A step back in time

8-8-01

By JENNIFER ATKINS BROWN, Staff Writer
News & Record

GREENSBORO -- Motorists slow down and gawk when they approach the Hoggard home on Cypress Street, near downtown Greensboro. It's not the house that attracts stares.

It's what's sitting in the Hoggard yard that causes the gawking.

An 8-foot catapult, 14th-century vintage, dominates the yard.

The homemade trebuchet, weighing about 300 pounds, looms erect like it's ready for battle, or, in this case, for play.

"We get a lot of strange looks," said David Hoggard, one of the four proud builders of the contraption. "People say, 'Is that what I think it is?'"

The answer is yes.

Unlike the weapons early European warriors employed in siege warfare to gain access to castles, this modern trebuchet doesn't launch missiles. Also described as a catapult with a sling, the Hoggards' trebuchet has flung balls, water balloons and even rotten watermelons and cantaloupes through the sky. They usually aim the trebuchet toward the end of their street.

"It will shoot about 50 yards at about 40 feet in the air," Hoggard said proudly.

The 45-year-old Hoggard and his sons Jackson, 11, and Jesse, 7, along with a neighborhood friend, Alex Porter, built the trebuchet in June.

Hoggard's wife, Jinni, and 10-year-old daughter, Josie, were in Costa Rica on a school field trip, so Hoggard said he figured the project would be a great way to spend some quality time with his sons.

"What a great way to spend a summer vacation," said Hoggard. "It was a lot more interesting than watching TV."

Jackson got the idea to build the trebuchet from a Ages of Empires II, a computer game about medieval times.

"He was fascinated by it and talked about building it for a couple of weeks," said Hoggard.

Picture in hand, the guys headed to their local home-improvement store where they purchased the necessary components -- two-by-fours, bolts, screws and nails.

"It looked like they had gone down the aisles and bought one of everything," said Louisa Lauver, who lives across the street. "The women were out of town and the testosterone ran."

With the boys right in the middle of the process, it took them about eight hours to build the device and about two days to build the sling. They did some research on the Internet on how to make it fire correctly and figured out they needed to release the sling at 30 degrees.

The trebuchet is powered by a counterweight that swings a long arm. When the counterweight is dropped, the device launches items from a leather sling at the end of the arm.

Though the trebuchet is really just a toy for the kids, Hoggard has taught them to take safety precautions with it, such as making sure there are no cars coming.

Hoggard said the project was quite a learning experience for the kids.

"They learned about things like measuring, physics and counterweights," he said. "They may use it for their science projects next school year."

"I got a lot of satisfaction the first time we fired it," Jackson said. "We got a water balloon stuck in a tree and it didn't pop for four days."

Ah. The joy of childhood. The boys and their friends love it, Dad loves the final product, but what about Mom and Sis? What do they think? What do the neighbors in the Charles B. Aycock Historic District think?

"I knew they had completed it when I heard a kaboom one day that shook the whole house," said Lauver. She had told them it would be OK to sling a water balloon at her front door.

"We (the neighbors) have all had a good time watching it," she said. "It's always an adventure living across the street from them."

"I wanted to shoot it as soon as I got out of the van," Josie said, explaining her reaction when she returned from her trip. "I thought, cool!"

"I drove up and saw this big monstrosity, but I really wasn't surprised," said Jinni Hoggard with a laugh. "They do these kind of things all the time."

Hoggard, who does school fund raising for the Wisconsin Heritage company, arranges his work schedule so he can spend lots of time with his kids.

Last year Hoggard built a two-level treehouse in a big tree in their backyard. It is equipped with an old television and has a pulley system for transporting snacks from the kitchen to the treehouse. The treehouse also has a line suspended from the top to the ground that kids use to swing down to the grass.

He and Jenni also renovate old houses as a hobby, so using tools and creating with his hands is nothing new to Haggard. Plus, he loved to build things as a kid.

And it seems that love has carried over to his kids. Jackson is already thinking of the next father/kids project -- building a hovercraft boat.

"I think we've unleashed some monsters here," Hoggard said.

"I've tried to pass some of my love of building along to my kids. I tell them if they don't know how to do something, go at it, make mistakes, and try again."