My Aunt Mae was a wiry 110 pounds
She had 3 boys
I would go and stay with her and Uncle Biss
For 2 weeks in the summer
We said we could pin her down -- she said OK
Then she tossed us around the living room
Like paper dolls
One day my cousin Darrel
Got a Red Ryder B.B. gun that Aunt Mae told him not
To take out around other kids
She came outside and grabbed the gun
Darrel ran -- Aunt Mae pulled the trigger by accident
Away went a B.B. into Darrel's shirtless back
It left a little round dent in his back and he fell down
Aunt Mae dropped the gun and started to cry
We ran over to him, he was laughing, she hugged him
And then she hit him in the shoulder and hugged him again
We all laughed
Aunt Mae went back in the house
We went on playing, without the gun
Plymouth Iron Windmill Company opened in Plymouth, Michigan, in 1882 and, in 1886, began to give away BB guns with purchases of windmills. The gun became so popular the company went into the air rifle selling business. When General Manager Lewis Cass Hough fired one, he exclaimed,"It's a daisy!" and his remark led to
ReplyDeleterenaming the company Daisy Manufacturing Co. The term "BB" originated from the nomenclature of the size of steel balls used in a shotgun, normally 0.180 inches (4.6 mm). Around 1900, Daisy adopted a bore diameter of 0.175 inches (4.4 mm) and began to market precision-made lead shot specifically for their BB guns. They called them "round shots", but the "BB" name was already well established, and people continued referring to "BB guns" and "BB shot" (or just "BBs"), and the generic term "BB" came to mean round shot of various calibers and materials, including bearing balls, plastic round shot, 0.177 caliber lead and steel shot, marbles, and others.
Daisy introduced the Red Ryder BB Gun in the spring of 1940, named for the comic strip cowboy created in 1938 by publisher/comic syndicator Stephen Slesinger and artist Fred Harman.Designed to resemble the Winchester rifle featured in many Western movies,it had an engraved stock and a saddle ring with leather thong on the receiver. A lever-action, spring piston air gun with a smooth bore barrel, adjustable iron sights, and a gravity feed magazine with a 650 BB capacity,it produced velocities of about 240 feet per second (73 m/s). The effective range is fairly short, about 10 yards (9 m). Though the comic strip ended in 1964, Daisy Daisy Outdoor Products continues to make the BB gun named after it, making it the longest-continuous use in the history of the global licensing industry.