My Red Ryder BB Gun
(as seen in A Christmas Story)

A Christmas Story has long been one of my favorite Christmas movies. A Charlie Brown Christmas is my favorite animated movie, and It's a Wonderful Life gets the #1 spot for a film, but this runs a very close second. It first aired around Christmas of 1983, so I was 25 at the time - a bit old for Christmas movies you might say... but you'd be wrong. Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Melanie and I watch those three movies, plus Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Christmas Carol (the original with Alastair Sim).

A Christmas Story was adopted from a story that Jean Shepherd read on his radio show on WOR, in New York, on December 25, 1972. A friend of mine who lived there at the time happened to record the original broadcast on his reel-to-reel tape deck, and a couple years ago he sent me a copy on CD. The movie, of course, expounds on the story, but in this case it adds a lot. Jean Shepard narrates in the background of the movie as Ralphie remembering his childhood.

Here is my version of the Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. "An official Red Ryder carbine action, 200-shot Range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time." It does not yet have the compass in the stock or that thing which tells time (a sun dial burned into the wood), but some day I will modify it so that it does.

Do you remember the scene in A Christmas Story where the kids in Ralphie's classroom all wear fake teeth and the teacher, Mrs. Shields, collects them and tosses them in her desk drawer? That drawer is fill with many formerly confiscated items, including a copy of "Pat Nelson - Ace of Test Pilots." Its copyright is 1937 by the Whitman Publishing Company, in Racine, Wisconsin. I posted some images of my copy.

I recently acquired a copy of the January 1939 issue of Boys' Life magazine, which is the one Ralphie was reading in bed.

Check out this vintage Mattel BB cap pistol TV ad. Imagine the wussie response today's Special Snowflakes would have to such an ad! They would run for a safe space and expect comforting puppies until they got over it - if ever.

Posted February 11, 2012