Halfway to Christmas! Are you ready?

Snow balls soaked in water and left overnight to freeze into iceballs.
I wunce watched an older neighbor kid lock a CO² cartigridge in a vise, drill the end to a larger size, fill it full of gun powder, stick one of those waterproof fuses which we could mail order in rolls into the end and then crimp it shut, without choking the fuse. If we wanted to get Silver Salutes, we'd have to vacation somewhere down South in Tennessee or further, because Michigan had these pussy laws about having those. Cherry bombs were available in Quebec. So, we had to improvise.
My neighbor used to stick those cartridges under a coffee can and then watch it attempt flying into orbit. One day, he managed to blow off one of his finger tips.
He died of kidney failure, sometime thereafter in his early 20s. He had a good job, because he learned the machining trade in Germany, as soon as he got out of highschool. He left a Porsche 924 in his parent's garage behind

 

When I was 4 my dad gave me a nice sling shot. I let my neighbor who was 5 or 6 play with it for a minute. He shot me between the eyes with about a 3/4” steel sae nut!
Same house I backed my dads ‘58 Impala down the drive, across the street into their yard. Luckily it got high centered before I hit the house. My first driving experience alone.
I also have a bb lodged in the bridge of my nose from a shoot out in ‘76…

 

Nose-piercing is still trendy and costs big enough money. I forgot to mention M-80s. We couldn't get them either. But sometimes, other kids would have them. The first time I've seen one lit up, it mowed a bald spot on a lawn, somewhere between 4 and 5 inches.
I once harvested a piece of conduit pipe from a construction site, cut it down to size and then crimped the end in a vise. I then drilled a hole near the end of it, the size of a typical underwater fuse. During times of no powder, I used to clip matchheads from their paper stalks and then pack them into this pipe. Using ordinary newspaper, I would then pack a bunch of wad following the matchheads and then drop a bunch of pebbles into the pipe, before securing them in with more wadding. I would then place this pipe a few feet away from some particle board. it would blow a sizable hole, each time.
Matchheads can even propell a CO² cartridge

 

We had those too. Made them from an old inner tube and the tongue from an old tennis shoe. We used "pop beads" for ammo and shot pigeons off the eaves of old Victorian houses. It would bruise their wings so they couldn't fly and they'd fall to the ground. Took em home for pets until Mom discovered they were covered with lice. We also used the tongues for tire boots when our bikes needed one. Electrical tape didn't last long enough.

When soybeans were ready to harvest, we'd load up on them and turn to our peashooters. In high school when some of us had cars, we'd raid gardens for rotten tomatoes and have city wide tomato fights. It was a pretty small, rural town.

All these things would probably send you to jail nowadays.

 

Rotten tomatoes were small-time for us. You couldn't harvest them year round, anyway.
I copied a real sling that you could swing around and then let go of one end with a finger. Cat biscuits harvested from little kids' sandboxes and fresh doggy doo were feared ordnance. You'd be surprised at the velocity generated by one of those primitive slings

 

Errr, so, about Christmas...... and you know, gifts and cards and trees and lights and maybe snow and more gifts and food...

 

And car parts….

 

Or truck parts...

 

I forgot to mention car and truck parts, and tools, and books about cars and trucks and tools -
Shame on me, how could I have let that slip my mind.......

 

I get NHRA Midwest Nationals tickets every year for my birthday…
But that isn’t till January 6.

 

or a truck!

 

Well, we just got done discussing gift suggestions (and I don't mean raiding little kids' sandboxes ). I've almost forgotten what snow looks like here, since it hardly does even that anymore.
It's almost time to get out a flashlight and harvest a tree somewhere

 

look for newly landscaped yards or building sites. The trees come up easier and you don’t have to take a saw…

 

That works too!