My first gun was a hard earned Daisy Model 25 BB gun. I can't remember if it cost $8, or if I was 8 years old; I think both. That would have been the summer of 1955.
I begged for the Daisy BB gun.... Dad finally said he'd buy it; 'If', I cleaned out his 30 foot cattle trailer. I'll never forget that!
Dad didn't think I'd do it. I didn't think; I would ever finish, or ever be clean again. I just kept working and thinking about the daisy bb gun. It took two miserable days to finish the job. I learned the value of a dollar. I took care of my gun; IT COST A LOT!
The Daisy Model 25 looked like a pump BB gun. It was actually more popular than the better known lever action Daisy Red Rider. It would shoot harder; mine had a rotating open and peep sight. For a few years I felt like I was a step ahead of my cousins who had Daisy Red Riders.
Some of our shooting antics were not so smart: I learned that by standing directly under a high-line wire I only had to concentrate on left to right gun movement (windage); I could hit the wire about half the time. Not a great idea, but it made a cool sound when I hit it. PING!
Jimmy (my cousin) borrowed my gun one day for some pay-back. He and his older brother Ronny both had Daisy Red Riders, but for some reason Ronnie's would shoot "harder".
Ronny had learned to stay just far enough away to hurt Jimmy, but not get hurt by Jimmy's BBs. When Jimmy borrowed my Model 25; it was Ronny who ended up dancing, yelling, and running for cover.
One day I was bored and decided to shoot at my grandmother's concrete steps. The BB came almost straight back and hit me in the forehead. I didn't do that again.
A trick shooter came to our school, and after seeing him strike a match with a twenty-two, I spent most of one afternoon trying to do it with a BB. I stuck the match in one end of an old picnic table and rested the gun on the other end about two feet from the match. After several small packs of BB's and half a box of mom's kitchen matches; I finally did it!
I hunted every day and missed thousands of times. My hunting rifle, the Daisy and I, took good number of birds, lizards, snakes, frogs, insects...
It was a simple, but very special, time. The gun was my constant companion until my twelfth summer. That summer I worked in the hay fields. I earned enough to buy my first twenty-two.