Five Brothers and a War

Target Practice, van Pelt-Style

With the war over, sometimes there was more available time than useful tasks to fill that time. By way of example, Kees was the proud owner of an air rifle that could fire an assortment of ammunition, mostly BBs and lead, shallow-pointed, hollowed-out pellets. He had a bull’s-eye target pinned against the two-meter-high back fence. Starting from outside the kitchen door, over time, after having obliterated the eye of that bull’s-eye, he moved inside against the kitchen door to the hallway. With the outside door open the range to a new target was now a few meters further. After again demolishing the new bull’s-eye, he repeated the process three more times, until he could go no further than the sidewalk in front of the house. The distance was comprised of the path to the front door, the foyer, through the swing door, down the long hallway, through the kitchen, across the length of the backyard to the fence at the back of the property.

van Pelt

The view through the house to the target on the back fence.

It was not just increasing the challenge of hitting the target, it became much more interesting because of the extremely narrow pathway the pellet had to travel to that target. Not only did all the doors along the route need to be open of course, but the doors from the hallway to the living and dining room needed to remain closed, in order to minimize the possibility someone would come through those doors and take a pellet to their head or body. To Kees it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but with the benefit of reflection, it was definitely not one of the better ways of improving target skills. Kees claimed, in defense of his misguided idea, that he had taken the precaution of drawing some skull and bones symbols, with the following warning:

Five Brothers and a War

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