Back in the days before I thought that Richie Willis’s older sister Madelyn was the most beautiful thing in the world, that position was held by a Daisy Red Ryder bb gun that belonged to my friend Sam. I wanted one.
If I had one of those, I would go plinking and I would go varmint shooting like the guys in Boys’ Life did. I’d be an expert in woods lore, making fires by rubbing sticks together, being able to find my way in the woods by the position of the sun or the moss on the trees. I’d be able to track animals, recognizing every paw print I came across. I’d shoot rabbits to cook over the fire I’d made.
Of course all sorts of other good things would follow. I’d suddenly, being an outdoorsman, be able to whittle my own neckerchief slides for my Boy Scout neckerchief. I’d have a new one every month. I’d follow the instructions in Whittlin’ Jim’s article in Boys Life and I’d carve beautiful neckerchief slides that would be the envy of the troop.
Another good thing that would follow would be that I wouldn’t have to worry about Ernest Armstrong any more. Ernest Armstrong was a big kid who had vowed to get me since the day I’d made all the kids laugh at him when I said his name should be Brainweak instead of Armstrong. I lived in fear of Ernest Armstrong, but with my Daisy Red Ryder bb gun, those days would be over. Ernest would think twice about “getting” a kid with a bb gun.
I could see myself confronting him in our backyard on the day he finally came to “get “ me. I’d be standing there with Ernest in my sights and I’d say “Hold it right there”. He’d stop in his tracks and slowly raise his hands. He’d say “Now hold on a minute there, Chucky, I ain’t lookin’ for no trouble” and I’d say, “No? Well it looks like maybe trouble found you. Now I suggest that you just back up, real slow. Keep your hands up and don’t make any false moves” and I’d back him up to the property line, and when he’d crossed it, I’d say “Now just take note of where you are right now. Everything on this side of that tree is Gundersen land, and I don’t ever want to catch you on Gundersen land again. Now git!” And he’d run. No; he’d high-tail it. Oh how sweet that would be.
But it was only a dream. I’d never have a bb gun. I figured it out. If I bought only one comic book a week and saved the rest of my allowance every week until I was twenty-four, I’d have enough money to buy one, but it was so far in the distant future that I was discouraged and never quite got around to starting the program.
I didn’t need to. Sam decided one day that he didn’t want the bb gun anymore and he’d trade it to me for my roller skates. Roller skates were no good in our neighborhood. The roads were tar over gravel. The roller skates were steel things with steel wheels that you strapped around your ankle and then clamped to the sole of the front part of your shoe with a key that tightened the clamps. What happened was that you’d get out there and you’d be going along rattling down the road and the vibration would make one of your shoes pop out of its clamp. The skate would still be strapped to your ankle, and the other skate would stay on, so you’d have to try to hop to a halt with one foot out of control on it’s skate and with two pounds of steel strapped to your other ankle getting under your foot, twisting your ankle, and when it wasn’t doing that, banging your other ankle mercilessly. Roller skates for that bb gun,the object of my desire, was a good deal.
We traded. When Sam brought the bb gun over, he said “the only thing wrong is that the stock is broken. I dropped it and it broke, but you can glue it back together.” “Ok”, I said. He handed me the gun and a bag with the pieces of the stock. He also gave me a couple of tubes of bbs.
Sam swore that he dropped the bb gun and didn’t tell me until years later that what happened was that he got frustrated with it and smashed it against the side of their garage. The stock being plastic, Sam smashed it to flinders, and what he gave me was the metal part of a bb gun and a bag of flinders.
I put a newspaper over the kitchen table, got out my model airplane glue and spread out my flinders. I glued some pieces to each other, some pieces to the newspaper and some pieces to my fingers. Trying to get the plastic pieces off my fingers, I got glue all over the place and glued pieces of newspaper to the table. I was on the verge of frustration when it occurred to me that there were some scraps of wood in the shed behind the house and I could make a stock out of wood.
I found a piece just the right size; well, a little short, perhaps, but acceptable. I marked the shape of a stock on it, cut it out with a jigsaw and bored a couple of holes in it with a philips screwdriver; all I could find to do the job, bolted it in place, and I had my bb gun; a Daisy Red Ryder lever action bb gun. Oh, the stock was a little short and the holes I’d bored were a little big, so it was loose, but it was a bb gun, and it was mine. I loaded it and took it out in the back yard to shoot.
I discovered that the gun was fairly accurate to about eight feet. After eight feet or so, the bb seemed to drop quickly and generally hit the ground at about twenty feet. I could actually see it travel through the air. Instead of that forceful and satisfying PUP! sound a bb gun is supposed to make, mine went something like pifff. But it was mine and it was a Daisy Red Ryder lever action bb gun and it still had the little rawhide thong attached to one side.
My fantasy about running Ernest Armstrong out of town didn’t require me to actually shoot him, so that was ok. My fantasy about shooting a rabbit and cooking it over the fire I had to admit was no longer viable. I would have to get within six feet of the rabbit, and then, if I hit him, well. it wouldn’t matter if I hit him or not. Oh the heck with it. After a couple of days I put the gun in my closet.
Well, I thought, I can still whittIe. I whittled a neckerchief slide that was supposed to look like Crazy Horse and it came out looking like President Eisenhower with a cactus on his head — if Eisenhower had one eye a lot lower than the other. When I threaded my neckerchief into it and slid it up, it split in two. I threw it away, but I wish I hadn’t. There can’t be too many Eisenhower with a cactus on his head neckerchief slides around, and the Boy Scout Museum might be glad to have it.
I still have the bb gun. It hangs in our mud room. It doesn’t work at all now, but it’s a Daisy Red Ryder and it’s mine.