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Do you remember “Punks?” No, not the neighbor kid down the block that always trashes your trash cans. I do understand the misnomer. Can’t say that I’ve not been called a punk in my time especially when we loaded a brown paper bag with dog crap and lit it on someone’s front door step, but then I digress.
“Punks” were sticks that just smoked. They looked exactly like incense sticks that you see sold today but punks didn’t have any “scented” smell to them they were just punks. Funny, we would buy one with the very little money that we could get back then and just sit and watch it burn. Remember this one highlight of a young kid’s afternoon while you play your latest high-definition video game.
I think the basic function was as some sort of bug repellent yet it was nothing more than smoke and yet again smoke is a good repellent but it would take thousand of these things to repel the mosquito’s that made their lives in the summer months. I bought them but truthfully I could not tell you why. If I were to guess what is in my head now is we bought them because it was something lit, something in some tiny way that way on fire. We also had to use matches to light them which were all on our forbidden items list. Really couldn’t blame our parents as we were the same group of young men when on a too late seasonal delivery of seltzer-water and diet-Pepsi spend afternoons drinking the Pepsi (nasty-stuff by the way) and shooting people with seltzer-water to include each other. Giving boys such as we were means for damage was not a good thing.
As I sit here I now understand why all our parents were tolerant of us playing with “Punks.” For some reason they hypnotized us. We would all sit and watch it burn occasionally waving it around like a sparkler. Wow, that’s really pathetic on our part and quite a devious way for our parents to calm the tide. I guess better we play with a match and light a punk then run the alley’s or play stoop ball or baseball in the middle of our tiny street. See, other people’s cars became targets for handprints and ball marks; even the occasional dent or ding. Running the alley’s involved trespassing through the very tiny most walled sectional yards of all our neighbors. The occasional bumping of outside furniture or plants was always a possibility. For all of these violations and more not named, the parents of the sixties children bring you “Punks!”
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Memory is a funny thing-look at what a Punk was used for! I have to laugh at my own childhood visions! Ain't life grand!
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For too long I've messed with the wiring in my head. Now it shorts out more oft than not. But at my age I just sit and enjoy the sparks. RJM '07
Many Exceptional Free and Pay for Images Available here Fotosearch.com
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