Spring Jackets
Pea Shooters
Yo-Yo's
and
Squirt Guns
Every Springtime in my youth was a time to accessorize.
During my growing years I needed to fit into a new Spring jacket for school. Nothing special to recall, except maybe the once very stylish small brown and white houndstooth and the even more styling dusty pink with black trim. Very Rock'n'Roll.
As I matured my taste went for the classic khaki zip up windbreaker with the bright red plaid lining, knit cuffs and waist. Still a classic. Behold the Steve McQueen approved Baracuta Harrington G9 jacket (since 1937)…
Now to the good stuff. Every year when the weather turned to warming it was like religion for me to get my equipment updated. For some reason Spring leading to Summer was also the time for the three essentials in every boy's life: 1) a new pea shooter, 2) a new Yo-Yo, and 3) a new squirt gun.
If you lived in my neighborhood in Detroit on the "Boulevard" you didn't travel outside without your gun. Pea shooter, that is. The corner candy store always had a large supply for the kids come Spring. The ones we used were 9" long double thick plastic straws with the regulation 5/8” ID in your choice of colors with accent stripes in a coordinating color. A pea shooter for every peewie.
And every year religiously, and heard so many times, my mother would shake her head and worry over someone getting someone's eye shot out. When you used real dried peas, they could be dangerous. Mostly the preferred ammunition was bits of paper wadded up with just the right amount of spit. They stuck good. Some of the really bad boys in my neighborhood carried BB guns and I once ran the gauntlet past them on my speedy bike. And once there was a great hue and cry among the adults when we figured out how to reconfigure a wire spring clothes pin to shoot one of those self-igniting kitchen matches. There may have been a fire, or two.
The only next option would have been a zip gun. But I tended to err on the side of being a good boy (even when I was bad, inside—“no one to the wiser” as my mom would say.) That was my only brush with potential juvenile delinquency. Well, maybe the time when I got my first drivers license and was pulled over for racing in the woods on Belle Isle. The cops never found the stash of firecrackers under the seat. Offsetting all that I would have you know I was an altar boy. But I was kicked off mid-career. Just a misunderstanding on some priest authority figure’s part. I swear.
Then the Yo-Yo. The Yo-Yo was to me as a boy, what… what? Words fail. You had to be there, or had the same addiction to understand. At the time the Duncan Yo-Yo company would send demonstrators to schools to amaze the kids with the latest tricks. Soft sell, but the message came through. Get one now! Every boy worth his salt could make it sleep and do the forward pass, rock the baby, the around the world, and walk the dog.
I fondly remember my red Yo-Yo with the spray-painted center black stripe.
And, the hollow metal number inherited from my older brother Arnold. It was painted pea green and had these little holes near the outer edge. When you made it sleep it gave this low pitched whistle. Excellent.
When I was a boy you could pick up a pretty nice Yo-Yo for pocket change. Now I see that you can name your price. Like most things, we have engineered into almost everything a kind of excellence and NASA level perfection that puts the price up there and having to get your rich Auntie or Uncle to spring for it. Nowadays you could spend nearly 150 smackers if you cared to. No more kid stuff. Grown men make lucrative careers doing Yo-Yo tricks. My mother, anyway, would not be proud.
Lastly, the squirt gun. You had to get a new one every year to keep up with the technology. Nothing said loser more than last year’s squirt gun. Besides, by the end of the season the darn things would lose their squirt (technical boy-term for what happens when you pull the trigger).
One thing that was always on the list of sought after options was capacity. Even as a boy, you knew that size matters. What a pain to have to go inside to the faucet for refills. I was not that inventive a boy. Somebody got rich figuring out the capacity thing. Voilà! Super Soaker. I still get a little misty at the idea of having one for myself. Maybe it’ll have to be the vicarious route with a little surprise package to my grandson this Summer.
As an adult now, I may have to go on to other fun things; like a marshmallow air gun, toilet paper bazooka, potato gun. Maybe go all the way, and get into paintball. (Make mine the Luxe DLX Technology Luxe Paintball Marker – Digi Camo.)
