A Red Ryder Christmas: Visiting the Daisy Airgun Museum in Arkansas

A Red Ryder Christmas: Visiting the Daisy Airgun Museum in Arkansas

By a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

Boy, do I have a Christmas story for you.

Christmas has always been nostalgia season for Fish and me, and this year we leaned all the way in. One quiet afternoon found us at the Daisy Airgun Museum in Rogers, Arkansas. This small, unassuming place costs just two dollars to enter and somehow holds an entire century of American boyhood within its walls.

Daisy began, improbably enough, as a windmill company in the 1800s before turning to airguns in 1890. By 1938, they had created their most famous model, the Red Ryder, the “official Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot range model air rifle” immortalized in Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story. For decades, it sat near the top of countless Christmas lists, right alongside sleds, bicycles, and hope.

Once upon a time in America, children roamed a little freer. They learned by doing. BB guns were part of that world. Around the age of eight, sometimes younger if you lived in the country, kids were handed their first BB gun along with a short lecture on responsibility and a longer leash. For many, it marked the beginning of a gradual education in judgment and self-control.

And yes, most adults of a certain age can tell you about the first time they got shot, usually somewhere unmentionable and always remembered with laughter. The phrase “You’ll shoot your eye out” became legend not because it happened often, but because it might. That was the point. You learned to aim carefully. You learned consequences. And if you wanted to play cowboy, soldier, Texas Ranger, or world explorer, you needed the proper equipment.

As we wandered through the exhibits, Fish paused in front of a familiar model, one he’d owned as a boy. Watching recognition cross his face felt like watching time fold in on itself. Somewhere along the way, this kind of childhood faded, and standing there, I couldn’t help but wonder when, and why.

Once upon a time, Americans believed that risk was a teacher. Scraped knees meant you’d been outside. Welts meant you’d overestimated your skill. Today, we have foam playgrounds and industrial quantities of hand sanitizer, and while the intentions are good, something essential seems to have been misplaced.

I don’t think it disappeared because we suddenly became kinder. I think it faded because we became afraid—afraid of accidents, afraid of blame, afraid of liability. Somewhere between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, the idea of learning through experience quietly gave way to the notion of eliminating risk altogether. Childhood became safer, but also smaller.

The older I get, the more I find myself drawn to the old ways. They weren’t comfortable, but they allowed room for growth, for learning where your limits were and discovering that, with practice, those limits could move.

The Daisy Airgun Museum doesn’t argue any of this. It doesn’t need to. It simply preserves the artifacts of a time when trust was given in stages, and responsibility was learned the hard way, one careful shot at a time.

Maybe that’s why it feels especially fitting at Christmas. And maybe this year, I’ll ask for a Red Ryder. I promise not to shoot my eye out.

Some museums preserve artifacts. Others preserve ways of being.

xoxo,

a.d. elliott

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller based in Tontitown, Arkansas.

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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