One of the benefits of being a paperboy was free rubber bands, lots of them.<\/p>\n
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Early in my journalism career I noticed a box marked \u201crubber bands\u201d on one of my administrative documents; the card I sent to the Sacramento Bee to order papers.\u00a0 I checked the box.\u00a0 A couple of days later I got a bag of rubber bands about the size of a loaf of bread.\u00a0 Cool!\u00a0 Now I could THROW papers.<\/p>\n
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Putting rubber bands on all of the papers wasted time; not only in the act of banding papers but in damage control.\u00a0 Soon I was retrieving papers off of roofs, out of trees; from under cars.\u00a0 My throwing arm was never very good.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take long to learn that rubber bands were appropriate for some situations but not others.\u00a0 They were great for yards with mean dogs.\u00a0 Sometimes I could hit the dog with the paper.<\/p>\n
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One of my customers complained unless the paper was precisely placed inside his screen door.\u00a0 One time after a particularly petty complaint I put about 50 rubber bands his paper, threw it on his roof, and left it there.<\/p>\n
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Before long I had about 30 \u201cloaves\u201d of rubber bands.\u00a0 After a couple afternoons of detention I was forbidden to take them to school.\u00a0 They were a valuable commodity.\u00a0 I could use them to trade with my friends for cool stuff.\u00a0 I traded five loaves to Steve for a WWII bayonet with real blood stains on it.\u00a0 Turns out it was Steve\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n
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I started looping the rubber bands together to make a long chain.\u00a0 I could snap my brother with it from across the room.\u00a0 I made a real heavy rubber band by making a chain with about a dozen bands on each link.\u00a0 The heavy ones made good slingshots.<\/p>\n
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I made a long, heavy chain and towed the wagon behind my bike to deliver papers for a while.\u00a0 It was quite a bungee.\u00a0 Over time I kept adding links.\u00a0 One particularly boring afternoon I used up a dozen or so bags adding to the bungee.\u00a0 It was probably about 70 feet long.<\/p>\n
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Thank God we had never heard of bungee jumping!<\/p>\n
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What do you do with a bungee that big?\u00a0 I was playing with it in our yard when I noticed my brother\u2019s Tonka Truck in the sandbox.\u00a0 It was a navy blue 1960 Chevrolet pickup.\u00a0 I popped off the front axle, put it through the end of the bungee and popped it back on the truck. \u00a0 Now what?\u00a0 The bungee was almost as long as our yard.\u00a0 It was a problem in need of a solution.\u00a0 Then I noticed my mother\u2019s car, a nineteen fifty-something Lincoln Capri.\u00a0 It had a trailer hitch.\u00a0 I looped the other end of the bungee over the trailer hitch and carefully pushed the bungee and truck under Mom\u2019s car.<\/p>\n
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We lived on a dead-end street that was a long block in length.\u00a0 After a short while Mom came out with her purse.\u00a0 She told me to stay home and be good while she went to the store.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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As the tension on the truck increased I realized I was about to die!\u00a0 She was at the stop sign about two-thirds of a block away.\u00a0 If the bungee broke it would probably take off my head.\u00a0 If I could not hold the truck it would hit Mom\u2019s car and she would take off my head.\u00a0 I kept all my weight on the truck and prayed.\u00a0 After an eternity she turned right and drove away with the bungee stretching around the Stop sign.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I stepped off the truck. It leaped about four feet in the air and launched like a rocket.\u00a0 At that same moment a late model white sedan drove across the end of our street.\u00a0 It came from the direction where Mom had gone.\u00a0 BAM!\u00a0 It hit the passenger door behind the driver, a man in his late fifties.\u00a0 He came to a screeching stop.\u00a0 He jumped out of the car and walked around it to see what had happened.\u00a0 The passenger door had a huge blue dent.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I could hear him swearing as he looked in all of the nearby yards and the ditch along the street.\u00a0 He could see me standing in the middle of the street, way down the block.\u00a0 I just stood there with my hands in my pockets.\u00a0 He ignored me.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The whole situation evolved without malice.\u00a0 There was no plan.\u00a0 One step seemed to suggest the next.\u00a0 I meant no harm.\u00a0 At least nobody was hurt.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I still wonder how he explained it to his insurance company.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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