The End of the Spear

Speaking of homemade weapons... We spent countless hours making slingshots, bows, arrows, spears, toy guns (including rubberband guns) - just about anything we could come up with. Heck, we would even take the galvanized garbage can lids and use them as shields as we gathered up pockets of acorns or even small pebbles for our throwing fights. Yes, we would literally throw those objects at each other. It wasn't just a light lob to let them know it was coming their way. No, no! We threw them at full force. Thus, the need for the shields.

Anyway, we spent a great deal of time working on those weapons to get the arrows as straight as we could, or make sure the bow was strong enough to pierce thick cardboard at about 50 feet, or whatever we could think of to make them more "real".

When we made a spear, we tried to keep it for as long as we could (providing it didn't break in playing with it). We came up with our own unique markings to identify our individual spears. At first, for the tip, we would just use a hatchet and chop it into the sharpest wedge we could make. However, eventually we would tire of that and want it to stick into more things at which we would throw the thing. So, we would take a knife and whittle away at the tip to round it, and make a nice tapered and sharp point. But, even that got tiring, because when we threw it at something the point would usually break off and we would have to sharpen it all over again.

Eventually, we figured out that we could slightly burn the tip then rub it on a river rock to sharpen it. Not only would it get sharp, but it seemed to harden the tip more than it was naturally. That was nice for awhile, but it soon became old hat. Besides, we didn't always have a campfire to use to keep sharpening the tip when it got dull.

As would normally be the case with us, we began experimenting. Now, if my parents always knew what we were doing, they would have suffered many fits over our antics. However, Mom would send us outside most of the time, because in the house we either got in her way, messed up the house, or just roughhoused too much. We didn't mind, though. We loved spending countless hours outside, winter or summer, playing all our games, or just looking for some new adventure. As I was saying, we began experimenting with our spear tips. What did we come up with? Tin! Yep, those tin cans were finally proving useful for something. All we needed to do was to cut out the round tin top from a can, then cut a slice to the center. Since the spear tip was round and tapered, a round tin can lid fit almost like a glove - well, as long as you could tap a glove onto your hand with a hammer and tacks.

It was important to take our time while installing this tin tip to the spear. We wanted it to be as sharp as it could be. We finally hit pay dirt! The spear would stick in wood and pierce through that thick cardboard like it was butter. We were quite pleased with ourselves. Yes, we would even play our "Hunter and Hunted" game with these metal tipped spears!

One fine summer day, we were out playing our game of "Hunter and Hunted". Kory was the hunter. He had just newly tipped his spear with some heavy-duty tin. Low and behold one of us ran by the twenty-one foot travel trailer that was stored in the back yard. (Not only was it great on long trips, but it served as an extra bedroom when we had more company than we had rooms in our large house.) Well, as I said, Kory wound up and let that spear fly from where he was stalking in the field. Whomever was the target of that spear was so very lucky, because it sailed straight and true - right into the side of that travel trailer! He threw it with such force that it penetrated the side of the trailer, and stuck part way through to the inside! We were quite impressed - and also knew that Kory would suffer the wrath of Dad when he found out what had happened! It was a priceless moment! It also pretty much ended our modified, metal-tipped spear experiments.

Hunter and Hunted

I like to think I was so creative with so many things while growing up, but I really wasn't. I would usually take an idea someone else came up with and make it my own.

One such idea was a game we came up with called, "Hunter and Hunted". The rules were fairly simple. We would divide up into two teams. One team was the Hunter team, and of course the other was the Hunted team. The Hunted team usually had until the count of 100 to go out and hide in our expanse of field and woods. That's where our country property came in very handy. In fact, we usually had to set boundaries so no one had to spend all day searching for those on the Hunted team.

Our tools (weapons) were fairly simple. We would cut down birch or maple saplings for spears. We spent a great deal of time getting their tips sharp so they would stick well into the ground when being thrown. We worked hard at finding the correct balancing point so they would fly the farthest and stick in the ground rather than hit tail first, or flat. We also took either saplings, or green branches of birch trees to make bows out of. If needed we would shave the bow down some so it could bend easier, then notch the ends for string. We usually would use twine for the bowstring, but it didn't last long. We would also try taking regular string, waxing it, then making multiple strands twisted together. That would make for a longer lasting string. For arrows we would use young saplings from poplar trees, because they usually grew fairly straight. We never messed with trying to put fletching on them. We weren't too awful accurate anyway.



So, the way it would work was that each member of the Hunted team would go out and find a good hiding place. Sometimes that would be up in a big tree. While other times it would be to find a depression in tall grass or ferns, and just try to blend in. Did I mention that we would often create loin cloths to be more like "Tarzan" or "Indians" while playing this game? It would help us blend in better to the environment.



After counting, the Hunter team would go out and search for the other team. Now, the Hunted team members did not need to stay put. They could move around all they want as long as they weren't spotted by the Hunters. If memory serves, there was no real goal to reach. The Hunted team just wanted to spend the most amount of time without being "caught".

Speaking of "caught", the way a Hunter caught a Hunted member was by throwing a spear, or launching an arrow at that person. If the weapon landed within two feet of the Hunted person, then they were caught and would then join the Hunter team. Sound dangerous? I suppose, but we were pretty good at shooting arrows, and throwing our spears without hitting someone. To this day, I don't ever recall anyone being hit or wounded by one of our crude weapons.

On one particular late summer day, I was on the "Hunted" team. I usually liked that team, because I loved to see how creative I could get with my hiding places. I thought I was pretty good at it. Anyway, on this day, I chose a depression between a couple of mounds in tall grass to hide. This spot was quite open, but with the tall grass, and my ability to lay flat, I was pretty invisible. I was quite pleased with the fact that no one saw me, when suddenly I heard my brothers scrambling around closer to me. I began to think I might need to move from the spot. I held tight, though, and just listened more intently. Suddenly I heard some footprints coming from my right side. They did not sound so loud or heavy as my brothers, though. Just then, I looked up and saw this brown figure leap right over the top of me. I thought, "Could that be?" I got up just in time to view the white tail of a deer bounding into the woods. I just sat there stunned. Imagine me lying there in wait for one of my brothers to try and find me, and a whitetail deer gets scared up and leaps over me to run away. I believe it was a once in a lifetime experience. I wish there had been some way to record that event, but I can only describe it in words some 30 odd years later.

Victims of a Different Sort

In thinking back over the times we had growing up, it is sometimes amazing the things we came up with to keep ourselves occupied at 'Branham's Damsite'. Goodness knows who came up with the original ideas. The fact is, even if the ideas were not our own, we would always modify the rules to fit into our extreme way of doing things. We always loved thrills, chills, and spills.

One such game was called "Ambulance". The premise was that one person was selected to be the ambulance driver (the player no one wanted to be). The other players would go around the property with our bicycles and/or whatever device we creatively used, and get ourselves into a position which displayed some sort of accident we had been involved in. The idea was to be the most creative we could be to get into odd and awkward positions to make it the most difficult for the ambulance driver to retrieve us and take us to the hospital. (Thus, the ambulance driver being the least enviable position to have.)

So, the ambulance driver would usually count to about 100 to allow the other players to get into position. Then he/she would go around the property with the ambulance (the trusty Radio Flyer) and search for the injured parties. They would usually be crying out, "Help, help me!"

Since there were many trees on the property with low branches, it was especially fun to try and hook a bicycle tire on a branch, then the bike rider would be hanging upside down - sometimes tangled in the bicycle itself - and have to be retrieved by the ambulance driver. The object was that the victim could not help the driver in getting loaded into the ambulance. It was always a lot of fun to observe the unlucky person who was the driver try and wrestle the victim down from his or her position and place them in the ambulance, then transport to the designated area for the hospital.

One drawback for being creative, though, was that sometimes it was especially difficult for the driver to retrieve a victim, and it would take quite some time to accomplish. All the other victims had to wait in their postion until the driver reached them for retrieval. Some of my siblings would get bored of waiting and just quit before the game finished. Needless to say we didn't play that game too many times in one day. We would play it often, though, because we always tried not to be the driver. Usually, we would be in a group and someone would yell out something like, "Hey, let's play ambulance! I'm not the driver!" Whomever was the unlucky one to be last to yell out usually ended up being the driver.