Hm, was today the day to make a bow and arrow?

We had enough kite string left over, and our World War II surplus Marine Corps K bar knives – carefully sharpened of course – would make short work of the cutting and hewing challenges that lay ahead.

Note: most of us carried authentic Marine Corps K bar knives on our belts in those days, carefully selected from large bins of similar equipment during intensely interesting forays onto Jacksonville’s Bay Street where there were several authentic military surplus stores at the time. I don’t remember any of us ever getting hurt, or even cut, when we used these knives. Somehow we knew how dangerous they could be, and we used them to cut inanimate objects – and not ourselves.

Bamboo bows and “arrows” were fearsome weapons. If the recycled kite string didn’t break too soon, the (on a good day) 10-pound pull? bow might send the arrow about ten feet. That didn’t dampen our enthusiasm for “archery” competitions, trying to shoot a bamboo arrow through a hemp hoop dangling from a string hung from a limb.

Depending on how you shaped it, bamboo shoots of the right size and diameter could also be turned into pea shooters or even flutes. I can remember making a flute or two and thus acknowledge my (eventual) aesthetic debt to Pan and Euterpe. However, I must admit that bows and arrows were more frequently produced from that bamboo than flutes. Inevitable, perhaps, when considering the cultural activities of male hunter gatherers operating in urban environments during the Eisenhower-ic era.

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