When we moved to Vryenhoek Crescent in 1973, we were close to Mother Nature. You would have to walk a long block to Raleigh Avenue and then cross it and the railroad tracks, cross Gateway Avenue and then you were in a “forest”. The forest was located south of Springfield Road, an area now encroached by civilization and most of the forest obliterated. It stretched all the way to Highway 59, later Lagimodiere Boulevard. It wasn’t a forest in the true sense. But there were many trees and small ponds surrounded by willows.
On weekends my two
sons, aged about 5 and 3 at that time, and I often went exploring in these
woods. They loved it and it gave their mom some uninterrupted “me-time”. In the
“forest” there were black and white poplars of varying sizes. There were saskatoon
and chokecherry and pin cherry bushes which you had to know where to look to
find them. There were willows, both diamond and other varieties – pussy willow,
goat willow, and the white willow. There were many birds flitting about and the
occasional nesting pair of ducks. We saw small animals such as rabbits, hares,
squirrels, chipmunks, and the odd fox. Occasionally we would startle a deer out
of hiding. It was a wonderful place to explore.
We would build
small forts from fallen trees and branches. From this home base we would go
looking for imaginary foes. To fight our foes we made some very rudimentary
slingshots using diamond willows for the wood base. We could not shoot our
small pebbles at living creatures but only at our imaginary foes. When we were
constructing these “weapons” my memory hearkened back to a n earlier time when
I was just a young boy.
Growing up on a farm on Saskatchewan in the the 1940's and 1950's gave me many opportunities that are unavailable to most urban children of today. One of them was that I was taught how to use a Cooey .22 calibre single shot rifle. I was taught the rudiments of shooting and using the rifle safely was drilled into me.
It was also a fact that you would never shoot the rifle unless it was for a good reason - shooting an animal or a bird for the table, ridding the farm of a rodent or carnivore which came hunting our chickens, ducks, or geese. My father did not condone the shooting of something just for the sport of it. As well, if you fired the weapon you were responsible for replacing the bullet if you missed at what you were shooting.
I early on decided I did not like killing animals or birds and since I would have to pay for any bullets I used in plain target shooting - plinking cans or shooting at insulators on telephone and hydro poles. The latter I did once and I received one of my dad's lectures. He never raised his hand or his voice to us but when he was finished with one of his lectures, we felt about an inch high and very ashamed of the dastardly deed we had been remonstrated for. I was careful in selecting my targets after that.
Because of this cost for ammunition, I adopted another type of "weapon", the slingshot. A well - constructed slingshot was a thing of beauty. It felt good in your hand, and if made well, it was a formidable weapon. It fit into the back pocket of your jeans and no self-respecting prairie farm boy would be without one during the months when there was no snow on the ground.
Making the slingshot was an art in itself. First you had to find a sturdy, y-shaped piece of wood. By piece of wood, I mean the forked branch of a sturdy diamond willow. The piece of willow had to be about 6-9 inches long, depending on your hand size and your arm strength. I tried to find a piece with as few imperfections as possible because even moderate flaws such as a crack can render your slingshot dangerous or unusable. If there were knots or bumps on the y-shaped branch, I cut or sanded them off.
Then I would peel off the bark. With the bark gone, the slingshot was more comfortable to hold. I would let the wood dry for a few days. This drying ensured more stability and strength. To form the firing mechanism, you needed some strong rubber. As surgical tubing was non-existent on the farm and strong elastic bands difficult to obtain, I used the next best thing - the rubber from a discarded inner tube. With sharp scissors, I would cut 2 strips of inner tube, each about a half - inch wide. I would experiment with the length to find out what worked best, but the important part was that the tubing had to be strong and thick. A newly discarded tube worked best as one that had weathered for awhile tended to become brittle and the rubber bands could break at a most inopportune time.
Then I would find an old shoe and cut off the tongue. Out of this I would cut a rectangular piece of leather between 2-4 inches in length and width. This would become my holder or "pocket" for the ammunition. Then with a pocketknife, I would cut two slits into the pocket. I made the slits just large enough for the rubber band to fit through without being wrinkled. Then I would slip one end of one of the rubber bands through the slit and fold it back over itself so that it made a little loop around the edge of the pocket. I would then secure the loop by tying a small length of leather shoe lace doubled or tripled around itself to make it tight enough. I would do this with both strips of rubber.
The next step was to lash the rubber bands to the slingshot body. I would secure with the strip of leather shoe lace, one of the long rubber bands to the back of one branch of the "Y", and then secure the other long rubber band to the back of the other branch of the "Y", both near the tips of the branches. I would make sure the bands were of equal length.
As ammunition, I would use small rounded stones that I collected from the highway running past our farm. And for targets...tin cans placed a top of fence posts. But my favorite target would be a small rectangular piece of board fashioned roughly into looking like a small ship. Usually I would mount 2 or 3 upright pieces of dowelling on this board to which I glued paper "sails". The boat or boats (I often made a small fleet) would be launched onto our slough. Then from the banks I would attempt to destroy this armada with my trusty slingshot. I spent many an enjoyable hour honing my shooting skills on these cans and boats and the wild life in insulators were free from any predatory attacks on my part.
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