The most of Andy Rooney by Rooney Andrew A

Author:Rooney, Andrew A
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American wit and humor
Publisher: New York : Galahad Books
Published: 1991-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

I didn't live in a tough area of town and we didn't have gang wars, but still, we were aware of weapons. In the spring we all had water pistols. Water pistols may be the best weapons ever made, because they're accurate, inexpensive and ammunition is readily available. It isn't like having to get yourself heavy plutonium or whatever it is they arm nuclear warheads with. All you need is a puddle.

They have that new nuclear weapon now that kills all the people in the area but doesn't damage the buildings. This must certainly rank with the greatest inventions of all time, but I still think that a shot right in the face or down the back of the neck with a well-aimed water pistol would be more help to mankind in the long run.

We had cap pistols, too, and there must be a mandatory death penalty now for carrying a cap pistol, because I haven't seen one for sale in years. I was lucky enough to have been born during the era that saw the introduction of the repeater, a cap pistol that could be loaded with a roll of caps. Up until that time, you had to insert a cap in front of the hammer for each shot. This, too, was considered a great advance in weaponry when I was young.

I don't know what position the National Rifle Association takes on bean blowers. Water pistols were our spring weapons, cap pistols our summer guns, but in the fall we switched to bean blowers. A bean blower was a metal tube about fourteen inches long with a hole through it about three-eighths of an inch in diameter. On one end it had a wood mouthpiece. You filled your mouth with white beans, positioned one in front of the mouthpiece with your tongue and then exhausted your lungs in an explosive puff. The bean shot out the tube and hurtled toward the target.

For several years this seemed like the ultimate weapon to us. It hurt more than the water pistol and it had a range of up to fifty

Weapons 473

feet, whereas even the most expert marksman couldn't hit anything with a water pistol at more than fifteen feet.

The weapons makers, perfectionists that they are, wouldn't quit with the bean blower though. By the time I was nine, the bean blower was obsolete, replaced by a more accurate weapon with greater range and greater hurt power. It was, of course, the pea shooter. It may not seem like much to those of you who don't comprehend weaponry, but the pea shooter represented a great step forward in our arms race on Partridge Street. The opening in the pea shooter was only half the size of the opening in the bean blower, so it not only hurtled the projectile faster, but the projectile itself, a small, hard green pea put fear in the hearts of the enemy over on Western Avenue.

There was only one weapon so fearful we hardly dared talk about it.

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