BB Gun - A
Weapon of Mass Destruction
by Don Drewniak
During a three-year
span in my pre-teenage years, I lived with my
parents in a duplex located a quarter-mile north
of the Tucker Street Dump in Fall River,
Massachusetts. My three best friends lived a
stone's throw to the east. All four of us owned
Red Ryder BB guns.
We journeyed
to the dump with our Red Ryders shortly before
dusk about once a week, weather permitting. The
attraction? Rats. We positioned ourselves
opposite the setting Sun with a mound of garbage
and trash between the Sun and us.
Shooting began
as soon as a rat's silhouette appeared on top of
the mound. To conserve BBs, the rule was one shot
each per rat. When a rat was hit, it almost
invariably sprang one or two feet into the air
before disappearing. Then came the argument as to
which one of us made the hit.
The rifle
ended up unused in a corner of a basement
subsequent to our family moving to a different
part of Fall River. My father eventually sold it
and handed me a one-dollar bill (the equivalent
of $11.28 as of this writing). He never revealed
how much he kept.
Leaping over
decades, we come to this past September when I
was shopping at Vargas, the mega-hardware store
here in Atenas, Costa Rica. I passed by a locked
glass case that had two pellet guns in it.
Memory of the
glory days of rat hunting flashed into my
consciousness. I asked one of the employees who
spoke English if the store sold BB guns. (My
Spanish vocabulary is extremely limited.)
“We have
them on order. They should be here next week.”
I ordered one
(hand gun) and checked in once a week over the
next five weeks, only to get the same response,
“Next week.”
Near the
beginning of November, I made the colossal
mistake of telling my wife, Dolores, I had a BB
gun on order.
“You what?”
she shouted.
“I
ordered a BB gun from Vargas.”
“There
will be no guns in this house!”
“It's
just a BB gun. I'm only going to use it for
target practice.”
“There
will be no weapons of mass destruction in this
house!”
“A weapon
of mass destruction? It couldn't kill anything
bigger than a mouse.”
I tossed in
the towel after a few more exchanges and walked
away saying, “You win.” I canceled the
order.
We move on to
mid-December when Dolores returned from visiting
a neighbor. “I told Jennifer (name changed
to protect the innocent) about your wanting a BB
gun.”
Still pouting,
I questioned, “So?” in a less than
pleasant tone.
“Ted (her
husband/name changed) has a BB gun and a real gun.”
“So?”
“I
apologize. Buy your gun.”
“No thank
you.”
“Don't be
a baby.”
I went to
Vargas a few days later only to find out that
they still hadn't received the BB guns. As a
result, I ordered one from Amazon knowing that it
would most likely not arrive here until early
January. It's a long story as to why it takes two-to-three
weeks to get items shipped from the States to
Costa Rica.
My daughter,
son-in-law and two grandsons (ages twenty-one and
fifteen) spent Christmas in Las Vegas. They
returned two days after the 25th to their home in
Maryland. Dolores and I flew in the next day.
Gifts were
exchanged that evening. We gave our grandsons
what we knew they most wanted – cash. The
oldest is a junior in college, the youngest a
high school sophomore. They laughed throughout
when their ancient grandparents gave their
versions of the weapon of mass destruction.
The “kids”
approached me the next afternoon and asked if I
wanted to join them on a trip to Walmart. Off we
went in my oldest grandson's pick-up truck.
Once in the
store, I followed them up to the second floor and
through a bevy of aisles until they found their
target, a locked glass case containing both BB
and pellet guns. They examined the merchandise
for ten minutes or so before flagging down an
employee who opened the case and pulled out an
elongated box with a Barra 1866 CO2 Air Rifle (BB
gun) in it.
I couldn't
resist as I pulled my cellphone out of a pocket
and took a few photos of them each holding one
end of the box. Off went one of the photos to
Dolores. Zap!
Needless to
say, she was not overjoyed when we returned to
the house with the Barra 1866. After unpacking
the new weapon of mass destruction, off the three
of us went to the backyard where we took turns
blowing holes though an empty gallon plastic
container.
Decades
earlier in college, my closest friends nicknamed
me “The Drewn.” On occasions when I did
something right, I would hear “Score one for
The Drewn.” It was a “Score one for The
Drewn” afternoon.
My BB gun
arrived ten days into January. With it were a
packet containing about a hundred BBs, two CO2
cartridges, four pages of microscopic directions
and a pair of plastic glasses to protect eyes
from ricocheting BBs.
Called to mind
by the glasses was the classic 1983 film, A
Christmas Story, specifically the “You'll
shoot your eye out” scene. For those not
familiar with the movie, there are several
YouTube clips centered on a BB gun worth the
watch.
“Directions?
Who needs them?” I pulled the cover away
from the handle and as I suspected, there was a
slot for a CO2 cartridge. After loosening a
plastic screw at the base, I inserted one of the
cartridges and began tightening the screw only to
jump about a foot in the air when a loud hissing
sound accompanied the release of some CO2 from
the cartridge.
Rather than
try to read the directions that would have
entailed using a magnifying glass, I found two
clips on YouTube that said the release of a small
amount of CO2 was necessary to break the seal and
allow the CO2 to power the BBs.
One down, one
to go. I ejected the magazine. It included a
track in which to house the BBs.
Piece of
cake.
I filled the
track with twenty of them and pushed the magazine
back into place.
It was off to
the backyard to test my latest toy. After
releasing the safety, I took aim at one of dozens
of morning glories covering a wall that separates
our property from that of a neighbor. Nothing but
clicking sounds accompanied each pulling of the
trigger. That was it. No loud firing sound. No
holes in the morning glories.
Back to
YouTube. The one and only video I watched began
with the release of the magazine and pulling back
a spring before inserting BBs.
A spring?
Who knew?
“No
problem,” I said to my wife's cat who was
watching my every move. “All I have to do,
Furnando, is put the magazine over a bowl, turn
it upside-down and watch the BBs succumb to
gravity.”
Furnando
yawned.
Clink, clink,
clink... Out dropped sixteen BBs. Four defied
gravity. Shaking the magazine failed to dislodge
them.
When I
inserted the BBs, unbeknownst to me at the time
was that I had dropped them on top of the spring.
Four were stuck in it. Trying to get them out
using needle-nose pliers, a magnet and several
jackknife blades yielded no results.
Furnando was
sleeping.
I then tried
prying one of them out using the tip of a thin,
three-inch nail. Eureka! Out sailed a BB. It was
on to a second BB. Out it came, but only a half-inch
as I dislodged a small section of the spring
thereby destroying it. I had no recourse but to
place an order for a packet of two magazines with
Amazon and wait another two or three weeks for
them to reach Atenas.
Dolores
figured something was amiss when she realized I
wasn't attacking the morning glories or anything
else in our yard. While she made no comments when
I told her my BB gun tale of woe, I'm sure she
quietly enjoyed a good laugh.
During the
interval, I built a 2-foot by 2-foot by 2-foot
box made out of plywood. One side was left open.
I stacked ten empty aluminum cans inside the box
in a 4-3-2-1 pyramid shape from bottom to top,
The reason? To recycle the fired BBs that landed
on the bottom of the box, and not scattered and
difficult to find in the jungle-thick undergrowth
of the morning glory plants.
Target day.
The magazines arrived nine days into the new year.
It must have been wind gusts that made me miss
hitting any of the cans with my first nine shots.
It was then that I thought I heard Dolores say
from inside a nearby window (probably to Furnando),
“Couldn't hit the side of a barn door.”
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