Shooting Up The 'Hood

I LOVE GUNS, flat out. My first gun was a cap pistol I got when I was about eight. I loved the smell and the sound. When I ran out of caps, mom would always oblige me, and get me a new roll at the store. I seem to remember that caps for cap pistols could be gotten at the local grocery store, without having to resort to a toy store, but maybe that's a fabricated memory. It might have been the Ben Franklin five and dime. I don't even remember wo I shot at, back in 1963. maybe my older sister, but I don't remember her being interested. I think I just pulled the trigger for that sweet sound and smell of gun powder, and I enjoyed carrying the smell on my clothing. then came the inevitable BB rifle, at about the age of ten or eleven. all the neighborhood kids had one, including my older sister. Every kid in America had a Bb gun in the mid nineteen sixties. We roamed the lower middle class neighborhood in packs, shooting the place up. the y were about half a dozen of us, a couple of kids who later became hoodlums and criminals and landed in the pen, a future fire chief, and a couple of us were intellectuals, destined for advanced degrees and professorial careers. then, in childhood, it didn't matter. the fun was the thing. We made horse apples bleed. We shot at squirrels and birds. Yes, we had BB gun wars, actually shot at each other. I recall taking a hit in my thigh, while fortunately wearing heavily starched blue jeans. it still stung like hell, and left a red dot on my leg, of which I was proud, but not proud enough to show mom. Dad, who had quite a collection of rifles, gave us a single shot, bolt action, breech loading .22 rifle at about the same time, and we fired it, only in his presence, at empty beer cans sitting across the cold clear water river. Then, high school came along, and other interests. For me, tennis, reading, and girls took the place of guns. then college, grad school, career, and now, retirement. however, for the past ten years or so I have been strongly considering reliving my childhood, and getting a new BB gun, just for shits and grins. maybe even a twenty two. I would take target practice, and probably shoot at squirrels in my back yard, but only when the local police aren't watching. Nowadays you can do time for shooting squirrels in your own back yard. Truth is, chances are I would shoot my new BB gun for about a seek, then loose interest, and stash it away in the closet, which is what I eventually did as a kid. But who knows? maybe I could round up all my old buddies from the sixties, the ones who are still alive, or maybe even get a few neighbors together, and start a new gang. that would probably land me in jail too. If in today's world a group of twelve year olds started roaming around the suburbs armed with BB rifles, shooting at anything that moved, the parents would be in jail, and the kids would be in juvenile detention, then foster homes. Back then, nobody cared. My, how times have changed.