cap guns

If it wasn’t evident before it should be now. I feared my father. I respected him yes, but I truly feared him more than anything.

A trip to Ben Franklin in Grasso Plaza netted some caps for our cap guns. You remember those red rolls. Individual caps on a perforated roll made the caps turn with each pull of the trigger. Many times the caps would explode and destroy the paper. You would then pull them through and tear off the burnt paper. On occasion there would be some good dimples of gunpowder that could be ignited by other means.

My brother found at age eight that a hammer was a good tool to blow up the unspent caps. He would lay them on the floor in the garage, it was smooth, and he would strike the little disks with the ball peen hammer. They would explode in a similar fashion to those in the gun, one at a time.

I almost always played games the way that games were designed. I followed the rules and I would get angry when my brother wouldn’t. I used the cap rolls in my gun to play cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers as they were intended to be used. We would pair up and have good guys and bad guys.

For some reason Pat always bored of traditional games and found a way to amuse himself. Since he had discovered the ball peen hammer/cap trick he decided to accelerate the explosion process and create a new way to play the game. He thought that blowing a whole roll at one time would bring more satisfaction to the process.

Roll after roll exploded in loud fashion until his rolls were gone. A sledge hammer to the roll expedited the process and in no time he was through his dozen or so rolls. He turned to me. I was enjoying the shot by shot version of the game and Pat was impatient. He tried to convince me that doing mine like he had done his own was far more satisfying. I disagreed. There was a scuffle.

He tore at least two rolls from my hands and I began to cry, I was only six. He exploded the first roll with laughter. I was screaming in anger. He set the second roll on the floor and I would have none of that. There wasn’t any chance I was going to lose my last roll of caps to his sledge hammer.

He reared back and with all his might he trust the hammer towards the ground, while keeping me at bay with his other hand. I wiggled free and at the moment of impact between the sledge hammer and the caps my hand covered the caps stopping the explosion of gunpowder but replacing it with the explosion of finger tissue and blood.

Naturally I pulled back my shredded fingers and shook them like any injured child would spraying blood on Pat and the car and inside the garage walls as well as on the floor. My angered screams were replaced with pain filled screams and both Mom and Dad appeared in an instant.

Mom grabbed me and took me inside to access the injury while Dad was left behind to deal with my brother.

I cannot imagine ever being angry enough at my son to hit him with a 2 x 4. Dad was and Dad did. My Dad struck his eight year old son with a piece of lumber from the garage not once but several times. I was told one of them sent him down the hall of our house.

My Mom settled Dad down cleaned my brother’s tears up and life went on as normal.

I have to defend my Dad. You see he didn’t have a very good role model in his parents. His Dad would often beat him while he was inebriated and his Mom would do the same to his Dad. My Dad witnessed a lot of violence in his childhood and participated in his share. So it might have seemed normal to him or maybe more acceptable to behave the way he did, as it was far less violent that what he had experienced as a child.

I had to go to the hospital that day. The doctor couldn’t stitch up my fingers; they bandaged them and sent me home. I didn’t have much of a lasting mark from that experience, at least on my hand.