The problem with a BB gun is there is nothing interesting to shoot with it. Manufacturers recommend target practice, but that gets boring fast when you’re 10 or eleven years old and can’t afford the targets. Birds are your target of choice, but are hard to hit, even harder to kill and, most important, in invitation to your mother to take away your gun.
The year Tony Krouse and I each got BB guns for Christmas was filled with fun and trouble. Trouble not only with our parents and neighbors, but the police.
We started out innocently enough by building snowmen as targets. We would go around the neighborhood setting up small snowmen like soldiers. We set up machine gun nests behind bushes and sniper posts in the limbs of fir trees. Then we built a Sigfried Line snow fort with snow Nazi’s manning Germany’s last line of defense.
We were the guys on Combat, a very popular television show of the time staring Vic Marrow as a World War II platoon leader. With plastic army helmets from The Ben Franklin Five and Dime on our heads and our BB guns at the ready we swept through the neighborhood picking off snipers and assaulting machine gun nests.
It usually took eight or 10 BBs to blow the heads off the small snowmen, which was all the better as far as we were concerned. The final assault on the Sigfried Line took most of the afternoon or until it got too cold.
When there snow melted in late winter we went bird hunting. This required a lot of hiking around because we didn’t dare shoot birds in town where people could see us and report back to our parents.
Birds were really hard to bring down, however, and killing them was really gross. They were always little birds and they would lie flapping and bleeding on the ground. Our options were to stand there pumping BBs into the dying body like Nazis exterminating Jews or club it to death with a rock. This sent us looking for more satisfying targets.
The closest place to hunt was along the Snake River south of the Railroad tracks. One day while waking along the river bank shooting at grasshoppers, bees and other insects, be came across the large pipe that deposited Weiser’s sewage into the river.
The river was the Treasure Valley’s sewer in the days before treatment plants. Weiser’s highly mineralized drinking water came from wells and had a reputation as the worst in the state. Actually, Moscow’s was considerably worse sometimes looking like mild iced tea.
As we watched Weiser’s toilets flushing into the river Tony came up with the idea of shooting turds. We also shot at pieces of vegetables and other more or less solid stuff that came flowing out, but, for pre-teen boys, turds were the most satisfying to hit.
There was not always time to trudge down to the river bank, which was often very muddy in the spring anyway. So, we took up shooting insects in the alley behind our houses. No one could object to that. Unfortunately, someone did and called the police.
We were shooting bees hovering over a puddle across the street from the Presbyterian Church when a black and white squad car pulled up. We lit out for home and hid the BB guns, but that was of little use. Chief Tindal Ragsdale knew who we were; in fact, he lived on the same block.
Apparently someone thought we were shooting at the stained glass windows in the church. We pleaded our innocence to the chief, who seemed to accept that we were shooting at bees. But then he asked the killer question: “If you weren’t doing anything wrong, why did you run with I pulled up in the squad car?” he said.
“Wel-l-l-l-l-l-l-l,” we mumbled, “maybe some of the BBs could have, kinda, bounced on the windows after they hit the pavement. Yea, and maybe when we shot at a bird we might of hit the window a little bit, but nothing’s broke. See!” we said pointing at the large window.
Our rifles were confiscated and turned over to our parents. Tony got his back when school was out. I never asked for mine back. The only really fun thing had been shooting turds and even that got old. It was time for baseball and swimming.
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