As a young boy, I remember eagerly retrieving the Sunday newspaper from the driveway each week before Mom or Dad could get it. My brother and I would pull out the comics and save the rubber band. It’s hard to say which we most appreciated… The colorful collection of comics was always fun for a few minutes, but those big, strong, fat, red rubber bands gave us hours of fun.
Dad cast two armies of soldiers from molten lead during his teenage years. One army was comprised of the Colonial “Minutemen,” while the other was of the dreaded British Red Coats. He painstakingly painted each one and created quite the set. We were thrilled when he let us play with these special handmade toys, but I think our “war games” surprised him.
We’d flip a coin to see who would command the brave “Patriots” fighting for America’s freedom and who would command the dastardly “Red Coats.” Once determined, we’d set the soldiers up in the long bedroom hallway about twenty feet apart. Then, with an ample supply of those highly coveted rubber bands, we’d stretch them one at a time from our fingertips and shoot at each other’s army. We enjoyed this game for hours at a time, and – predictably – became quite good at knocking over the little lead soldiers.
Invariably, we’d lose track of a rubber band now and then only to find that Mom would vacuum one up. Doing so made a terrible noise, shut down the vacuum cleaner, and made Mom quite angry. We swore each time that we’d never lose another, but – hey – we were boys!
When we were a little older, Dad made us rubber band guns from foot-long pieces of 1×4 pine to use outside. He notched the front edge from which we’d stretch a piece of tire inner tube back to a finishing nail at the rear. We could “load” up to six pieces of inner tube and slipped each off the finishing nail one at a time to shoot. Playing “cops and robbers” in the back yard was a blast, but it did indeed sting a bit if you got hit at close range!
It’s funny what you remember about growing up, but playing rubber band wars with my big brother is a special memory. You see, he passed away earlier this year, just three weeks before his seventy-seventh birthday, and I miss him.
“Family is not an important thing. It’s everything“
Michael J. Fox
