Texas Toys and Games Page: 36
viii, 253 p. : ill., ports. ; 26 cm.View a full description of this book.
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FOLK TOYS
Paddle Boats
by
Lee Haile
Lee Haile's
paddle boat
(Karen Haile).the middle of the boat. Then get a leaf and stick it in the hole
and it acted like your sail" (Loblolly 6, no. 4 [1979], p. 40).
Children are still making sailboats out of anything that will
float-styrofoam plates with soda-straw masts or corks with
toothpick masts. Patricia Hurley sent in a sailboat made out of a
bar of Ivory soap and one made raft-like of tongue depressors.
Eldridge Harper's folded-paper sailboat requires a skill in con-
struction that is almost extinct. More mobile, however, is the
traditional rubber-band-powered motorboat. Lee Haile tells
the history of rubber bands and how they are put into use in
the motorboat:
When Columbus came to the New World in 1492, the South
American Indians he met were already playing with rubber balls
that they had made. In 1736, French explorer Charles de la Con-
damine brought samples back with him to Europe. In 1770, an
English scientist discovered that a hardened piece of latex would
erase a pencil mark if you rubbed hard enough. That is where
the term rubber came from. The Indians around the Amazon
River were making rubber bottles by putting layers of latex on
clay molds and breaking out the clay after the rubber had dried.
By the end of the century, there had developed a good trade of
rubber boots and bottles between South America and Europe.
In the 1830s, another Englishman invented rubber bands by sim-
ply cutting up a rubber bottle into rings. This invention opened
a whole new era in toy making. Rubber bands were soon being
used on toys as a power source (Henderson and Wilkerson, 102).
One popular rubber-band-powered toy is the paddle boat.
For this toy you need a thin board about ten inches long and
four inches wide. This is just a rough figure. The best size to use
is whatever you can find handy. Cut a U-shaped notch out of
one end. If you use the ten-inch board, your notch should be
about three inches deep. Now get another, smaller piece of
board that will fit into the notch that you made. It should be
about four inches long. Take your rubber band and stretch it
over the two prongs of the U-shaped end. Stick the little board
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Texas Toys and Games (Book)
Collected information about popular toys and games relevant to the state of Texas, including folk toys, folk games, sports, dances, songs and other recreations. The index of contributors begins on page 245 and the index of toys and games begins on page 249.
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Abernethy, Francis Edward. Texas Toys and Games, book, 1989; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67661/m1/46/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.