On Rimfire Central was a post asking for Daisy memories. I captioned my reply as above, and my post is as below. Good idea for us old timers.

Now that I looked at my caption, I realize that all memories must be from the past. I was born in 1942 and back around 1949 through about 1957 I had a Red Rider gun that I tried pulling the trigger with the lever out. Ouch, it slams into one's hand and answers my questions as to what happens if you do that. Later on, I had one of the pump types that used a spring fed BB tube. At around this same time, we had these BB sized things that would go bang if you stepped on them. They were called Atom Pearls. We used to scatter them in the school hallways. I discovered I could load them in the BB gun and shoot them. They would go bang on contact. We would shoot passing trucks. One day I had about 7 in the tube when the spring follower slipped and they all went off. My ears rang for the entire day. We also had BB gun wars, much like the paint ball of today. We agreed to shoot away from the head and nobody was ever injured. Stung perhaps, but no injuries. Just getting back into air rifles, lots of fun. The ties with the past are a big part of that. Thanks for suggesting this topic. I probably shouldn't show this to the grandkids.

I too took the hide off my knuckles with the open lever of my Red Rider. But on the other hand my idea that the opened lever of my Daisy pump would make a perfect half-bipod for prone shooting was even nastier. At one time there were feral cats living in our hay loft who dug their crapping holes in the loose hay. The dried cat turds shot pretty well in a daisy pump with the barrel/magazine taken out and we kids had some outstanding turd wars. That should have given me the idea to invent paint ball guns but, sadly, I missed the clue.

z

Instead of 'cat turds' we used to use wadded up tar paper. we used to peel off a strip of tar paper each, from the side of the barn. lol after a couple years, the bard was bald of its tar paper on the bottom 5 feet or whatever it was we could easily reach lol. I can still remember the first time I shot a friend in the back of the knee joint. dropped him like a bullet for a few mins, while he yelled in pain. I think I can still feel it when he got his revenge <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />