The Future Is Now
Thursday, May 9, 2019
By: Ted Nugent I remember it like it was just this morning. I couldn’t have been much more than six, maybe seven years old. We lived on Florence Street in Redford on the northwest edge of Detroit, and right across Hazelton Street was the winding wildgrounds of the mighty Rouge River that called my name loud and clear and all the time. It may have well been the uncharted jungles of Mozambique for all I could have known or cared, for its big timber, towering forests, snag-nasty tanglezones of thick scrub and impenetrable bush, tall, steep hills and deep, dark valleys, all its magnificent wildness and mystifying critters lured me as powerfully as anything can lure a human being. At first, pre-dating Whamo’s and WristRockets, I had my trusty old handmade slingshot, cleverly fabricated from a geometrically perfect forked hickory branch, powered by old bicycle innertube strips fastened by tight shoelaces with a sturdy patch of worn canvas for a projectile pouch. Many a painstaking hour was dedicated to picking out the perfect sized, as round as possible pebbles and stones for my arsenal of ballistically coefficient ammo, and Lord knows the passion with which I relentlessly practiced my aim small miss small discipline to be the best marksman I could be. And let me tell you, I was murder! Chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, quail, birds of every description and species, river rats, snakes, frogs, turtles, coons, possums, skunks, nothing was safe from the WhackMaster in the making.