Marbles, Cigars, The Sixties, and The Battle of Bonneauville.

In the mid-1960's, Jerome Seymore lived his young life at 15 Maple St. in Bonneauville. Unbeknownst (lest Bonneauville temporarily beat Gettysburg for ghost stories,) his family resided in what was once the former home and funeral parlor of Civil War Captain Jacob Miller. The famed hero John Burns was among many prepared for burial there.

Two doors to the south lived the large Melvin Noel family. Melvin Noel owned a garbage truck and picked up trash in and around Bonneauville. At that time the sanitation workers could keep anything they found of value in the trash. They simply attached the merchandise to the outside of the truck until the end of the day. Bicycles, old chairs, scrap copper and anything of perceived value could be seen tied onto the trucks until the day was done.

This is how the Noel family came into possession of a large number of plastic cigar bags earlier picked up on Hanover Street in Bonneauville - where the Golden's Cigar Co. factory was once located. The Golden's were producers of the famous Blue Ribbon Cigars, of which they and the citizen workers of Bonneauville manufactured over one million per year. During a WWII bond drive in 1944, one of their cigars sold for an astonishing $12,000. (Nearly $100,000 in 2015 dollars.)

It was the mid-1960's and air conditioning was practically unheard of at the time. As was common, the Seymore boys were camped out in their back yards on one hot summer night. After dark, peculiar swoosh-plopping sounds began to rapidly punctuate the banter of the campers. Water was falling way too heavily from the sky. A harrowing investigation showed that the huge droplets were encased in red and white striped plastic bags. The bags were being hurled from the south, across Charles Staub's narrow back yard. The Noel boys pre-planned surprise attack came from two doors to the south where they too were also camping. The narrow, rusty wire fence which lined the Staub lawn provided a fortunate DMZ. It prevented a strategic full frontal attack. The Noel's had conceived the perfect use for the unwanted cigar bags. They became water balloons. Due to the surprising strength of the bags many did not break when tossed. Most were used as return fire ammunition during the late night "Battle for Bonneauville."

Being of inventive mind, young Jerome (Jerry) Seymore kept some of the undamaged bags. They were ultimately used to hold his glut of excess marbles from the daily matches at St. Joseph's School yard in Bonneauville. As high school came and marbles went, the excess cat eyes, bumblebees, steelies and shooters drifted into storage. The hard-won bags of marbles were nostalgically transferred to Jerome's new home after marriage.

Thus after a 2015 discussion on the most successful business ever in Bonneauville - Golden's Cigar Co., - the long-hidden Bunnie Boys bags were remembered. One of the Golden's Bunnie Boys bags; "Just the right mildness," was retrieved from storage. The container is very good condition to this day.

Bunnie Boys is one of many brand names of cigars that the Golden's produced. It is said by a later generation of the family that the name was a shortened variation of "Boneauville Boy's." As the plastics age took off in the early 20th Century, it was found that the bags were a much cheaper way of packaging cigars than traditional boxes. Thus the product could be sold at a lower cost. However, bagged cigars never became popular with the general public because they did not offer sufficient protection for the fragile cigars.