How did I ever survive beyond childhood?

[k0ua]

Did any of you guys make clothes pin match guns? We sometimes loaded them with a #8 shotgun pellet when we didn't want to start fires (armor piercing incendary's, ha ha). For those living more sheltered childhood lives, we are talking about modifing a clothes pin by carving a "sear" point into the wood, and using its spring power to launch the shot or a flaming arrow of death (strike anywhere matchstick).

 

[k0ua]

This one is slightly different than the ones I made as a kid, but similar.

 

[tcreeley]

In the 1950's in an older car my sister got 3 stitches in her head from hitting the metal dashboard when my mother hit the brake. Of course - before seat belts and before plastic dashboards, let alone putting kids in the backseat. Who didn't stand up in the back of a truck holding the sideboards, or catch a ride on the runningboard (could hold 2). If I was lucky I got a ride sitting on the fender of our ford tractor, or stood on the 3pt drawbar going across the field.
As kids we used to climb the hay and run along the plank scaffolding around the silo that we were putting up.

As a 4 year old my sister had a little black cast iron kitchen style cookstove to play with. (like this)View attachment 400052 We'd take it to the driveway and light fires in it. I was 5. My older brother would get us to make paper houses. We'd then set them on fire and play fireman. Of course most of the town would burn!

 

[MossRoad]

Of course you made them sharper.... how else would they stick in anything? :laughing:

Thanks for the link. Never seen that before. Might have to experiment.... I'll never grow up!

I remember my dad and I going out to a local farm and getting some osage orange branches and he showed me how to make a simple bow and some arrows from straight sticks. Drawstring was braided cloth fishing line. Man, I had hours of fun with that. Probably only shot a couple hundred feet at an angle, but hey, it would stick into stuff at close range.

Anyone remember tennis ball cannons made from beer cans and powered by lighter fluid? YIKES!

 

[MossRoad]

Did any of you guys make clothes pin match guns? We sometimes loaded them with a #8 shotgun pellet when we didn't want to start fires (armor piercing incendary's, ha ha). For those living more sheltered childhood lives, we are talking about modifing a clothes pin by carving a "sear" point into the wood, and using its spring power to launch the shot or a flaming arrow of death (strike anywhere matchstick).

Nah. That's pretty cool! :thumbsup: We didn't have clothespins. We had an electric dryer. I think we were the only house on the block that didn't have a clothesline.

We used to take a matchstick and wrap gum wrapper foil around the head and down about 2/3s the stick. Then we'd set the match in a small hole, on a ledge, anywhere, really, light another match and hold it under the foil. When the match head inside the foil got hot enough, it would light up and shoot off a few feet like a teeny tiny bottle rocket.

 

[MossRoad]

And I remember getting a couple gunny sacks (what's a gunny sack, Dad?), going down the gravel road near our house and collecting cans and bottles. We'd cash in the ones with deposit for a dime a poke and eat enough candy to make you pretty sick for the rest of the day. The ones without deposits and cans we'd throw in a retention pond and throw rocks all day until we sank all of them. Fire, glass, rocks, sharp metal.... ahhh, the good old days.

 

[oldballs]

Oh yeah, the flaming clothes pin match shooter. My sister and I set the dried weeds along the road on fire with that thing. Then we proceeded to hide the box of matches in Mom's linen cabinet ( a gutted radio cabinet). But one of us must have put a hot one in the box, because the house was set on fire too. Fortunately, the house didn't burn down cause we dosed it with a bucket of water. Boy did I get a whoopin' that day.

And how about sitting along the Missouri river bank with my 22 rifle and shooting at glass bottles floating along. That was when all kinds of trash went into the rivers. I never did know who lived on the other side where all those ricochets went. Ah "Yes".... the good old days!??

 

[Bird]

We didn't have clothespins. We had an electric dryer.

You mean you missed out on hanging clothes on a line in windy, freezing weather? It's a job that just about can't be done with the kind of gloves we had back then; they'd just get wet and your hands would feel like they were freezing anyway. My parents never had an indoor clothes dryer until they moved to Alaska in 1965.

collecting cans and bottles.

In my part of the country, cans were worthless, but bottles were another matter. If I could pick up enough bottles along the highway during the week, walking home from school, we'd have baloney sandwiches Tuesday night and toast for breakfast Wednesday morning. Now that wouldn't sound like any great treat in this day and age, but when I was a kid (first grade to fifth grade), my Dad said "light bread" (in other words, store bought bread) was not fit for human consumption. My mother made biscuits, cornbread, or yeast rolls for every meal except when Dad wasn't there, and back then his job meant that he spent Tuesday nights in the Kincaid Hotel in Oklahoma City every week. So a baloney sandwich and/or toast was a great treat for us.

 

[MossRoad]

Yeah, I thought bologna was steak! :laughing:

I ate a lot of cheese sandwiches (slice of cheese on bread) for lunch. Lots of chicken. Wings especially. Today wings cost more than breasts. lots of rice and beans, too. When I was about 12 I started fishing almost every day. We started eating fish several times a week. Looking back on it, I fed our family probably 25% of the meals from the time I was 12 to the time I was 17-18. Never thought about that much until recently.... take a lot of things for granted nowadays.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

This is close.. The tail looks like the ones we had, but the head was much broader and way way sharper. Think spear point.. We made them dangerous!:shocked:

The Shingle Dart

Yep, that's close. What you describe is about what mine looked like. The tail was on the thin end of the dart, and looked more like the rudder on a airplane. The dart was straight on the bottom, and yes, much thicker at the shaft and sharp like a pencil on the end.

Here's what the corn cob darts looked like, only we used a sharpened nail.

NativeTech: Native American Indian Games & Toys ~ Cornhusk Wheel & Corncob Dart Game