One of the benefits of being a paperboy was free rubber bands, lots of them.

 

Early in my journalism career I noticed a box marked “rubber bands” on one of my administrative documents; the card I sent to the Sacramento Bee to order papers.  I checked the box.  A couple of days later I got a bag of rubber bands about the size of a loaf of bread.  Cool!  Now I could THROW papers.

 

Putting rubber bands on all of the papers wasted time; not only in the act of banding papers but in damage control.  Soon I was retrieving papers off of roofs, out of trees; from under cars.  My throwing arm was never very good.  It didn’t take long to learn that rubber bands were appropriate for some situations but not others.  They were great for yards with mean dogs.  Sometimes I could hit the dog with the paper.

 

One of my customers complained unless the paper was precisely placed inside his screen door.  One time after a particularly petty complaint I put about 50 rubber bands his paper, threw it on his roof, and left it there.

 

Before long I had about 30 “loaves” of rubber bands.  After a couple afternoons of detention I was forbidden to take them to school.  They were a valuable commodity.  I could use them to trade with my friends for cool stuff.  I traded five loaves to Steve for a WWII bayonet with real blood stains on it.  Turns out it was Steve’s blood.

 

I started looping the rubber bands together to make a long chain.  I could snap my brother with it from across the room.  I made a real heavy rubber band by making a chain with about a dozen bands on each link.  The heavy ones made good slingshots.

 

I made a long, heavy chain and towed the wagon behind my bike to deliver papers for a while.  It was quite a bungee.  Over time I kept adding links.  One particularly boring afternoon I used up a dozen or so bags adding to the bungee.  It was probably about 70 feet long.

 

Thank God we had never heard of bungee jumping!

 

What do you do with a bungee that big?  I was playing with it in our yard when I noticed my brother’s Tonka Truck in the sandbox.  It was a navy blue 1960 Chevrolet pickup.  I popped off the front axle, put it through the end of the bungee and popped it back on the truck.   Now what?  The bungee was almost as long as our yard.  It was a problem in need of a solution.  Then I noticed my mother’s car, a nineteen fifty-something Lincoln Capri.  It had a trailer hitch.  I looped the other end of the bungee over the trailer hitch and carefully pushed the bungee and truck under Mom’s car.

 

We lived on a dead-end street that was a long block in length.  After a short while Mom came out with her purse.  She told me to stay home and be good while she went to the store.  As she drove away I kicked the truck out into the middle of the street, casually sauntered out and stood on it while the bungee payed out to full length.

 

As the tension on the truck increased I realized I was about to die!  She was at the stop sign about two-thirds of a block away.  If the bungee broke it would probably take off my head.  If I could not hold the truck it would hit Mom’s car and she would take off my head.  I kept all my weight on the truck and prayed.  After an eternity she turned right and drove away with the bungee stretching around the Stop sign.

 

I stepped off the truck. It leaped about four feet in the air and launched like a rocket.  At that same moment a late model white sedan drove across the end of our street.  It came from the direction where Mom had gone.  BAM!  It hit the passenger door behind the driver, a man in his late fifties.  He came to a screeching stop.  He jumped out of the car and walked around it to see what had happened.  The passenger door had a huge blue dent.

 

I could hear him swearing as he looked in all of the nearby yards and the ditch along the street.  He could see me standing in the middle of the street, way down the block.  I just stood there with my hands in my pockets.  He ignored me.  Pretty soon I saw him holding up the remains of the Tonka Truck by a piece of bungee about a foot and a half long, comparing it to the dent in the door.

 

After another sweep of the yards, ditch and the culvert at the end of the street, he threw the Tonka Truck in his trunk and drove away.

 

The whole situation evolved without malice.  There was no plan.  One step seemed to suggest the next.  I meant no harm.  At least nobody was hurt.

 

I still wonder how he explained it to his insurance company.