BB guns and Baseballs

When you read “MY first BB Gun” posting you would get the idea that I was really a baby because of all that crying. That was such a traumatic event for me that I had a really tough time presenting it to the world in the form of a blog. I feel better since I wrote about it because for 52 years I didn’t even talk about it. My mother returned my BB gun to me the following summer and I had never once asked for it back. To a 10 year old there are just some things that are wrong and that was wrong because I directly disobeyed my mom and also God and I killed something and I really new that was wrong. When I got my BB gun back the one thing I didn’t do was shoot at birds. Windows and people [especially my two older brothers when they were bending over were still fair game. Shoot them and run like Hell] were still on the ‘mom’ list but I never felt badly about violating those items. Maybe I didn’t think that shooting my brothers in the butt was on God’s list or something like that. I think I learned to replace windowpanes at about the age of 11. Dad said that if I broke the window I could use my money [lawn mowing and newspaper route money] to buy new glass and replace the windows. When I first got caught I had 10 windows to replace. By the end of 10 windowpanes, I was pretty good at it. That knowledge really paid off for us after a baseball game at a local church. A couple of times a week we would play a pick-up baseball game in a neighborhood church’s side yard. During one game a foul tip went bad and hit a window in the kitchen of the church. We all took off like our pants were on fire and then later three of us went back and surveyed the problem and how to solve it. We figured if we fixed the window, no harm done and we wouldn’t be in trouble. I was off and returned with my “measuring stick”, window putty and glazing points. The door was open and in we went and found our ball and the broken window. One of the guys stayed and cleaned up the glass while LeRoy and I headed for Mr. Anderson’s hardware store. I walked in with my measurements and Mr. Anderson quickly said “shooting windows with that new Red Ryder BB Gun again, are we Teddy”, “No sir” I responded, “Just a little accident with a baseball”. Mr. Anderson cut the new piece of glass and didn’t ask me any more questions. That was good because Mr. Anderson was a member of that church. LeRoy and I were sweating bullets the entire time and then we quickly returned and replaced the glass. It looked like a first class job and no one would be the wiser. The next day, five of us headed for the church for some practice and when we got there we realized we did not have the ball. We had left it inside the kitchen yesterday. We decided to risk a return in side but when we got to the back door to go inside we saw our ball on the back steps and the Pastor had autographed it for us.