Guns

Dad did work for Crosman Arms (BB guns, pellet guns, and the like), a division of Coleman (the camping company). Dad was a commercial artist and had a studio in which he did his work. Sometimes the studio was at home, though I dunno why. I enjoyed playing around (carefully) with his art stuff and occasionally he would show me some process or activity related to his work.

Anyways, he designed the Crosman logo which is in use today, or at least something pretty much like it. If it has changed, it has changed very little over the years. He re-designed their packaging so it stood out on store shelves. Apparently it had an amazing effect on the company’s revenue stream at the time. He even designed at least one of their air rifles which is still being sold today.

The upshot of this to Dennis and I was that we had a virtual endless variety of BB and pellet guns to play with, along with ammo plus CO2 cartridges which supplied the air power. BTW, nobody shot their eye out. Matter of fact there were no injuries involving the use of the guns that I can recall. Dad taught us how to use them safely, and we did. We did mostly target shooting, though certain wildlife ended up dead because of us: frogs, starlings (black birds who were quite numerous and bullies at the birdfeeder), for example. We even had a Crosman air-powered shot gun (the shells were quite small in comparison to standard shotgun shells and either contained tiny shot or a ball bearing) with a skeet launcher – instead of clay pigeons there were little plastic frisbees that came apart if you hit them and could be easily reassembled.

It was a lot of fun, and I’m glad for the experience as my parents could have never afforded such a luxury out of their pockets. Plus, it incremented my popularity in the neighborhood.