Swing My Brother To and Fro

Blame everything on Freddie Upchurch!

Freddie lived on our block in Culver City. He was an only child and his parents both worked. He was a year older and considerably larger than the rest of us. His parents were able to buy Freddie pretty much whatever he wanted.

War stuff was what Freddie wanted.

He had camo clothing, BB guns, knives and assorted weapons of every description. Basically, what you had here was a walking Army Navy store.

Freddie was fascinated with warfare. He had little GI Joe action figures and battlefield layouts.

We would get pretty bored during the summertime - all of the parents were at work.

Well, not this day! We got the bright idea to try our hand at target practice in the garage of Freddie's house.

I remember putting up some regular targets and shooting at them from the garage door line into the back of the open garage. We were pretty accurate...

After a while that got pretty boring...we needed to liven things up a bit!

What if we shot at something a bit more difficult? Like my brother Kent for instance!

We get Kent to come over...we string up a rope over the rafters of the garage and we tie the rope to Kent's ankles. Now, turn him upside down and pull on the rope so that Kent is above the floor and hanging there. Mind you, this wasn't done easily - he fought pretty hard for a little guy!

Now, to make things more sporting, let's swing him back and forth from the rope.

Ready, aim, fire! See if you can hit him while swinging wildly from the rope. Remember, no head shots - that would really upset our parents! Just some body shots...steady, steady - time your shot to dead center. Got him!

After a while we even got tired of that! Bring him down...his face is really turning red now!

"You OK?" we ask him...he seems to be upset. He's gonna tell Mom and Dad...no, don't do that!

Don't worry - he'll get over it...it's only been 50 years and he's almost forgotten about it...