It should be noted here that the knife
Dad bought me was an "el cheapo" and didn't hold a cutting edge for
beans, even while whittling wood. Being the snoopy kid that I was, I found in
Dad's dresser in the bedroom where he hid his special jack knife, with a really
sharp blade that he used when we had to castrate pigs. That knife was really
great for whittling and I don't believe that Dad ever caught on to what I was
doing with it, cause I always put it back where I found it after I was done but
he had to wonder sometimes about why it didn't hold the fine edge on the
cutting blade. If the pigs complained, their complaints were pretty much
contained in the squealing they did while the "operation" was
performed on them. I still have that knife somewhere around our house today. I
also carry a scar on one finger of my left hand where that knife sorta slipped
one time and got me, but at least I was cutting away from my body (like Dad
taught me to) and all I got was a deep cut that was fixed up with a bandage and
carbolic salve. No 911 calls back in those days.
I got to be a pretty good wooden gun
maker and along the way, branched off into leather work to make holsters for
the wooden guns.
The only leather I had to work with was
from old "high cut" boots or pieces of old harnesses that had become
obsolete when Dad got the new tractor and the horses had to go.
Do you remember the "high cut
boots?" Some called them "High Tops". They came to almost knee
high and laced partway up the front and finished with the little hooks for
speed lacing. Old photos show that they were the only fashionable
footwear for hunters or engineers to wear out in the wilds. As for kids high
cut boots, the pictures in the old Sears and Roebuck that really made this
kid's mouth water showed the boots that had a nifty little pocket with a snap,
sewed on the side of the right boot, and that pocket could hold your nifty Jack
Knife. Boy oh Boy, how I wanted a pair of boots like that, but here comes the
old refrain I keep singing-----my folks just couldn't afford the extra cost of
frills like that. So I never got a pair of "high cuts" that I dreamed
about.
Working with that old leather was not
easy cause all I had to work with was my jack knife, and a nail for poking
holes. To hold pieces of leather together, I poked holes with the nail and then
using copper wire I salvaged from an old Model "T" coil that I broke
apart, I could poke the wire through the holes and make a passable job of
"sewing" the pieces together to make a holster and belt. My first
holsters were kinda crude, but when Herbie Tischauser got a store bought Roy
Rodgers pistol, holster and belt for Christmas and brought it to school, I saw
a way to make a much better holster for my "piece".
Eventually, my side arms were upgraded to
cap guns but I had to hang in there with homemade leather holsters and belts.
Fourth of July brought out the fireworks
for more realistic sounds to go with the play guns. My folks would give me,
when I got old enough and they could afford it, an allowance of maybe fifty
cents or up to a whole dollar to buy fireworks in town at the Five and Dime
Store, next to Mees's Drug Store. The store would stock up on fireworks for the
occasion, and for a whole dollar, you could lay in a good supply of
firecrackers and caps for my cap gun. The firecrackers were five or ten cents
per package and five cents would buy you a box of rolled caps for your
automatic gun or a box of disk caps for a six shooter revolver. Bottle rockets
were cheap and fun but I don't remember that they had the M-80, the really
powerful fire cracker you can buy nowadays.
The firecrackers were used for all kinds
of fun, including blowing up ant hills and putting under tin cans to see how
high they would fly. We had a three foot piece of half inch pipe that was
pounded shut at one end and bent kinda like a gun stock, so when a firecracker
was put in the other end and lit, it would make a passable shotgun.
I learned a valuable lesson the hard way
one time when I stupidly put a firecracker in one end of an open pipe, lit it,
and then sighted through the pipe from the other end so I wouldn't miss what I
was shooting at. I was one lucky kid when it went off, cause all it did was
scare the crap out of me without causing any harm to my eye. I never did fess
up to my stupidity to anyone, especially my folks, cause I was afraid they
would say-----no more fireworks.
My folks had an old cap and ball musket upstairs in the "seed room"
that occasionally they would let us kids bring down and use for a firecracker
gun, but then we had to put it back. I am glad now that they did not let us
kids 'play it to pieces', because that old gun, (I think Dad bought it at an
auction somewhere) now hangs on the wall of our family room where I still
appreciate the old memories it brings about.
I continued my manufacture of wooden guns
way into my high school years. One of my classes was woodworking down in the
Agricultural building where us FFA {Future Farmers of America) took shop
classes. I was working on a three legged milking stool for a project which was
to be made out of a piece of 2 by 10 plank, and I saw an opportunity to make a
round drum---- for a Wooden Thompson Sub-Machine Gun that I was building at
home ----out of the same plank. That round Thomson Drum, to hold those
imaginary wooden bullets, was a lot harder to make than the milking stool but
Mr. Polich, the Agriculture teacher did not seem to mind that I was goofing off
on another, not especially authorized, project and passed me anyway.
So----that's it readers, for this little
story about the Kid Gun Collector and his wooden weapons. One of these days I
will get around to a story about the real shootin' irons that we got into when
we got older and responsible enough to carry them around.
copyright 2016, Harold Ratzburg
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