Today’s guest post was written by Jim Casada.
THOSE WERE THE DAYS:
WHERE IS THE BOY WITH THE SLINGSHOT?
Recently on her blog, “Blind Pig & the Acorn,” my good friend Tipper Pressley offered a piece featuring a song, “It’s Gone Like a Candle in the Wind,” with a video of her brother and late father singing the sad yet heart-warming ballad. This isn’t the song with a similar title featuring Elton John’s tribute to Princess Diana but rather one devoted to lost youth, delayed promises, and a boyhood lived close to the good earth. Verses from the chorus go straight to my soul while capturing so many powerful, poignant memories of old long ago.
Where is the boy with the slingshot?
Who guarded the homestead back then.
And where is the life that I used to call mine?
It’s gone like a candle in the wind.
Certainly it would seem that slingshots, at least of the nature and in the configuration I knew them, have indeed vanished like a candle’s flickering frame caught in the frenzied winds of what some style progress. Yet for several generations slingshots, sometimes known as flips, wrist rockets, or catapults, were an integral part of life for young boys growing up in rural areas. Parents who had known the rigors of World War I, survived the horrible influenza epidemic of that conflict’s aftermath, weathered the woes of the Great Depression, or were adults during World War II, all raised youngsters whose “raisin’” included almost an instinctive sense of guarding the homestead. They also knew the value of a dollar and the virtues of cost-free toys with potential practical uses.
That guard duty meant every red-blooded American boy had to have a slingshot or, in the final decades of the eras mentioned above, possibly a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. The latter item, however, while perfectly capable of wreaking havoc on homemade paper targets, fence posts, songbirds, and more, had significant problems. Acquisition of a BB gun required cash money, and to make matters even more complicated, they required ammunition available only through purchase.
Slingshots, by way of sharp contrast, could be made from readily available, cost-free materials. Moreover, ammunition in the form of small, carefully selected river or creek rocks, along with pea gravel, was available in endless abundance.
Boys, usually with considerable assistance and advice from their father or grandfather, constructed slingshots on pretty much an annual basis and sent untold numbers of rocks hurtling towards targets. The materials required to craft a slingshot included a carefully selected and whittled dogwood fork or similar wood from some other tight-grained, slow-growing hardwood; rubber from a discarded car or truck inner tube back when tires came equipped with those tubes; a leather patch cut from a discarded boot or other item then softened with repeated applications of Neat’s-foot Oil or some other leather conditioner; and sturdy twine to attach the pieces in rubber to the patch and the frame of the slingshot.
Someone who was really good with a slingshot could shoot them with deadly accuracy and with considerable rapidity. I had two older cousins who lived on a farm near Whittier, Erwin and Merlin Casada, who were flat-out marksmanship wizards. They could cut a corn stalk into with virtually every shot, and any rabbit or squirrel that made the mistake of staying still at distance up to 25 yards or so was in dire trouble. I never reached their level of expertise but I certainly sent thousands of rocks, not to mention somewhat more accurate but costly ammunition in the form of marbles or ball bearings, hurtling through the air. Whenever I struck my target there was cause for celebration, and I was at least sufficiently accomplished to hit a sheet of notebook paper or medium-sized tree trunk with regularity.
My interest in making, carrying, and shooting slingshots wasn’t at all unusual. Many boys carried one in a hip pants pocket as a matter of course, and just like the verses from the previously mentioned song, we guarded our homemade forts, held off Indian sieges, repulsed Nazi hordes, and played “war” with great regularity.
The simple thought of playing war in an outdoor setting in today’s world would quite possibly cause trauma in parents and send a trained psychologist into a tizzy. Yet the sling-shot carrying youngsters of generations past probably had a greater likelihood of becoming stable, solid citizens than is the case of today’s boys using high-tech tools to play video games of a decidedly warlike nature.
I lack the training or knowledge to make anything approaching a definitive statement in that regard, but based on personal experiences and keen observation I can say that growing up making, carrying, and shooting slingshots never had a negative impact on me or any of my boyhood buddies. Instead, slingshots required care and craftsmanship, along with getting out in the woods to acquire the frame for making them, in their creation. They took youngsters to creeks and rivers for ammunition, and shooting them meant roaming field and forest in a healthy fashion.
In short, slingshots furnished meaningful recreation, demanded creativity, cost nothing, and provided a great deal of fun. To me, the seeming disappearance of the humble slingshot from the American scene, truly gone like a candle in the wind, is a matter for sadness and perhaps a bit of sobering thought.
—Jim Casada—Mountain Musings and Memories for October 26 (Copyright 2023)
Last night’s video: First Blackberry Picking – Enough for a Cobbler & a Little Juice.
Tipper
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