As a child in the 1970's, we grew up with parents and friends of parents who grew up with cowboy films. It was before our time BUT as they grew up with them, they assumed we would like to play with things like that, so they would buy us cap guns. The caps consisted of a thin red roll of paper (Brown on the underside) with raised dots on them where the tiny amount of gunpowder was. Some kids would try and collect this in the hope they could make a big explosion but in reality they would have had to buy hundreds, if not thousands of rolls of caps to get enough for it to be a problem. On each roll there was around 100 of these raised caps. We would tear one off at a tim e and put them under the rear trigger of our gun, and when we went to shoot "Bang!"
I didn't like bangs especially when very young and the bang was indoors, so most of my caps were not used apart from adults trying to get us to play with them, until I was an older child. Later came these so called "Safer" caps that had a plastic surround which could not be used inthe same toy guns. (A new toy gun design was made for them), but what these were used in is a toy rocket that one threw up and when it came down and hit the ground "Bang"!
For an idea of the noise, it was the same noise level that Chrietmas crackers make.
When I spent a week on my holidays at my cousins where my Uncle and Aunt (And cousins) lived on a farm (Uncle was a farmworker), I remember walking with my cousin down the farm lane and not far from where the lane came out in the village was a shop (The lane was at least half a mile but we were used to walking miles with our parents in those days, so half a mile was nothing to us!)
We reached the shop and with the money we saved we could not afford to buy much, so we looked fod something cheap, and the only thing we could afford was rolls of caps at 3p each. We had about 17 1/2 p between us but we had to buy crisps as well out of that! If I recall, we came back with a packet of crisps each (Golden Wonder was the brand in them days. These days is Walkers), and around three or four rolls of caps.
Now without a cap gun,and we could not afford the rockets which were something like 25p each in them days! (Rockets worked with both types of caps), so we decided to use a nail and hammer (Or a nail and stone) to make them bang, but after a few bangs, me and my cousin (5 years older than me) got bored. We sat there by my auntys large chicken pen. We wondered what would happen if we tore a cap off at a time and dropped them in with the chickens. We soon found out. Peck, peck, "BANG", flutter, flutter...Peck, peck, peck "BANG!" Futter!
The hens were thick! They were scared of pecking the caps, but then after a while they would forget they were caps and "BANG!" We started playing caps with the hens at around 4 pm? So when around 7pm came we had to go to bed. They went to bed early due to my Uncles farm work with early morning milking. I was used to going to bed about an hour later (I was aroud 8 or 9 years old). It was a hot summers day and didn't get dark until 11pm (We were in West Wales where it gets dark an hour later than if one is in the east of the UK such as London). But right up until 10pm or slightly later, I was hearing the chickens pecking away with the occasional BANG. I just hoped my Aunt didn't hear it! Is all I could do was to keep from giggling!
Anyway, the rest of the weeks holiday was spent with one or the other of my older cousins in the river at the bottom of the fields playing with the water and stones. It kept us amused as it was only about a foot deep.
Around three weeks later my Aunt and Uncle visited, and while they were there my Mum and my Aunt (Her sister) were in the goats paddock having a chat, and I LOVED playing with my Aut as she was so much fun, but my Aunt was asking my Mum about her chickens, as she said they seemed nervous and they had not laid for two weeks. As a child I did not connect the two events but remembered it as my Aunt thought it odd. Was only years later I reasoned that it was the caps!
25 Nov 2023, 5:09 pm
