Jack wrote this in November, 2005:
Hi blogsters:
Over the T-day feasting someone was telling me about a movie they said I’d enjoy. The name almost turned me aside, being “A Christmas Story”, which sounded a lot like a class of movie a lady-friend of the past used to insist I endure with her every Xmas season.
But this one, I’m told, is about a boy with a BB gun.
Brought to mind my first BB gun.
I was living on that small farm in the picture above….must have been 5-6 years old. I was fairly sure I should get, and that they owed it to themselves to get me a .22 calibre rifle for Christmas.
Turned out it was a Daisy Pump BB gun, instead. A PUMP! Now anyone with any savvy knows the only BB gun an in-the-know kid would own is a Daisy Red Ryder lever-action. Kids our size could take that Red Ryder and lock the butt behind their knee strain upward stopping short of a hernia, and get that thing ready for action in a New York minute.
But a pump was a different matter. You had to put the butt on the ground, grab the pump with both hands tight, lift your feet off the ground and it would slide down far enough to pinch a blood blister on each of your little fingers, but it would be ready to go.
But it beat not having one. Wasn’t any time after that Christmas we were all over creation having BB gun fights. They’d usually last until someone chipped off a piece of tooth or went home crying.
My mama went through a ritual with that Daisy pump taking it away from me and giving it back after a while, always with the admonishment:
“You aren’t really going to be happy until you put someone’s eye out with that BB gun.”
I never put anyone’s eye out with it, but I never was really happy, either.
Jack
So Far From Heaven 