Straight Shooters

I’m amazed that when I mention my family was involved in the Daisy BB Gun National Championships (aka BB gun shoots), very few people have even heard of them.

The BB gun shoots were my family’s only vacations.   

The Daisy National BB Gun Championship Matches (Daisy Nationals) bring together teams of kids ages 8-15 to compete in a 5-meter, four-position (standing, kneeling, sitting, and prone) shooting match.

Shooting BB guns was one of the Carty kids’ favorite activities. Mostly because we didn’t have many activities. We shot at cans, targets, and birds. “Just not robins or cardinals,” Dad decreed. We were all straight shooters from lots of practice and probably just deadeye Carty genes, if I’m being honest.

Back in 1976, when we found out about the team, I had just turned 16, so I was already too old, but my best friend Lori was on the team. Her family traveled to Shreveport, LA for the Nationals that summer, and I was so jealous!

The next year, Lori’s brother Roy and my brother Steve both made the Clinton team, which won the Indiana competition and the right to represent our state in the Nationals in July.  The Championship was to be held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And the Cartys were going!

 A Real Vacation. Sort of.

It was exciting to finally get to travel somewhere for a vacation. Our vacations were always spent at our camp set up at the end of Dad’s best friend’s cornfield... but that’s another story.

Dad was incredibly tight with money, and while the other team families would be staying in hotels and eating at fast-food restaurants, we lucky Cartys would be loading up in Dad’s truck-bed camper, staying at KOAs (Kampgrounds of America) the whole way, and eating lunchmeat sandwiches at rest parks.

But since we hadn’t really been outside of Indiana, all but Dick, who was 20 and in college, went along. My recollection is that Lynn, who had just graduated high school, went, but she doesn’t think she did. So, I will go with that. She’s out of this story… until the following year.

The younger kids got to take turns riding in between Mom and Dad on the bench-style truck seat. That left four of us (really five, but it’s not worth arguing with Lynn) riding in the camper, either lying up in the bed located over the cab of the truck or sitting at the table in the lower part. No seat belts, no real concern for safety. The only way to communicate with them in the truck cab was to rap on the window and hold up notes. “Need bathroom!”  “We are hungry!” 

Our notes would be ignored if Dad wasn’t on the same page, however, so we mostly just crossed our legs, tightened our belts, and waited until he pulled over at a rest stop to pee and eat our lunchmeat sandwiches. 

To us, KOA campgrounds were practically a luxury hotel. Unlike at our cornfield camp, there were running-water bathhouses with showers and flushing toilets. There was also typically a heated pool (although we were not great swimmers; we mostly grew up watching Dad swim).

The campground stores offered snacks we could buy with our own money. It was at a KOA store that we were introduced to Tombstone pizza, which was not available in stores at the time. Much like today’s Hunt Brothers, they were only available at the finest gas stations and campgrounds. They were so much better than any frozen pizza we had at home, which were typically small Totino’s brand pizzas with essentially a cardboard crust. 

When we reached a campground, we pitched a tent for the kids, and Mom and Dad slept in the camper. At our halfway stop at a KOA in Iowa, Dad decided to cook spaghetti. That sounded fine. We all needed a break from lunchmeat sandwiches and potato chips. Dad had been a cook in the Army, and he could cook for his own troops.

 “Well, shit,” he lamented, “I forgot to pack Ragu.” No worries.  Like any good Army cook, he improvised. If you’ve never had spaghetti with ketchup, you aren’t missing a thing. Thank goodness for Tombstone pizzas and having our own money.

That year in Sioux Falls, SD, the team from Hawaii came in first place. I had to look that up on the internet. No other places are listed, just first, and no one seems to remember what place Indiana finished in. The team from Clinton would go on year after year, winning the state shoot and the honor of representing our state.

My younger brothers continued to compete on those Indiana teams for three more years, but that was the only trip I went on.

That trip to South Dakota was a great experience (I did mention Tombstone pizzas). We got to see a few things along the way. But only along the way. Ray Carty, a straight shooter when it came to travel, too, was not one to drive even a few miles off the interstate to see unplanned sights. The trip was mapped out and highlighted on his KOA-provided map, and there was no time or money for detours.

The next year, my brother Alan was on the team, and the Nationals were to be held in Iowa. We older kids decided not to go along that year. Dick was 20, Lynn was about to turn 19, and I was 17. We all had jobs and were old enough and responsible enough to stay home. Our parents trusted us.

Lynn’s Keg Party

Yeah, I remember the intoxicating feeling of that independence… and hoping that Mom and Dad wouldn’t find out about the huge keg party Dick, Lynn, and I hosted (Also intoxicating!).

But since the police showed up, they did find out. It took us a while to earn that trust back.

My brother Dick, who later in life answered the call to be a preacher, claims he doesn’t remember being involved in planning the party. He refers to it as “Lynn’s Keg Party.” When I reminded him that he had friends there, too, and that he and his friends probably bought the keg, he said, “I don’t ever remember buying a keg.”

Ever? Really? It’s hard for the preacher in him to openly discuss ever breaking rules. “The statute of limitations has run out,” I tell him.

Then he added, “I just remember getting angry because people were trashing the place and our parents would be home soon.” Spoken like a true goodie-two-shoes, which in 1978, he was NOT.

"Lynn’s Keg Party" was held on June 30^th, Lynn’s birthday, which she shares with my high school best friend, Lori. I had worked all day to make special cakes for both of them. Part of the “trashing of the place” involved a huge food fight with those special cakes. Dick remembers the front porch light getting broken, too.  We had quite a mess to clean up.

The police didn’t come to our house. They set up a roadblock to stop cars leaving “Lynn’s Keg Party.”

I hadn’t been drinking yet, and I had a friend who was a year younger than me who was a little drunk. Once we heard about the police, he needed to get out of there. “My parents will kill me,” he implored. I drove him up the road next to the railroad tracks to a little-known back way out of Summit Grove and took him home.

Heading back home, since I hadn’t been drinking, I was cocky and took the main road where the cops at the roadblock flagged me down. They asked for my license. They knew the party was at the Carty house. They saw my last name.

“What’s going on, officer? I’ve been at work,” I fibbed. The officer just smiled and handed my license back to me, as if to say I was in for a big surprise when I got home.

My hands were shaking when I got back home to the party. “Give me a beer!” I said to Lori as she drunkenly laughed, finger-combing cake out of her hair. 

Yeah, BB gun team trips made for a lot of fun memories, even after I stopped going.