View Full Version : Home Front: War games are in every little boy's genes
Home Front: War games are in every little boy's genes
http://fayobserver.com/articles/2012/04/01/1166996?sac=fo.military
"One recent Wednesday afternoon, I paused from the chaos of a teacher's workday just long enough to get a head count and was momentarily taken aback by the results.
In all, there were nine children celebrating their brief respite from school in and around my house. Only one was female..........................."
Nice story about letting boys be boys. Sounds like my house when I was that age.
Badger52
04-02-2012, 07:17
Nice story about letting boys be boys. Sounds like my house when I was that age.Amen, thanks for posting that.
The gun held by the center young man here (http://www.daisymuseum.com/) was very versatile. One could unscrew the barrel's magazine tube & have a trench shotgun, or just leave the slide racked back and it "became" a BAR. (Always liked Kirby even if he gave Sgt Saunders fits; bad-ass gun with some attitude.) Away from suburbia in the hills live BBs were loaded up and cherry bombs were carried. I don't ever recall a kid on the block declining to play because he was "much too sensitive." Just America, at full speed.
:)
mark46th
04-02-2012, 08:15
My son left his Daisy BB gun with me when he moved out. Cat control...
Amen, thanks for posting that.
The gun held by the center young man here (http://www.daisymuseum.com/) was very versatile. One could unscrew the barrel's magazine tube & have a trench shotgun, or just leave the slide racked back and it "became" a BAR. (Always liked Kirby even if he gave Sgt Saunders fits; bad-ass gun with some attitude.) Away from suburbia in the hills live BBs were loaded up and cherry bombs were carried. I don't ever recall a kid on the block declining to play because he was "much too sensitive." Just America, at full speed.
:)
This thread and the Daisy museum brought back such wonderful memories. Thank you. I had almost forgot about Cage, Sgt. Saunders and Kirby, Little John and Doc!
Ya know, in some ways, boys will never grow up.
I realized that the other day while I was in my fort.
:munchin
Ya know, in some ways, boys will never grow up.
I realized that the other day while I was in my fort.
:munchin
Underground or tree? :D
Sometimes snow, sometimes cornfields, sometimes rusted and abandoned vehicle carcasses deep in the woods depending on where I was living at the time.
Great memories.
Ah the memories :) I think my parents are still a bit pissed about the garage door window: "Uh Dad, we had a bit of a misfire (damned crooked BBs)" :D
Ya know, in some ways, boys will never grow up.
I realized that the other day while I was in my fort.
:munchin
Box forts to man caves, some things never change :lifter
Some of the best times I had was BB gun wars and shooting bottle rockets across the creek at eachother. Had a couple of nice burn and singe marks on my white winter coat.
We also wore our tennis shoes with holes, and with the souls flapping off before going to get new ones.:D
I also had my own .22 in my room and the LR bullets to go with it. We would go out all day in the fields (now those fields are subdivisions) and shoot at anything, moving or not. I was 8 or 10, and did not need permission to take it out.
My friends and I all had BB guns, rifles and one had plenty of them to loan out if someone was going to "play" with us that day. He even had a .22 pistol. Today we are still friends, he is an avid knife collector, still has his guns, plus a few more, and we go to the range a few times a year to shoot his pistols.
That Springfield .22 I had was awesome (tube fed, held 18 LR), but finally went to one of my little cousins when I went into the Navy.
It's in their DNA. They can't help it. It's that whole hunting and gathering caveman thing. From birth, boys are genetically programmed to want to point an object at you and yell, "Put your hands up!" Baby boys practically emerge from the womb pointing their tiny index fingers like guns, ready to start fighting bad guys.
Heheh! That about sums it up. I love my boys' attitude about life. If it's dangerous, hair-raising, loud, messy, or gross, they're all for it. :D Nobody taught them these things, they're hardwired for it.
It's that same hardwired attitude that I appreciate in men - the fact that you guys are willing to go places and do things women have the sense not to do. :p
Susan
Underground or tree? :D
Collins. ;)
DIYPatriot
04-02-2012, 13:42
We graduated from toy guns to bottle rocket wars. I remember catching my grandfather's shed on fire with a really well-placed mortar (the kind that explode in the sky and give lots of color) - not the heavy artillery, although I am pretty sure I would've tried it.
I'll never forget my Cub Scout and Boy Scout master, either. He had a cabin in the woods and served in the Army many moons ago. Every Saturday was an excuse to learn how to live outside, do good will for others and earn badges while squeezing time in for war games with the other scouts. We dominated water balloon fights at our summer jamborees, too.
Man, I can't wait until my son is just another few years older...and then I want him to stay 7 for as long as possible. Good times...;)
Found myself doing a lot of reflecting while reading that story. It’s refreshing to hear about kids that know how to entertain themselves with something that does not involve electricity and a video game. I grew up on a farm in Eastern Iowa, middle son squeezed between two brothers. My playground was 420 acres, bldgs. On both sides of the road, two barns with hay mows, big barns. The building site was surrounded by double rows of huge pine trees which formed wind breaks. Great places to build forts and play “war.” We had a farm lane that headed north to the fields and at the end of the lane was a timber with a creek winding through it. Field tiles emptied into the creek, clay tile not plastic and back before all the chemicals made the water unfit one could always get the coldest most refreshing drink from them. When it would rain hard we would head out to the fields where the water would be rushing down towards that creek, it was cold, muddy and fast moving. We had 3 channels on our B&W TV, we watched Combat, The Rat Patrol and 12 0’clock High and lord knows how many Westerns. Us kids were always fighting Germans or Indians. Cornstalks or sticks were our guns and corncobs made great hand grenades. I do not recall which birthday it was but my grandma got me one of those green plastic machine guns one that looked like the Thompson that Vic Morrow always carried, you pulled the knob back and it was ready to rock and roll, I loved that machine gun, of course one of my brothers broke it one night when I was away. Those kids in the story will grow up, we all did, and forty years from now something will trigger their memories back to those days, just like this story did for me. Thanks for the post!
1stindoor
04-02-2012, 23:43
Great story, and like the others in this thread it brought back memories of BB guns, 22's, homemade bows and arrows...and bottle rockets. It also reminded me that one of our biggest rules was that we had to be home before street lights came on. No cell phones, no beepers, no GPS trackers...we rode our bikes, skateboards, or walked everywhere throughout several neighborhoods gathering friends and villians as we went until we found a field big enough to support our field of battle for that day.
Badger52
04-03-2012, 06:56
... and 12 0’clock HighBesides thinking nothing of riding bicycles from the San Fernando Valley to go to the beach in Santa Monica (past Rowdy Yates' house, that young guy Clint Somebody), we used to hit the big supermarket parking lots of a summer's eve and "dogfight." Schwinn Stingrays clearly had the edge in turning radius but no armor and were easily flamed - kinda like Zeroes.
Corn cob grenades; pure perfection.
Corn cob grenades; pure perfection.
Agree with the corn cobs...crab apples and shingles from the roof of a downed barn folded and thrown just right...ahh the memories.
Dirt clods from a freshly plowed field also work well... especially if you "accidentally" get one with a rock in it.
However, once that starts, garbage can lid shields are needed to maintain the balance of power.
There is nothing like the day when you realized that you were the sole architect, contractor, and protector of your first man-cave and you waged war againt any enemy -- foreign or domestic -- to protect it.
The chosen weapon -- as pointed out earlier -- was the trusted BB gun followed by the wrist-rocket for its silent properties.
Those were the days! :D
..."Black Kat" firecrackers packed in damp(not wet) mud made great "air burst" grenades!
We soon progressed to the same fc's, rigged with a longer fuse, coated in epoxy and dipped in daisy "BB's"... what a great anti-personnel mine!
"...you'll shoot your eye kid!"
Those were definitely the good old days, after the really good old days of course.
:D
Badger52
04-03-2012, 11:03
Those were definitely the good old days, after the really good old days of course.
:DSomewhere there are, hopefully, a fresh crop of kids somewhere getting dirty, bloodied - and more confident - and having their own 'good old days'.
From an instructor in 1969: "Where the **** did you learn to throw a grenade like that?!"
Me: "yeah, abc_123's dirt clods, high angle, juusssst landing on the other side of the giant packing boxes of the enemies' fort."
"Uh, I used to play a little ball, Sergeant."
:D
Just about any stick would make a great gun. But if you looked a little harder you could find one that had a branch on it that forked off to form a grip.
Somewhere there are, hopefully, a fresh crop of kids somewhere getting dirty, bloodied - and more confident - and having their own 'good old days'.
AMEN!