Blowguns and Bouncing Pigs: Traditional Toymaking: The Foxfire Americana Library (6)

by Edited by Foxfire Students

  LAWTON BROOKS: You get forked sticks and drive them in the ground. Then set your mill down to where the creek will pull it. Drive it down far enough so that the water is hitting the paddles. It will go just as fast as the water goes. If the creek’s running it will just keep on going from now on.

  Sometimes we’d make them and put them in the creek and we’d get great, great old big wide planks for paddles, and we’d get a sluice of water about as big as your arm and we’d put a pipe in the branch out here so it would hit the end of a paddle. Then we’d whittle us out some little round pulleys and cut a groove in them all the way around for the string to go in and put them on the side of the fluttermill. Then we’d put a string across the pulleys. Then we’d put up three or four fluttermills on down through there and have this first one up here pulling the others on down there where there wasn’t any water. We’d make it look like a sawmill working. Sometimes we’d make it pull something else way down yonder. It worked like a belt. It wouldn’t take but one pulley each to pull them.

  We’d leave these in the creek and when it came a hard rain they would wash away, but we would make us some more.

  ILLUSTRATION 52

  ILLUSTRATION 53 Lawton finds the centers of two 12″ boards and then cuts a notch into each board and fits them together (top). Then he puts a nail in either side to act as an axle, and, holding it under a stream of water, shows how it spins (bottom).

  EDD HODGINS: Get you two boards and mortise them together sort of like a grist mill, and have nails for axles and set that in two forked sticks. Then let water pour on them blades and it’ll turn. I made the Florida folks one over here and it was still turnin’ when they came back the next year. Then what you want to do if you want to make a little racket is put you little pieces of tin on those blades and that water will make a racket on that tin when it his it.

  ILLUSTRATION 54

  ILLUSTRATION 55

  Fly Gun

  In Watauga County, North Carolina, numerous craft shops, like the one Fred Potter runs in Sugar Grove, market a toy called a fly gun. A white-oak split propels a projectile out of the end of the toy. We could find no contacts who remembered seeing this toy as children, but we have included it here as it is marketed in the mountains as a mountain toy.

  ILLUSTRATION 56 A wooden pin pushed through from the underside (arrow) holds the white oak split bent back, or cocked. When the pin is pulled down, the end of the split hits the projectile and sends it flying.

  Flying Jenny or Merry-go-round

  We first heard about the flying jenny from Oscar Cook, principal of the Dillard Elementary School. After talking with Mr. Cook, we decided to do a survey on the flying jenny, talking to several people we know. We found this was a very popular toy among children. Several people remembered playing on the flying jennies in the past, even tieing their tiny brothers and sisters on with belts so they wouldn’t fall off. Flying jennies could be built right next to a creek where the riders could jump off and land in the creek, or right on the edge of the bluff so at one point one would be much higher off the ground. Although they were basically the same, there were often little variations. These are some of the ways they are made:

  Ada Kelly remembers cutting small trees and leaving about a three-to-four-foot-high stump. They whittled one end down to a peg. They then bored a hole in the center of a pole and fitted it down over the peg. One person would get on each end, and each person would push with his foot. She doesn’t remember anyone getting hurt or a flying jenny ever breaking.

  Richard Norton called it a “merry-go-round.” They cut a tree leaving a four-foot-high stump, and used a board about ten to twelve inches across and eight to ten feet long. They drilled a hole in both the board’s center and the stump and screwed a nut and bolt down in the board and the tree trunk. One person would get on each side close to the tree trunk. Then one would get on each side close to the end and all would push until they had it going real fast.

  ILLUSTRATION 57 Fred Potter outside his shop with a limberjack.

  Oscar Martin remembers the log was shorter on one end than it was on the other. A person would be astride the long end and someone would push on the shorter end to make it go.

  Mimi Dickerson remembers one person riding on each end and two people near the center pushing it. It was constructed the same way as the one Ada describes.

  Mack Dickerson remembers a small oak stump about four feet high. They used a plank with a hole drilled in the center. The flying jenny would last longer when they used axle grease. He also said they were located all over the settlement, not just around creeks or gullies.

  ILLUSTRATION 58

  EDD HODGINS: You made it in the woods. Cut you off a white oak. They make the best ones. Cut you a mortise in a pole and set it [on a dowel] on top of that stump, and have your stump up as high as you want. Set the pole down right in the middle. I’ve rode ’em many a Sunday with four or five kids on each end. Somebody has to push, but he better keep his head down when he gets it started! That pole is just like a merry-go-round. That’s pretty much fun. I like it because you can ride awhile, pull awhile, or you can sit off and watch another bunch. All kids liked that. Grown men made good pushers for little fellows. They were stout and they could make that thing run!

  A new one might be a little hard to push, but when that gets wore slick, and maybe you put a little grease around it, you can just take your foot and kick it and it’ll go four or five rounds by itself.

  VELER MARCUS: We would spend the weekend with our neighbors and play. Their daddy always kept them up a flying jenny and it would be out [in the woods]. We always hoped it would be a pretty, moonlit night, ’cause we could see how to get out there good. They would fix up a post about three feet high and then get this great long pole and bore a hole in it and notch it out to fit down over this post.

  They would stand here next to the post and make it go around. You can imagine how it come around. It wouldn’t be a little bitty short pole, either. It would be a great long one. There would be two that would have to get in next to this post and push. There would be one person that got on the far end of the pole and one over here on the back end. After the pole got worn and got slick, it would move fast. Those in the middle would be running and it would make those ends go around real fast. Law, it would make your head swim!

  Up at this place where we were playing one night, it was my time and they started before I got my balance good, and it went ’round and ’round. Some of ’em would sit up on it, but I would always lie down on it. Law! They got that thing just a’flying! I kept telling them, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” I was getting ready to turn loose and boy! They slung me off that log out to an apple tree that was there. I looked like a lizard lying out there. You can imagine! I’ve always been long and slender and they just slung me up in that apple tree. They had to work with me awhile. They didn’t dare let [their parents] know I got hurt, or their daddy would of taken it down so we couldn’t play on it no more. I said if I lived through this I would be the most worked-over young girl there ever was in this world!

  ILLUSTRATION 59 A walnut doll’s bed made by Willard Watson.

  ILLUSTRATION 60 This child’s rocking chair has a corn-shuck bottom put in by Harry Brown, Sr. [Foxfire 4, pp. 461-65].

  ILLUSTRATION 61

  Furniture

  In many houses, miniature pieces of furniture gave away the presence of a girl whose doll had a bed of its own, or a child who had his own rocking chair to pull close to the fire. Stanley Hicks told us that he had often made crude beds for his sister’s dolls, and Willard Watson still makes beautifully carved ones today. The photographs in this section illustrate several such pieces.

  Hoops

  CLYDE RUNION: We rolled rims, you know. I don’t know if anybody knows how to roll rims now or not. Old Model T’s had spoked wheels, you know, and that rim came off it. You’d get a little old piece of wood and get it under that rim and just see how fast you could run with that thing. It’s a lot of fun. I
’d sometimes leave over here rolling that rim and I’d roll that thing all the way to school and never let up on it till I got to the schoolhouse.

  LAWTON BROOKS: We’d get small steel bands like those that go around a wheel, and we’d get two sticks and put them together in the shape of a T. You go along and guide the band. We got a lot of kick out of running them things. Just had old dirt roads to run them in. There weren’t any cars to run you out of the road, so then you had the whole road.

  LELIA GIBSON: We’d get a hoop off a wooden barrel; a wooden hoop. Then we’d get a stick with a bend in it. We’d start off and roll the hoop with the bent stick. Just run and roll till we gave out. The stick had to have a little bend in it; you couldn’t stabilize the hoop just standing still. The crook in the stick would stabilize it.

  Jumping Jack

  FRED POTTER: We used to have these when I was a child in Harlan County, Kentucky. The ones I saw when I was little were homemade out of cardboard.

  ILLUSTRATION 62 The toy is hung by a string loop through the top of its head (left). ILLUSTRATION 63 Seen from behind: When the hanging string is pulled, the arms and legs flex and jerk upward. (right)

  Kicking Mule

  ILLUSTRATION 64 Willard Watson with his kicking mule.

  Another toy Willard Watson makes using an old pattern he has in his shop is similar to his bouncing pig but is called a kicking mule. As the crank is turned, the man’s legs “walk.” As each leg approaches the mule, a rod connecting the man’s foot and the corresponding mule’s rear hoof makes it “kick.”

  ILLUSTRATION 65 Dancing dolls can be as fancy or as simple as the maker wants. This carved, hand-painted doll, complete with bow tie, was made by one of Dave’s friends.

  Limberjack or Dancing Doll

  DAVE PICKETT: One story behind the dancing doll goes that sometime in the seventeenth century, a Bohemian puppeteer broke the string to one of his puppets and he didn’t have a replacement string for it. So in order for him to perform, he put a stick in the puppet’s back and found a limber board for him to dance on. And it was so funny and hilarious that he decided to incorporate this into his act. What makes it so funny is that there really is no control on the motions that the doll goes through.

  So it evolved from a stringed puppet. Actually the dancing doll, which is a jointed toy, has been around for about five thousand years. Jointed dolls as such have been found in tombs in Egypt.

  It probably got into the mountains like the majority of the toys. People immigrated to this country and they brought it with them. I’d say ninety-nine per cent of the folk toys we have in this country originated in Europe. The people just brought their ideas with them. The various sizes of dolls were up to the individual. Just whatever size he happened to cut out that day with his knife was what he made. It was something that was relatively easy to make. It could be made completely by hand. People didn’t have the places to go and buy toys for their children, so what they did was make their own toys.

  When I first started making dancing dolls, I made them out of pine, or anything I could find—pine crating material, for example. But then I started making them out of poplar. It’s a little harder wood, and the wearing ability of it is better. I make these dolls to dance, and poplar is much easier to work with because it is a little harder than pine and doesn’t splinter as badly. The body, the legs, and the thigh pieces are primarily poplar, and the arms I normally make from scraps left over from the rockers off my rocking horses, which are made of beech or maple or any kind of close-grained hardwood.

  For the paddle, I’ve gone to using Luan plywood. The reason for that is that I found this makes as good a paddle as you can use. I’ve made them out of solid poplar, and that makes a good paddle, but I found you get more spring out of a Luan than you do a solid paddle. Luan is a type of soft mahogany. Taiwan’s a big producer. I don’t like the imported woods, but sometimes we have to resort to them.

  The kind of wood you use doesn’t make as much difference in the action as it does the sound of it. With poplar, you get a real good sound. Pine is soft and you don’t get the real good crisp sound when the doll is dancing on the paddle that you do with poplar legs.

  All you need to work it is a little practice.

  ILLUSTRATION 66 The disassembled doll.

  ILLUSTRATION 67

  ILLUSTRATION 68 After cutting out the body, Dave nails the arms on but leaves the nails protruding about 1/32″ instead of driving them in tight so that the arms will swing free. The small heads on the nails keep the arms from swinging off.

  ILLUSTRATION 69 Dave continues assembly by attaching the legs to the thighs. Before driving any nails, he drills tiny guide holes to keep the wood from splitting. Then, using serrated nails (he found that after a while the slick wire brads he used work loose and work out), he joins the pieces.

  ILLUSTRATION 70 He clips off the points of the nails that go through (arrow) and sands the area down to remove any rough edges. “I’ve seen people use wire nails and just drive the nail through and bend it over, and I don’t like this at all. I don’t like anything projecting like that.”

  ILLUSTRATION 71 Dave checks to make sure the thigh fits and will swing freely.

  ILLUSTRATION 72 After drilling guide holes, he nails on the legs, being careful not to get a leg on backward.

  ILLUSTRATION 73 Then he makes and sands the paddle (29″ long by 4 3/4″ wide at the ends), and inserts the dowel in the doll’s back. He does not glue the dowel in so that it can be easily removed.

  ILLUSTRATION 74 David Flanagan using the doll. As the end of the paddle bounces beneath the doll’s feet, the legs dance and the arms swing.

  Pop Guns

  ILLUSTRATION 75 Mitch Whitmire and John Bowen watch as Edd Hodgins demonstrates one use of a pop gun with a rolled-up newspaper.

  BUCK CARVER: We had our pop guns; we’d get an elder—that’s pithy. First thing, it had to be good and straight. We’d hew us out a stick to punch that pith out with. Sometimes that pith would pack up in that and maybe jump out three, four feet when it did pop out. You get all that pith out, and then you loaded them with spitballs. They’d make a pretty, cracking racket. We always had one load in front; then pack another one in the other side with a ramrod. ’Course that’s compressed air in there. Lots of time we’d blow in the barrel, but that didn’t help any, I don’t think. When you pushed the back spitball up [with the ramrod], it threw the front ball out. Some of them shoot pretty doggone hard—I’ve nearly had blisters on one from those things.

  HATTIE KENNY: You went out and cut your elder and between the joint they’s about a foot. You couldn’t have a joint too thick ’cause the paper wads wouldn’t go through. You cut it behind the joints and then you got you some wood and made you a ramrod. Then you got some paper and went to chunking it in. You had to have two balls. One stayed in and the other went out. One stayed at the end at all times. It would burn you like fire if it hit you, too.

  ILLUSTRATION 76 Mr. Davis with the barrel in his left hand and the plunger in his right.

  ILLUSTRATION 77

  EDD HODGINS: You load them like loading a muzzle-loading gun. You put your first load in there and push it to the end. Ramrod it to the end. Blow a little air in there [from the back end] and chew up another wad of paper and stick it in the back end. [Then push that back wad with your ramrod] and it’ll pop like a .22 rifle!

  ARTHUR DAVIS: The first one I ever made was sixty-five years ago. I took them to school many times and got into trouble with them. We’d use a wad of newspaper and put it in there and make it shoot. I’d have to sit on a slat with my back to the crowd because I shot somebody with one. Our teacher would take every one away from us that she saw. We never got them back neither. We’d go home, make some more, take them back the next day.

  The plunger is made out of pine. The other part is made out of cane. I get my wood from the woods.

  You chew a little wad of paper, put it in one end of the cane. Then chew another, put it in the other end. Y
ou shove the plunger in the cane, and the air between them pushes one of them out and leaves the other one for the next time. It will pop you so hard that it will blister you.

  Puzzles

  Some of the most vivid memories Foxfire students have are of the times Kenny Runion visits our classes with a suitcase full of puzzles he has made—puzzles that keep us occupied and frustrated sometimes for hours. Kenny claims that homemade puzzles like the ones he makes have been around in the mountains to fascinate children on rainy days for as long as he can remember.

  ILLUSTRATION 78 The six curved cuts made in this block of wood cause it to come apart into sixteen pieces (four rows of four pieces each). The object is to put the scrambled pieces back together.

  ILLUSTRATION 79 The object here is to remove the heart-shaped piece from the rest of the puzzle without bending or untwisting any of the wire.

  ILLUSTRATION 80 This ox-yoke puzzle has two loops of cord with one nut or washer on each loop. The object is to get both nuts onto one loop without untying the cord.

  ILLUSTRATION 81 This puzzle consists of a block of wood into which two holes have been drilled, and a length of cord, the ends of which are glued into a section of mountain laurel that is big enough so that it will not pass through the holes in the block. The object is to remove the cord from the block of wood. Also shown are two of Kenny’s tops and three mountain-laurel rings.