Outagamie County, WI - "Aunt Artie and The Pea Shooter"
        
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 Subject: newspaper article "Aunt Artie and The Pea Shooter"
 Submitted by: county coordinator 
 EMAIL: jmmarasch@aol.com
 Date Submitted: 15 March 2000
        
 Source: New London Press newspaper article from Bicentennial issue, undated.
 
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                 Aunt Artie and the Pea Shooter
      Pioneer pleasures and toys were mostly of the home-made variety in the childhood days of my father.
      One of the favorite toys of the pioneer children was a home-made pea-shooter.  These pea shooters were
 made from a slippery willow branch.  The branch was gently -pounded until the bark could be slipped intact from the
 inner wood in one piece.  The inner wood was then split in two along its length and the soft center core was carefully
 scraped away.  After the tube was carefully polished and smoothed, it was fitted back together, slipped into the bark
 sleeve and there was a pea shooter.
      My Grandmother Ruth raised a special kind of chick-pea in her garden.  She had brought the seed along
 when she came to Wisconsin from Buckhannon, Virginia.
      These chick peas made the very best ammunition for the home-made pea shooters.  They were small,
 perfectly round, solid and hard.
      There were no bumps or bulges on them to cause drag and friction as they flew through the tube.  There
 was no wrinkly skin to deflect the air.  They flew fast and true.  They could always be depended upon to score a hit.
      Unknown to Grandmother, my Aunt Artie had a thriving little barter business going on in school.  She
 would trade a handful of chick-peas. for the equivalent in loot - pins, ribbons, nuts, candy, slate pencils; whatever the
 traffic would allow.
      One day she made a deal with a girl named Laura.  One handful of chickpeas for a slate pencil.  The
 exchange was to take place in school.
      To appreciate the enormity of this deal, one needs to know how the schoolroom was set up.  The desks
 were set in double  rows, two students side by side, with the teacher sitting on a raised dias in the front.  The aisles between the row's
 of desks were wide, and by lifting her head, teacher could easily survey the entire classroom.
          Laura sat on one side of the aisle and Aunt Artie on the other, directly across from one another.  By the
 classic means of communication, note passing, they worked out this scheme.  When teacher would be busy with the
 primers, Laurawould stretch out her arm across the aisle and Aunt Artie would do the same. The chick peas would
 go from hand to hand, no noise, no trouble. They would both be busy with their books, so if by chance teacher did
 look up from the primer class, she would see only bent heads. The teacher didn't cooperate. At the crucial moment
 when both hands met in the aisle, she stood up.  Laura, peeking over her book, saw her stand, and quickly jerked her hand back to her desk. 
 Aunt Artie, blissfully ignorant of it all, opened her hand and ----- Prtttttttttt!  With a rattle and a clatter the hard little
 chick peas hit the hardwood schoolroom floor.  They' bounced and bounded all over the schoolroom.
 That is the episode that put an end to Aunt Artie's business venture.
 Characters:
 
 Grandmother: Ruth De Moss Tinney Nutter
 Aunt Artie: Artemesia Jane Nutter Bottrell
 Teacher: Lydia Wasson
 Place: South Medina, School, Medina, WI
 Time: 1888