The Muse is Loose

Today there are sophisticated guns that shoot paintballs. It kinda looks like fun to this old man. I think I would be pretty good at it. However, paintball shooting could never match my memory of rubber guns. You don't know what I am talking about? Wow! You are young! Rubber guns were made of wood. The only ones I knew were "home-made". There were pistols and rifles. Clothepins (wooden) were fixed to the gun and strengthened to help them better hold the ammunition. The ammunition was rubber taken from innertubes of cars. Red rubber was the best in our rubber gun days. It was hard to find. I made a rubber gun rifle that could fire four "shots" without reloading. At Cavanaugh, Arkansas we had a neighbor with a big hay barn.
One group of rubber gun shooters would get in the barn and the other group would attack them.
Those things stung when they got you at close range. Most if not all the boys wore overalls most of the time. Barefooted all summer. Picture that and you'll think Huck Finn is out there with the gang. Today kids are buried in some X-Box fighting enemy far more powerful, but they never get stung by a real piece of red rubber from an old innertube. That's the way it was and it was fun. I wonder where I could get an old innertube?