textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-0456.txt

 '##::::'##:::'#####:::'########: VIVA LA REVOLUCION! CERDO DEL CAPITALISTA!!
  ##:::: ##::'##.. ##:: ##.....:: ===========================================
  ##:::: ##:'##:::: ##: ##::::::: THE HELOTS OF ECSTASY PRESS RELEASE #456 !!
  #########: ##:::: ##: ######::: ZIEGO VUANTAR SHALL BE MUCH VICTORIOUS!  !!
  ##.... ##: ##:::: ##: ##...:::: ===========================================
  ##:::: ##:. ##:: ##:: ##::::::: "The Bottle Rocket Gun -- A True Story"  !!
  ##:::: ##::. #####::: ########: by -> Cap'n Sparky                       !!
 ..:::::..::::.....::::........:: 1/21/99                                  !!
 !!========================================================================!!

        When I was little, there were still plenty of toys made of metal.
 In fact, metal toys were common.  We had metal Tonka trucks, and metal
 toy guns.  Back then, many toy guns looked like real guns.  There were
 all kinds of toy guns back then.  It was the early 80s.  That was the way
 it was.  I had all kinds of toy guns.  One of them would eventually come
 to be the bottle rocket gun.

        This toy gun was an old type of gun when I was young.  This type
 was being phased out.  It was a toy version of the old west rifles.  It
 had a lever you would pump around the trigger.  It would fill a resevoir
 with compressed air.  When you pulled the trigger the air would rush
 through a sort of whistle and make a ricochet noise.  It would also jump
 in your hands, simulating recoil.  You'd pump the lever, pull the trigger
 and pretend you were a cowboy.  The gun was metal, and it was painted
 metallic blue, not black.  It was a simple design that would pretty much
 work for decades.

        The guns were popular in my neighborhood because you could fill up
 the end of the barrel with dirt and shoot a shotgun spray of filth at
 your friends.  That's also probably why they stopped making them after
 decades of construction.  That, and the fact that they were made of metal.
 You could really fuck another kid up with one of these things.  That
 happened pretty often.  Living in an inner city neighborhood, we'd often
 beat each other with metal toys.  I had this U-Haul truck, must have been
 4 or 5 pounds of cheap rusted metal.  I could get my little-kid hand
 under the front axle and wield it as an effective and balanced weapon.
 After a few winters in my backyard, the thing was pure, jagged, rusty
 evil.  I did hurt one kid pretty bad with it once.

        One day my cool, second-hand, rusty metal cowboy gun broke.  Dirt
 or small rocks probably got into the whistle.  My brother took it apart,
 and as a result we had this long tube with a rifle stock.  Where the air
 resevoir and trigger assembly used to be there was a large rectangular
 hole.

        My brother was like MacGyver on crack, only MacGyver wasn't on
 T.V. yet.  He made a flamethrower out of a rubber hot water bottle.  No
 shit.  It was a rubber hot water bottle with a length of tube attached,
 and on the tube was a handle with a spoon coated with pitch.  You'd put
 the bottle under your arm, light the pitch on the spoon and you'd push
 down on the bottle with your arm with all of your might.  A nasty and
 flammable liquid would spew out the tube.  It would get ignited by the
 pitch-fire-spoon and you could coat your friends with deadly fire.  He
 abandoned it because it was too dangerous.  The flame could ride up the
 flammable goop and burn the water bottle and the user.  This was the kind
 of person he was.  He was like 9 or 10 at the time.  I must have been
 about 5.

        He immediately found a use for the broken cowboy gun.  He sawed
 off most of the barrel and fit a heavy lead pipe to the end, and taped it
 all up in an urban camouflage pattern.  You could slide a bottle rocket
 in the lead tube at the front and the fuse would stick out perfectly
 through the rectangular gap where the trigger used to be.  Basically, you
 could aim a bottle rocket with a modicum of accuracy.

        Unlike the flamethrower, this weapon was actually used in combat
 on two occasions.

        My brother and two of his friends built a fort out of cardboard
 boxes on Freedly Street.  Actually, 'street' is too kind of a description,
 it was nothing more than a wide alley.  You could only fit a tiny car
 down the street, and then only if you really had to.  It was the kind of
 place junkies would go in the middle of the night to shoot up.  It was a
 convenient location to build a fort.  He and his friends, Stan and Greg,
 built this wonderland of a fort.  It was huge, and everything was
 reinforced with wood.  The windows had wooden shutters on tracks.  You
 could raise and lower the shutters easily for defense.  It was a nifty
 hangout.  On each of the shutters was a drawing of a circular face, wild
 hair, and a tongue sticking out.  The character's name was Fortease, and
 his job was to torment potential attackers who couldn't get at the
 defenders inside.

        Then the bad guys came.  They built a fort maybe twenty, thirty
 feet away.  It was of the crudest possible construction.  They roughly cut
 a hole in a box for entry, and spaced crude windows on the other three
 sides.  The windows were simply cardboard flaps left hanging from the
 wall.  They drew a crude hand with a middle finger on the flap facing my
 brother and his friends.  It was a declaration of war.

        There were four kids on the opposing side.  My brother and his two
 friends were outnumbered, they had no choice but to wait.

        The assault began quickly.  The enemy forces relentlessly
 bombarded Fort Fortease with alley apples.  I should mention that an alley
 apple is not a tasty fruit, it is a half of a brick.  They were plentiful
 in my neighborhood due to the fact we had many collapsing and collapsed
 buildings.  They made great toys and they had surprisingly good balance
 for throwing.  If you could peg someone with one of them you could do
 some serious damage.  We threw them at each other all the time.

        The roof of my brother's fort strained with the abuse.  Half-brick
 after half-brick hit home.  The ceiling began to sag with the weight, but
 the wooden supports held up.  Then, all was quiet.  The clacking of the
 bricks on the roof stopped.  My brother tentatively peeked out through
 one of the windows.  He saw another child's hand jutting from the enemy
 structure, its middle finger raised in defiance.  My brother picked up
 the bottle rocket gun and asked Stan for ammunition.  Stan obliged and
 crouched, ready with a pack of matches.  My brother loaded the big gun
 and set it on a forked branch for maximum accuracy.  He aimed carefully
 for the square window, for the beady, learing eyes of the neighborhood
 kids within.

        "Now!  Light it!" he yelled to Stan.  Stan lit the match with
 careful grace and the missile sizzled and sparked down the barrel.  The
 shot was true.  Dead on.  It flew through the crude hole in the wall and
 a few seconds later the enemy base puffed a bit, and a white flash came
 from inside.  There was nothing more than a low, quiet sound: a soft thud.
 Whisps of smoke rose.  The enemy children scrambled out, covering their
 ears and screaming as they ran.  They destroyed their haven in the
 process.  The battle was a victory.  The bottle rocket gun, a leap in
 inner city neighborhood technology over the classic alley apple, had won
 the day!

        The next trash day came, and the trashmen removed the enemy fort.
 Eventually, Fort Fortease would suffer the same fate.  There was no need
 fort anymore.  They didn't need to defend Freedly Street.  No one would
 fuck with their base again.  The bottle rocket gun was retired.  It would
 only ever see one more use, in my hands.

        Across the street and around the corner from me is Memphis Street.
 It's not a huge street, but I wasn't allowed to cross it.  In retrospect,
 my parents enforced that rule because that street was the dividing line
 between our neighborhood and Kensington, a real hell hole.  On the other
 side of Memphis Street lurked this kid, who I called Perdue due to the
 uncanny resemblance he bore to the old Perdue chicken man.  It's sad, in
 a way.  He was a small child that looked precisely like and old man.
 Further, in a twist of perverted fate, his parents would dress him up in
 really nice clothes.  This little Perdue bastard looked like he walked
 out of a GQ, Jr.  Issue or something.  He was a snotty bastard too.

        So anyhow, neither Perdue nor I were allowed to cross this street.
 It was the border of our domains.  There were no ready alley apples
 nearby, so our battles were mostly crude psychological warfare.  We'd
 curse at each other, and I'd ask him if he had an chickens to sell.  I
 was 7 years old.  I had my two friends, Chuckie, who was a little younger
 than me, and Jimmy, who might have been a month or two older.  Jimmy had
 a heart condition.  He had a hole in his heart.  He was always afraid
 that someone would punch him really hard in the chest and kill him.
 Chuckie had little control over his bowels.  He would shit himself every
 once in awhile.  People used to tease him for it.  They would say things
 like, "Chuckie, Chuckie with the pants so yucky!"  It was sad, but he was
 my friend.  Fortunately, Perdue and his gang didn't know that Chuckie
 would poop himself.  They had no real ammunition except the fact that I
 wore glasses.

        The three of us were in front of the corner store.  We had run out
 of money for video games, and we had bought a couple of 10 cent comics.
 They were so cheap because it was a scam.  To save on the cost of sending
 unsold comics back to the company that printed them, distributors were
 supposed to tear off half the cover and send it back.  They were supposed
 to destroy the rest of the issue.  They never did, and they sold the
 comics really cheap to local stores which would sell them really cheap to
 kids.

        I had a big red Darth Vader light saber, the old kind.  It would
 emit off a deep, low whistle when you'd swing it.  Jimmy had a big stick
 of wood.  My big plastic light saber, although it hit like a whiffle-ball
 bat, was no real match against his club.  I didn't mind because with the
 light saber I was Darth Vader.  That made me cooler than Jimmy because he
 had a stick.  That's what the mental processes of a 7 year old child are
 like.

        I figured Perdue wouldn't give me too much trouble.  My cousin had
 recently beat him up.  My cousin was like a year or two older, and he
 lived in Jersey.  That meant he could cross whatever streets he wanted to
 because his Mom and Dad didn't know which places were good and bad.
 Besides, he grew up in a much worse neighborhood when he was younger.  He
 was ultra-cool and above the rules of our own parents and babysitters.

        Perdue didn't know when to quit though.  He sauntered over to our
 corner, but he was across the street so he couldn't really do anything.
 He started yelling insults at us.  I replied in kind.  It got pretty
 heavy.   The three of us yelled at the three of them.  I suddenly knew
 that Jimmy had a bottle rocket in his waistband, and I suddenly remembered
 the past glories of the bottle rocket gun.  Struck with inspiration, a
 plan quickly formed in my mind.  I told Chuckie to keep yelling at them.
 I ran home and tore down the basement steps like a banshee, my babysitter
 was only mildly surprised.  I always came in running down the basement
 and running out with toys.  It was no big deal.  Besides, she was cool.
 Once a group of kids chased me home and she splattered them with boiling
 water as they taunted me from my own sidewalk.

        I found the bottle rocket gun in the toy box under the steps, the
 place where old toys went to die.  I felt its weight in my hands.  I was
 elated.  I found a pack of matches and we went running back.  Along the
 way I loaded the bottle rocket gun.  I aimed it carefully, I didn't have
 a wooden crutch like my brother had...

        The last thing Perdue said before Jimmy lit the fuse was, "What're
 ya gonna do, shoot us with a toy gun?" The launch seemed to take forever,
 I was afraid my aim would fail, a million doubts flew through my head.
 Finally, the projectile cleared the barrel and sputtered along, blowing
 out sparks in its wake.  It hit the white screen door behind them and
 bounced off.  It sputtered in circles on the ground like a wounded bird.
 Perdue and company immediately turned tail and fled, screaming.  The
 rocket exploded, leaving a black sooty starburst on the door.  Within
 seconds, an inhabitant of the house, an older teenage girl, was at the
 door yelling at us.  We ran, basking in the glow of victory.

        Perdue was forgotten within days.  He had lost his nerve.  He knew
 that we had won the arms race.  He just couldn't compete.

        The bottle rocket gun was never fired again.  My brother
 dismantled it when he was in high-school.  He carried the lead pipe half
 in his schoolbag in case he was ever jumped by kids from Daniel Boone
 High, who he shared the trolley with on the way home from school.  The
 bottle rocket gun is no more than a fond memory these days.

 !!========================================================================!!
 !! (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! #456, WRITTEN BY: CAP'N SPARKY - 1/21/99 !!