Ah...so That explains why we find marbles in privies!  I simply thot,
some fell out of someone's pocket...as they sat. ?? 

I really didn't think the kid was putting a live cartridge on the train
track...to flatten.  I would think they simply picked up spent
shells...and used those.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On 
>Behalf Of Ron May
>Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 10:56 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: of railroad spikes and such
>
> 
>In a message dated 8/6/2007 11:38:38 A.M. Pacific Daylight 
>Time, [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
>Perhaps as punishment. Many years back, I had the fun of  
>working with toy marbles and delivered papers at various 
>conferences on hand  made and machine made marbles. I received 
>lots of comments back from people who  played marbles as kids, 
>as adults, in the military, and then got their kids and  
>grandchildren started. Several people reported their stern 
>mothers punished them  by dropping their cherished marble bags 
>down the privy (where they were sure not  going to dig to 
>recover them). The late Paul Schumacher loaned me a collection 
> he reported recovered from a privy in Half Moon Bay, 
>California. And, Gary Breschini and Trudy Haverstat loaned me 
>a collection to photograph they also  found clustered together 
>in a privy. So, based on these known examples, I would suggest 
>that a parent could have punished the kid by dumping his 
>railroad spike and train-flattened bullet shell collection in 
>the dump. Heck, I could easily  imagine a parent horrified to 
>learn the kid was out flattening bullet shells  with trains 
>running past at high speed; fear of lost eyes or worse.
> 
>Ron May
>Legacy 106, Inc.
>
>
>
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