Rubber Guns & Corn Cob Fights

Growing Up In Bixby

By Don House

Scarcely any American boy of my generation can deny his dalliance with cowboy movies and reenacting them in the home environment. However, our gang (Jack Bolton, Richard and Barbara Dill, Bill Rosamond, Bones Watkins and others) went a step beyond in staging rubber gun wars! We devised various contraptions ranging from single to multi-shot ‘weapons’ for hurling half-inch cross sections of inner tubes toward a chosen enemy. Now, to the casual observer, this ammunition might seem to be on the par with marshmallows. But I can attest to experiencing memorable whelps at a distance of ten or more yards!

Our custom was to choose who would be in the opposing armies and begin our warfare with one army hiding either in someone’s barnyard or one of several yards at the old Pioneer Plant. In appropriate zones, the battles would often switch to corn cobs for ammunition. Being blasted in the face with a barnyard-soaked corncob provides a memorable childhood experience!