Children and parents would most likely be looking at serious court / lawyer / therapy fees .. today !
Washington, D.C., 1942. "Children playing, aiming sticks as guns." Kodachrome transparency by Louise Rosskam for the Office of War Information. View full size.
It's being willing. I found out early that most men, regardless of cause or need, aren't willing. They blink an eye or draw a breath before they pull the trigger. I won't. ~ J.B. Books
Comments
You don't see kids outside playing in those numbers anymore. They are all inside staring at their phones like zombies.
brings back memories we did not have a lot of kids in our neighborhood but playing army, cow boys and native Americans all armed with some type of cap guns some ok some good but none were the better expensive ones that collectors seek out now as caps cost money we would pool out pop bottle money and splurge on a few rolls but they never lasted long ) so most shooting were accompanied by bang bag bang 😁 got you and a occasional dispute that led to a bloody nose or lip to declaring the winner 😁
funny no one called the cops screaming there's a kid with a gun hiding in my shrubs
Seems most of the games of war we played ended when little Johnny failed to "take his DEADS!" 😁
Willow branches facilitated a lot of my early toys. From fishing poles, bows using cattails for arrows, dipped in the lawn mowers gas tank for flaming arrows 😲, and of course, for rifles. The backyard willow tree also provided a great climbing fort and when Tarzan was being played, swinging from that tree was quite successful!
Those branches also make great switches, just ask my mom!😉
When I was a kid I whittled a rifle out of a 2X4 that I found in the basement. It took me about a month to finish it. After I finished the woodwork, I drilled a hole in the end of the barrel, drove a nail in for the trigger, and screwed on a conduit bracket for a trigger guard. Then I mounted a sliding bold lock on top for the bolt.
I played with that for a few years before I got too old for cops & robbers. Ah, the good old days.
Joe
This is part of our gang below back in '59. That's me on the far right.
We fought wars between cowboys and Indians using real weapons. Arrows made from Bull Weeds shot from homemade bows and BB guns. No fair shooting at someone's head but it happened sometimes because those arrows were apt to go anywhere when you shot one. John stuck his head around the corner of an old abandon house one time during a war and got shot through his ear with an arrow. That arrow just passed a few inches from his eye as it went by going through his ear. Actually it only went half way though his ear as it was hanging there and we had to break it off and pull it out. Made a nasty hole. He had to make up some story to tell his mom so he wouldn't get whooped.
There was a big wooded hill where we lived and we decided to clear out a track down one side of it to ride wagons on. Not one of our better ideas. It destroyed everyone's wagon but somehow no one died. Steve got the idea of nailing and strapping a barrel with the top and bottom out of the barrel on his wagon where he could lay down in it to steer it so that if it rolled over the wagon would land back on it's wheels. It rolled over ok but it didn't stop with just one roll it got faster and kept rolling until it crashed into a tree. Other than a few knots on his head and scratches and bruises he survived. That was the end of the track down the hill in the woods.
We went on to other projects. Building a club house out of bricks without a block wall to tie it to don't hold up very well and walls can fall on you. Digging caves into a dirt bank without proper support can cause pretty big cave-ins. I walked back up in those woods to that bank one day over 50 years later and I could still see the what was left of the cave. We hauled a lot of dirt out of there with a wheel barrel.
Shooting a shotgun shell on the primer with a BB gun can put your eye out. Leroy, over 65 years later, is still wearing a glass eye. Building bombs can cause some pretty bad scares. Paul Wayne still has scars and numb fingers on his right hand from taking the powder out of a lot of firecrackers to build a nuclear bomb.
Dang Smitty!! I would have fit right in with this bunch! 😁