Christmas presents

1951. I got a cap pistol that had a cylinder that rotated when I pulled the trigger. That was a big deal, the cylinder that rotated. I had never seen a cap pistol like that. The toy … No, it was more than a toy. It was like one carried by Lash Larue or Hopalong Cassidy or Johnny Mack Brown in Western movie serials. The cap pistol was burned up in a house fire in September 1952.

1956. I got a stamped metal, wind-up bulldozer with rubber tracks. The bulldozer climbed books I stacked on the floor; first one book, then two, and three. It wouldn’t climb four books. Outside, the bulldozer scraped sand with its blade and destroyed German and Japanese twig bunkers. I think the spring broke, or maybe I wound it too tight. The bulldozer was the first self-propelled toy I ever had. It made a good tank, too.

1962. Daddy gave me a Mossberg .410 bolt-action, three-shot shotgun. It was the first gun I owned. Daddy didn’t keep a gun. I never killed anything with the gun, except a few bottles and cans. Sometime the next year, I came home from school and saw a black Ford pickup in the front yard. Daddy was at work, so I asked Momma, “Where’d Daddy get the truck?” She was sitting on the couch in front of the front windows in the living room. She said, “He traded for it.” I asked, “What’d he trade?” She said, “Your shotgun.” Daddy didn’t ask me to approve the trade. When I saw him next day, he didn’t say anything about the truck or about my shotgun. He never did.