Page 269 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

Mr. Deeds chose archery because his son and daughter were Scouts and
because half a century ago as a small boy in the wilds of northern California,
he had been taught by the Indians how to make bows and arrows from the
native woods and how to shoot.

By autumn, 1932, he had become a committee man for the Scouts and had
converted 60 per cent of the members over to the idea of archery as a project.
The following spring saw his interest so intense that he had committed
himself to the pastime as a lifework with the goal of making the East Bay
District the archery center of America.

That summer, while conducting a Scout expedition, he came across some
exceedingly tough grass which he thought had target possibilities. He mailed
a sample to the Department of Agriculture, at Washington, and learned that it
was the toughest grass in the United States. The owner of the property on
which it grew gave Mr. Deeds permission to take all he wanted. He said it
was called wild lyme grass and was useless for hay. Mr. Deeds made a trial
target and found it more practical than any he had ever used. He cut and
hauled away a ton of the grass and in his spare time made targets. These he
traded to tackle makers for raw material which he made into tackle (bows and
arrows).

In the meantime, he had organized a club called Berkeley Archers and was
known as its guiding genius. There were sixty members—teachers and the
tired-business-man element of the East Bay; also a junior section of thirty
boys and girls. In addition, there were fifteen men calling themselves “The
Rovers,” whom he was training for big game hunting.

When the Federal Emergency Educational Program provided for recreational
activities, Mr. Deeds visited the directors but was turned down; they
considered archery unsafe. He kept on visiting them until they agreed to
experiment if he could furnish tackle for the class. He could. Hadn’t he been
fashioning dozens of bows and hundreds of arrows for just such a
contingency?

Five hundred enrolled during the next six months and in two thousand