Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years.
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I once read that the toys boys and girls enjoy most are often the ones that are least expensive. I can relate to that because when I was a little kid, one of my favorite toys was a bubble pipe that my parents bought for a few cents at a dime store on one of our shopping trips to Columbus.
In fact, they bought me two bubble pipes that day. One was made of wood, and it looked like a miniature corncob pipe, like the one Gen. MacArthur smoked during World War II. The other was a white clay pipe. I had to be careful when I used that one, for if I dropped it on the sidewalk, it would surely break.
I really had fun with both of those pipes. My favorite place to blow bubbles with them was on our back porch. My mother would fill a dishpan with warm soapy water, and put it beside me as I sat on the edge of the porch. Sometimes, a neighbor boy named Jim Beck came over to our house with his own bubble pipe, and we blew bubbles together.
My two pipes not only looked a lot different, but so did the bubbles they produced. When I dipped the corncob pipe into the warm soapy water and I began to blow gently into its stem, that pipe started to produce a continuous flow of tiny bubbles … not six or seven, but hundreds.
When the sunlight hit the slow moving flow of bubbles, it acted like a prism, producing hundreds of tiny rainbows that appeared and disappeared as the flow moved in the sunlight. This was a wonderful thing for a five-year-old boy to see. To this day, I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite like it.
My other bubble pipe, the white clay one, produced one bubble at a time. But boy were they big. They were about the size of a softball, sometimes even a little bit bigger. I bet you have never seen a bubble that big.
Then one day when Jim and I were blowing bubbles together, I turned the pipe upside down as I blew. And I blew what I think must have been the worlds largest bubble. I’m not kidding. It was about the size of a cantaloupe. I wish my dad had taken a picture of it. I would have it framed today. That’s just how big it was.
Today, I think you would be hard pressed to find a bubble pipe anywhere. I think that’s because some kids might stick the pipe in their mouth to imitate adults who smoke. I’m all for things that help kids grow up “smoke free.” But it also makes me a little sad that none my great-grandchildren will ever get a chance to blow a bubble the size of a cantaloupe. You can’t imagine how much fun that is.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at bill@davidwboyd.com