Rabbit Box Blog

As I mentioned before, Mom strongly opposed any of us boys having a BB gun. As the oldest, I was the first to ask for one, and I triggered the strongest reaction.

Now this was when almost all men and boys in our circle were hunters. Mom’s brothers not only owned guns, but Uncle Ray was a gunsmith. Uncle Leroy was known to build weapons that might or might not be called firearms, including a zip gun made of a length of galvanized pipe that launched projectiles powered by firecrackers. Surely a BB gun was nothing in comparison.

Dad had already taught me to shoot his .22, so I could reasonably argue that I would be a responsible BB gun owner. And while Dad agreed that I could handle a BB gun, Mom would have none of it.

“Absolutely not!” she would say. “Remember your Uncle Sherman. I’m not having one of my boys lose an eye.” And that would be the end of that.

After years of trying to figure out a way around the Mom-block, I saw an ad on the back cover of a comic book. “Sell our greeting cards,” the ad promised, “and you can earn valuable prizes.” The prizes were the sorts of things that would appeal to boys my age, including bicycles, baseball gloves, gas-powered model cars, and—of course—BB guns. Most of the prizes required selling what seemed like an awful lot of greeting cards, but a Daisy Cub BB gun seemed attainable. It was Daisy’s least expensive model, so it was in the lower tier of gifts.

Now the parental roles reversed. Mom didn’t think for a minute I’d be able to earn enough to win the gun, so she was fairly easy to convince to let me try. Dad, foreseeing a financial disaster, said no. But eventually he gave in, and signed the parental permission blank on the order form.

I don’t remember much about the greeting cards, except that they were for all sorts of occasions and came in wax paper bags that each held about 10 cards. The box held a number of bags, and I had to sell them all to make my goal.

The first few weeks I scored a few sales by carrying my wares when we went visiting on Sundays. Most of my relatives declined, but a few actually needed some greeting cards, and these weren’t very expensive.

After that, the box languished in the hall closet for a few weeks. Then a reminder letter came, telling me that my prize was just waiting for me to send in my money. I worried about what to do, but soon decided that I needed to hit the road and find some more prospects. It took a new round of negotiations before Mom would let me walk around Alexis, but she agreed there really wasn’t any other way I was going to satisfy the greeting card company.

Alexis in those days had only a few hundred inhabitants, and most of them were members of our church, but as a kid, I didn’t pay any attention to grown-ups who weren’t close relatives or teachers. So as I walked up the road, my heart pounded. I didn’t think I knew many of the people who lived within walking distance, except for those I was convinced would laugh or yell at me.

I walked right by the Stroupe’s house. They were our closest neighbors on that side, and I knew them from church and school. Tim was a couple of years older than me, and I saw no sense in giving him another reason to make fun of me. I also skipped Roland Abernathy’s house. He coached the church baseball team and taught Sunday School. He might not approve of crass commercialism. I didn’t even slow down at Leonard Bynum’s house. We used to live next door to him, and he was much too dignified for door-to-door greeting cards.

Finally I got to a house whose occupant I didn’t know. With my heart pounding so loud I could hardly hear myself knock on the door, I barely looked at the woman who answered.

Now, to say that I was not a natural-born salesman is an understatement.

“You wouldn’t want to buy any greeting cards, would you?” I mumbled dejectedly, recognizing immediately that I had opened with an invitation to say no.

To my surprise, she answered, “well, I don’t know. What kind have you got?”

I fumbled through the stack of cards I held tightly in my hand and pulled out a wax paper bag of assorted cards.

“This kind,” I stammered as I shoved them nervously for her to examine.

“I need some Christmas cards,” she said. “These are for birthdays and different holidays. Have you got any packs of just Christmas cards?”

Luckily, I did, and she bought a pack. I think they cost $2, which she paid in cash.

With an odd combination of relief and depression, I turned and walked home. I had made my first real sale, and I knew it would be my last. There was no way I could ever make myself knock on another stranger’s door.

When I got home, I put my cards back into the linen closet and closed the door. I didn’t take them out again for weeks.

Then another letter arrived. The greeting card company hadn’t heard from me, and my payment was overdue.  Payment? I had never thought about what would happen if I gave up on the project. Couldn’t I just return the cards I hadn’t sold? The letter didn’t mention that possibility. They wanted full payment, and my sales to date would cover only about half.

After stalling for a day or two, I showed the letter to Dad. He didn’t yell at me or talk about punishment. He simply sighed in that kindly, gut-wrenching way that he had of letting me know he was disappointed.

“Well,” he said, taking out his wallet and looking to see how much cash he had. 

“I guess I can cover you on this one,” he said, offering me a few bills.

I could barely contain my joy, but I tried to remain stoical.

“Oh, good. Thank you, Daddy. But there’s one more thing. The letter says I have to pay with a money order, and I don’t even know what one looks like, much less how to get one.”

He said he would have to take me to the Post Office to buy one. So, after filling out the remittance form that came with the threatening letter, Dad and I got in the car and drove to the Post Office. Dad had me do the buying so I would know what a money order looks like.

I don’t remember how the BB gun arrived. It had to come by Parcel Post, which meant the mailman would have brought it with the regular mail delivery. Items too big for the mailbox were left outside the mailbox.

But the gun did arrive somehow, and it quickly became one of my favorite possessions. I used it for years, long after it wore out and could barely roll a BB down the barrel and a foot or two forward. 

Actually, except for Mom, we all used it. I remember Dad fighting off an invasion of mice in our kitchen with it. He was working second shift, and would arrive home after 11 PM. As he turned on the light in the kitchen one night, he saw a mouse, the animal Mom hated and feared above all others. Soon we had a full-scale invasion. Mom, of course, declared that the mice had to go or she would move out.

Dad tried mouse traps, mouse poison, and everything he could think of, but the mice kept coming back. Eventually he borrowed my BB gun. After work, he would sit quietly in the kitchen eating an after-work snack, and when a mouse skittered across the floor, he would pick up my old Daisy Cub and fire. 

It was about then that I began to realize that Dad was a terrific shot. He killed so many mice that they soon disappeared from our house.