Childhood Weapons

When I think back  to  the childhood days of East New York, even as little kids we had weapons.
Of course, the popular shows on TV were all shows that had guns. There was Bat Masterson, Lone Ranger, Texas Rangers, Davey Crockett, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke( no action), Cheyenne, Wanted Dead or Alive, Cisco Kid, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes, Hotel de Paris, Yancy Derringer, Annie Oakley, Wild Bill Hickock ,Rifleman,and more. Then we moved on to the Untouchables , these guys had  machine guns.
     As kids we all had  cowboy type guns. I even had a  derringer that was built into a belt buckle.  You breath pushing stomach out,and the gun pops out and  fires. I had a Rifleman rifle. You could  pump and fire that one.  We always practiced drawing  our guns and  trying to be the fastest in the East.
Some lucky kids had  BBguns. Comic books always advertised  Daisy BB Rifles.
      Even as  little kids we used to take the wooden sticks from  Good Humor ice cream bars,  we would sharpen them to a very sharp point.  We would  scrape them back and forth on the  stoop outside our  house.  When they were nice and sharp, we would stab a friend.  So much fun ,,haha...
      Then of course  paper clips and rubber bands were a popular  weapon, trying to shoot at  birds, we never hit them though.  Pea shooter were really fun. We'd use whole dried peas as ammo, a wide plastic straw was the pea shooter. These were accurate and powerful.  I was  very  proficient at hitting people's heads with a pea.  Pocket knives were popular. We played Stretch or Land with them. Sometimes missing and hitting our feet , while trying to  stick it in the ground.  Occasionally someone would have a switch blade , that was really cool.  Or we would take a ride to  42nd street, where some novelty stores sold nice  knives.  My father who was a cop, would confiscate knives from kids and bring them home. The only problem was ,  he would  break off the  points. So , i had  about  20 knives with no points. I hated that. Occasionally he forgot to break the points. I had a nice yellow  switchblade, thanks to my dad and  a  white  ivory one.  Boy Scouts were cool , in that we were able to buy sheath knives. You know, the big hunting kind.
     We moved on to more sophisticated linoleum or oil cloth guns.  You would  use 2x4's , nail them together and have a trigger system with  clothes pins and   thick rubber bands, some bottle caps too.  Stick a  little square of linoleum between the bands and push the clothes pin and  FIRE.  they worked great.
We heard a lot about  zip guns.  These were made from  the  thicker tubular part of a car antenna usually.  Sometimes  a  pipe.. I never made one.  Not even sure  if i saw one. But we heard of them quite often. Car antennas were a good weapon.  We would  break off an antenna, and carry it around and  if we had to  use it as  whip type  weapon. They really hurt if you got hit with one.
     I already spoke about  our  pastel chalk socks  , that we used on Halloween, to bop people on the heads.  ( See my Zorro gang  post).
     One time I took a  real 7.7mm  Japanese rifle to school. I was a soldier in  the school play. The teachers freaked out.   Yelling ,  "the kid has a real gun" ,,,,wow  did i get in trouble.
    So  weapons were a part of  daily life.  Chains, guns, knives, sticks,  we loved the stuff.  Nowadays,
lots of real guns, people getting killed every day. Not a good thing.