Nostalgia for only 89 bucks

I was thumbing through a catalog the other day, one of those arrives around this time of year from merchandisers who must think we’re rich or heavy into conspicuous consumption. Don’t get me wrong, there was some really nice looking stuff, but not stuff that would keep me any warmer or dryer than items much less expensive. There were some things that might have made me look a little more suave, though my compulsion to be suave is about at its nadir. Warm and dry is good enough, thank you very much.

WHAT STOPPED ME, though, what made my jaw drop, was a Red Ryder BB gun. “Because he’s always wanted one,” the headline said. He’d have to really, really want one for the price tag of $89. That’s not a typo. Eighty-Nine Dollars.

The photo stirred memories of my own Red Ryder BB gun, but not enough to make me want to own another one. My Red Ryder figured in some pleasurable experiences and in some that could have turned out tragic.

IT COST A LOT LESS THAN than $89. In fact it didn’t cost me any cash at all. I simply sold enough flower seeds to my kinfolks to redeem my prize. It arrived in the mail; when our rural mail carrier had a package to deliver, he sat at the mailbox and blew his horn until somebody came out to pick it up. I lurked on my grandmother’s front porch every day until at last my treasure arrived.

No one thought it strange that a boy not yet in the first grade should have a BB gun. For that matter, no one seemed to have any scruples about kids shooting birds, either.

Fortunately for the bird population, that Red Ryder BB turn was about as lethal as a water pistol. Most of the time, anyway. A wave of guilt still washes over me when I recall the one time that it achieved lethality.

IT WAS CHRISTMAS and we had gotten one of those rare snows in North Louisiana that stuck to the ground. I had gotten a buckskin jacket and a coon skin cap for Christmas, and that afternoon I marched through the snow around the house, pretending that I was the great hunter on the prowl for supper.

Sparrows hopped in my footprints, trying to find something to eat in the packed down snow. I turned, aimed and fired.

A sparrow toppled over. I waited for a few seconds for him to pop up and fly, but he just lay there in the track in the snow. I’ve done many things to feel guilty about, but for whatever reason, the death of that sparrow has stuck with me for nearly 70 years.

THAT WAS THE LAST bird —or living thing of any sort—that the Red Ryder killed. It was responsible, though, for my cousin and I setting a the woods on fire and for my cousin scaring the liver out of my mother with a real gun.

But those are tales for another time.

Eight-nine bucks for a Red Ryder? No thanks. The first one created memories enough.

Bill Brown is a retired newspaper editor whose newspapers won a Pulitzer Prize, National Headliners Award, Edgar Willis Scripps Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment and Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service and Freedom of Information Awards. He is the author of “Yellow Cat, Hendry & Me: Dispatches From Life’s Front Lines. He can be reached at 

bill@williamblakebrown.com