Dear Editor:
I read in The Pocahontas Times, September 17 on page 9 about the sumac tree, and I enjoyed it very much.
But I would like to add to it. Maybe someone reads The Pocahontas Times that never heard of it.
When I was young in the mid-40s, my father showed us kids how to take a chunk of sumac, about two feet long, and make a gun out of it.
So we cut a piece three inches round and two feet long and took the poker stick we used to chuck up the stove in winter, and we heated it very hot. The sumac is soft in the middle. We pushed the hot iron through the two-foot piece until we made a hole all the way through it. Then we took a rod of wood 20 inches long and put a handle on the end of it and used it to push a piece of paper into the hole all the way to the end; then took another piece of paper and pushed it in the same way and that would push out the first piece of paper, and it would make a “pop” sound.
It was called a “pop gun.”
We used an old Sears Roebuck catalog for paper, and we had a very enjoyable evening with the weapon.
The “pop gun” was easy to make and not expensive.
So maybe we can get some new kids involved.
Karl Pritt
Golt, Maryland
and Jacox
