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Steve Sleightholm
Steve's Venezuela Memoirs
Pea-Shooter Wars
Steve Sleightholm's Venezuela Memoirs
Pea-Shooter Wars
When my daughter was young and would shoot a paper straw at me from across
the table it instantly brought to mind the glorious pea-shooter fights and I
would say, “I remember when I was young.......”. “Yea, yea, yea....”, she would
say totally disinterested. She had heard it many times before....... And I would
begin the story.....
......Usually I did not sleep well because there was always the anxiety of
looking forward to the next pea-shooter war. The fights sometimes lasted hours
and involved groups of boys picking sides and selecting the place of battle.
I think our pea-shooter wars in Tia Juana were as exciting and as today's
“paint-ball” fights. They had all the excitement of the hunt and avoidance that
today's paint-ball fights have. Personally, I think the pea-shooter fights we
had were more visceral.
The best location for a good fight was under one of the old homes on stilts that
had lots of lawn furniture and clutter and shrubs around the base which would
provide protection from being hit and room for maneuver. Again, the McCormick’s
house comes to mind because it had all those things and actually had more shrubs
in the adjacent yard. You see, that house was one of the originals in Tia Juana
and it was on the same street where our first home was located.
We selected a day when the parents were away -- naturally as the fights were
boisterous affairs. Lots of hollering, i.e.: “I hit you -- you’re dead!!” “You
missed a mile!!”. “Get him!!” and more like that. We would raise, shoot and duck
to avoid being hit. Ganging-up on and charging a selected adversary was
permitted and your victim would cringe and cover his head to avoid the blister
marks which later among his friends marked him as a “loser” all the while
hollering “I give up”. If you gave up you were out of that game, which
continued. To run away was OK and probably a wise thing to do considering the
alternative was dealing with the humility of losing under fire afterwards when
we discussed how the battle went. Sometimes and battles would ebb and flow
across the neighboring yards and under other homes. These were the best battles
as they involved hunting for your adversary.
There were two basic types of pea-shooters: The hollow stem of a Papaya tree
leaf or the chrome tile-hanger tubes taken from the construction sites of the
new homes where the camp was expanding. The tube diameter was critical as there
was one common form of ammunition and that was the small, perfectly round,
premature dates (peas) from the four palm trees that only grew along the fence
that separated the Shell camp from Campo Verde and near the flood control pumps
by the dike.
The ammo
The ammo,“peas”, grew in clumps on a stem which hung from where the fronds
connected to the tree. You could pull the clump of pea ammo off the tree and
then hang it from your pant's belt where it was easily accessible. The Peas were
perfectly round and about ½ inch in diameter. When you pulled them off the clump
they came away with a small protrusion which you nipped off with your teeth
before you inserted the pea in the shooter.
You could safely hold about two peas in your mouth during a fight so you could
shoot two quick shots with some assurance of a hit on your target. One had to be
extra careful not to swallow the extra pea during the excitement. I never
swallowed one as I was fearful of choking to death.
The shooter
Well, here was where some judgment was required. If you got a Papaya leaf stem
you needed to select one that wasn't too old because the stem would begin to dry
and doing so would begin to dimple the length of the tube. So a green stem was
best and then you had to be sure it was straight. There weren't many mature
Papaya trees in Tia Juana at that time so the supply was limited and the demand
high. The tree end of the stem was slightly larger than the uniform diameter of
the rest and became the blow-tube end. If you used Papaya tubes you could make
them last longer by wrapping them in black electrical tape and soaking them in
water when not in use. They might last two weeks that way. A real disadvantage
of using Papaya stem was the real chance of crushing the tube in all the
excitement and therefore the adoption of the towel-rod tubes.
I wasn't excited about the towel rod tubes except you did not have to worry
about any of the issues associated with the Papaya stems and you could carry
them inserted in your pants belt which looked cool.
To shoot the pea took some dexterity and the ability to inject a large puff of
air into the tube in one instant blast and you accomplished this by placing the
tip of your tongue into the end of the tube while building as much air pressure
as you could in your mouth and then pulling away your tongue emptying the air
from your lungs at the same time. We could great distance and accuracy
sufficient to knock small birds out of the trees and to reach the highest bees
nests.
To this day, I am amazed that no one lost their eye-sight during the “wars”
because if you were struck anywhere the skin was exposed, it left small red
welts. This was at distances of 25 feet. You could be reasonably accurate out to
50 feet or so.
I think what stimulated these periodic wars was the presence at the Country
Clubs (old and new) of traders who brought and sold items from the Montelone
Indians: blowguns and accompanying darts; the long bows and the especially long
arrows tipped with hard, jagged, multi-directional points made from the heart of
the black-palm and then there were the “authentic shrunken heads” (not to be
confused with shrunken goat heads that came after the ban of selling the real
thing). As kids, we used to hang around the display and have visions of Indians
and shooting the kids we did not like with those neat weapons.
Walking down a camp street barefooted, wearing shorts with a bunch of peas in
your belt and your shooter in your fist was ultimate cool -- what more could you
ask for.
“Yea, sure....” my daughter would say in her early disinterested teens.
But, that's how it was.
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