"You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!": The Story of Daisy B.B. Guns

This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, and we love to tell stories about our own history.

And always are this day in histories and our historical segments are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. Here's Roger McGrath to tell us the story of a mining woman who sought her fortunes in a man's world and became one of the greatest women of the Old West. Dr. McGrath is a professor in Southern California and the author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier.

Here's Roger. Known as the frontier angel or the saint of the sourdoughs, Lily Cashman was one of the courageous women who helped make America's conquest of the frontier our Homeric era. She ranged far and wide on every mining frontier from Arizona and Mexico in the south to Alaska and the Klondike in the far north. She is not forgotten. She's an inductee of the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame, the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame, and Arizona Women's Heritage Trail. There's also a Nellie Cashman Day in Tombstone. She was a character in the 1950s TV series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, and the U.S.

Postal Service honored her with a stamp in 1994. Born in County Cork, Ireland in 1845, Nellie is only a teenager when she, her sister Frances, and her widowed mother leave Ireland and sail to Boston in 1860. When the Civil War erupts, a shortage of young men allows Nellie to find work as a bellhop in a hotel.

Not many bellhops look like Nellie, a beautiful and finely featured young woman with waist-length brunette hair, flawless fair skin, and sparkling expressive eyes. Here's Jane Baker, author of the Nellie Cashman biography, Tough Nut Angel, the tale of a real-life adventurous of the Old West. There's a legend that says that Nellie met General Ulysses S. Grant and had a conversation with him that ended in him suggesting that she go to the West because she would fit better there. With the end of the Civil War, the Cashmans decide it's California for them.

They arrive in San Francisco after sailing on steamships and crossing through the jungles and mountains of Panama on burrows. Frances, or Fanny as she's called, marries Irishman Tom Cunningham and starts a family. Nellie is off for mining strikes in Arizona, Nevada, and Idaho. In each new mining camp, she establishes a boarding house and a restaurant, builds it into a profitable enterprise, then sells out and moves on. Any miner down on his luck eats for free at Nellie's, and Nellie is always ready to grub-steak a prospector. She also has a talent for the healing arts and nurses many an injured or ill miner back to health.

Here's a story near the Old West, Marshall Trimble, otherwise known as the Will Rogers of Arizona. Nellie took great pride in the fact that she never turned away a hungry miner who had no money to pay for his meal or board. And when there was a need to raise money, whether it was for churches and schools or hospitals or a family of a miner killed in a mining accident, well, Nellie would head downtown for the saloons or the brothels with her hat turned upside down and she always left with a hat full of money. The source of those donations never bothered her.

She said one time, whether the money comes from an upstanding citizen or a member of an outlaw faction makes no difference to me, and the money doesn't know the difference either. In 1874, Nellie joins a party of 200 Nevada miners headed for the Cassiar Mountains in northern British Columbia near the border of the Yukon. The region is practically unknown and all but inaccessible, but the miners, including Nellie, the only female, reach their destination and strike gold on the upper reaches of the Stikine River and along its major tributary, Deas Creek. It's only fall when winter comes to the Cassiars. The miners are caught unprepared for the heavy snowfalls and severe cold.

As their supplies dwindle, dozens begin falling ill with scurvy. Their beloved Nellie is not among them. She left earlier for a vacation in Victoria on Vancouver Island. When word reaches Victoria, the miners are entrapped by snow and ice and suffering terribly. Nellie purchases 2,000 pounds of supplies, including plenty of lime juice, hires six men and heads for Deas Creek. At Wrangell, Alaska, U.S. Customs officers try to dissuade her from what they term a mad trip, but Nellie pushes on. When the commander of Fort Wrangell hears that a woman is headed into the Cassiars, he dispatches a lieutenant with a squad of soldiers to rescue her. They don't catch up with Nellie until high up on the Stikine River. Nearly exhausted and suffering greatly from the cold, the soldiers find Nellie camped comfortably on the ice of this frozen Stikine. The lieutenant says she is cooking her evening meal by the heat of a wood fire and humming a lively air.

The soldiers greatly accept her offer of hot coffee and food and return without her. The winter weather is so severe that people in coastal settlements think Nellie must have died. Here again is Jane Baker. There was a small avalanche and Nellie's tent was buried 10 feet deep in the snow. Now, when I heard about this, I wondered how did she figure out how to get out of there?

Well, if you spit, your spit will go down. So what she did was spit and climb the opposite direction and she climbed out of the hole. She dug herself up out of it. After 77 days on the trail and digging herself out of a snow slide, Nellie reaches Dease Creek. Upon hearing of Nellie's trek, a newspaper called it an extraordinary feat by an indomitable female who possesses all the vifacity as well as the push and energy inherent to her race. With lime juice and good food, Nellie nurses every one of the 200 snowed-in miners back to good health.

She is called the Angel of the Cassiars. And when we come back, we'll continue with the story of Nellie Cashman here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.

Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a look at our stories. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button.

Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we return to Our American Stories and continue with Roger McGrath and the story of Nellie Cashman. Nellie stays in British Columbia for another three years, operating her businesses and raising money to build St. Joseph's Hospital in Victoria. In 1878, Nellie returns to San Francisco to visit her mother in the Cunninghams.

Fanny and her husband now have three boys and two girls who love their Aunt Nell and are fascinated by her many adventures. A new mining strike soon sends Nellie to Tucson in Arizona Territory. She opens the Delmonico Restaurant, the first business in Tucson owned by a woman. But in 1880, she heads for the new Silver Strike at Tombstone. She takes over operation of the Russ House Hotel and within weeks becomes part owner.

One of the prospectors she feeds for free in grub stakes is Edward Doheny, who later becomes one of America's great oilmen. Not long after Nellie begins operating the Russ House Hotel, her sister's husband dies of tuberculosis. Nellie rushes to San Francisco and brings Fanny and her children to Tombstone to live in a home immediately behind the Russ House. In 1883, Fanny dies of tuberculosis and Aunt Nell finishes a job of rearing the Cunningham children. When Nellie arrives in Tombstone, there is no Catholic church.

Here again is Marshall Trimble. In 1880, there was an article in the Tombstone Epitaph that said, Nellie Cashman, the year repressible, started out yesterday to raise funds for the building of a Catholic church. We don't know what success attended her first effort, but there is going to be a Catholic church in Tombstone before many more days if Nellie has to build it herself. She convinces the owners of the Crystal Palace Saloon, one of the owners is Wyatt Earp, to allow Sunday services to be held there until a church is built. Nellie leads the way in fundraising for what becomes the Sacred Heart Church. Nellie also helps build the first school in Tombstone and the first non-military hospital in Arizona, St. Mary's in Tucson. She also establishes a fund for prospectors injured in mining accidents and serves as treasurer of Tombstone's chapter of the Land League of Ireland. Nellie becomes one of the most influential and respected figures in Tombstone.

Here again is Jane Baker. During the time she was raising those kids in Tombstone, the gunfight at the OK Corral happened and Nellie knew all of those players, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, all his brothers. She knew the mayor of Tombstone named John Klum who thought she was absolutely wonderful and wrote glowing reports of her. John Klum, the publisher of the Tombstone Epitaph and Tombstone's first mayor, said of Nellie, Her frank manner, her self-reliant spirit, and her emphatic and fascinating Celtic brogue impressed me very much and indicated that she was a woman of strong character and marked individuality.

Here's Marshall Trimble with another story exemplifying Nellie's servant's heart. During the Christmas season of 1883 in Bisbee, five men pulled a robbery, killing four people, including a pregnant woman. They were caught, tried and convicted and sentenced to hang.

Nellie took it upon herself to be their mother confessor. And just before the hanging, an entrepreneur had built a grandstand outside the high walls of the Tombstone courthouse and was selling tickets to watch the hanging. The outlaws pleaded with Nellie not to let their hanging become a public spectacle. So the night before the event, Nellie and some friends arrived late, late in the evening with tools in hand, and they tore it down.

After the five men were hanged, the authorities had planned to donate their bodies to medical science. But the condemned men protested to Nellie, so she sought to it that they were given a proper burial and hired a guard to protect their graves for several days. One day a dying Mexican stumbles in the Tombstone and collapses at the entrance to the Russ House. Nellie has him carried inside and put on a bed. Before he dies, he mutters to her, Moolay, go to Moolay.

Gold nuggets are found in his pockets. Nellie and some 20 Tombstone miners are soon exploring the desert inland from Moolay in Baja, California. The party runs out of water, and several of the men are on the verge of death from dehydration. The Phoenix Herald newspaper reports that Nellie and two others have died of thirst.

Actually, Nellie is in better shape than any of the men. She volunteers to go off on her own, assuring her fellow prospectors a good angel will guide her to water. She crosses miles of scorching desert and miraculously comes upon an isolated mission. Not pausing to rest, she organizes a rescue party and helps drive burrows loaded with goatskin sacks of water back to the miners.

She arrives just in the nick of time. In 1895, at the age of 50, Nellie is still going strong when she arrives in Tucson. The paper reports, yesterday Tucson was visited by one of the most extraordinary women in America, Nellie Cashman, whose name and face have been familiar to every important mining camp or district on the coast for more than 20 years. She rode into the town from Casa Grande and horseback, a jaunt that would nearly have prostrated the average man with fatigue.

She showed no sign of weariness and went about town in that calm, businesslike manner that belongs particularly to her. When news of the great strike in the Klondike reaches the states, Nellie is off for the far north immediately. She arrives in Dye, Alaska during March 1898 and becomes one of the first women to take the steep Chilkoot Pass Trail. At the summit on the Canadian border, the Mounties required each stampede to pack 2,000 pounds of supplies so they wouldn't let them in.

I guess they didn't want American citizens to perish on Canadian soil. Well, 54-year-old Nellie had to make several trips up the snow-packed trail, but she was able to pass inspection. And then while waiting for the ice to thaw, she built a raft and then floated 500 miles down the Yukon River to reach Dawson, braving a series of fierce rapids along the way. Nellie soon opens a restaurant and a grocery store, which includes a small library that becomes known as the Prospector's Haven of Rest.

A newspaper reports, her entrance into a saloon or dance hall is the signal for every man in the place to stand. Nellie has always done well, but she really strikes it rich in the Klondike. Her claim on Bonanza Creek pays her more than $100,000, equivalent to $3 million in today's money. Nellie continues living and prospecting in the Yukon and Alaska for another 25 years. She becomes an expert musher, more than once driving teams of dogs through the snow for hundreds of miles.

Here's Marshall. In 1923, at the age of 78, she mushed a dog sled team 350 miles in just 17 days. Newspapers all over Alaska carried the story of that intrepid lady named Nellie Cashman. During the fall of 1924, her fabled health finally begins to fail. She dies at age 79 in January 1925 in St. Joseph's Hospital, which she had helped build nearly 50 years earlier.

Nellie was single all her life. She had several proposals. She was a very pretty woman, but she never married. And when asked if she ever feared for her safety, being the only woman amongst the many rough-hewn men, she replied sweetly, if you act like a lady, men will always treat you like one. Shortly before she dies, a reporter asks her if she ever feared for her virtue while living in all-male mining camps or prospecting on wild frontiers. She replies, bless your soul, no. I never have had a word said to me out of the way.

The boys would sure see to it that anyone who ever offered to insult me could never be able to repeat the offense. And thanks to Roger McGrath for that storytelling. And he's told so many good ones here on this show. Also thanks to Greg Hengler, Nellie Cashman's story, here on Our American Stories.

And we return to Our American Stories. Up next, the story of a truly iconic American company, Daisy. Today, Daisy is a leading youth sports and BB gun manufacturer that most of us at least know about. Perhaps a few of us have even owned a Daisy BB gun at some point in our lives. Here to tell the story of the company is Joe Murfin, the chairman of the board at the Daisy Airgun Museum in beautiful Rogers, Arkansas.

Take it away, Joe. Daisy is what's considered to be a super brand. A super brand is one that survives in one business for a great length of time.

It's also one that's identified by top of mind awareness. When you ask somebody to to name a soda company, you're always going to hear Coca-Cola. When you ask somebody to name a tractor company, you're always going to hear John Deere, maybe first, certainly within the first two. When you ask somebody to name a BB gun, inevitably, Daisy is over 98 percent of the time the first words that come out of their mouth, unaided.

My name is Joe Murfin. I worked for Daisy Manufacturing Company from 1999 to 2017. During that time, I helped to develop and oversee the nonprofit corporation, Daisy Airgun Museum, the Rogers Daisy Airgun Museum.

And I remain as chairman of the board of that nonprofit corporation today. A lot of people want to know about Daisy Manufacturing, which is the most popular brand of air gun, a brand that everyone knows. But a lot of people want to know how to Daisy get its name. Well, you really can't tell the story of Daisy Manufacturing Company without dealing with three companies that were in business in the 1880s in Plymouth, Michigan. By the way, Plymouth is just today outside of Detroit. And even back then, it was not a far buggy ride from downtown Detroit out to Plymouth. And Plymouth was, as Detroit is, a very industrial town. It had a railroad and it had a river.

And back then, if you had a railroad and the river, you had industry or you would soon have industry. The three companies, though, that I think we need to talk about a little bit are Markham Manufacturing, the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company formed by Clarence Hamilton, and the Plymouth Air Rifle Company, which was Hamilton's company through which he made some air guns. Markham Manufacturing, founded by a gentleman named Phil Markham in 1879, made buckets and cisterns and horse troughs. They were in the business of making things out of wood that would hold water. And Phil Markham and his son first envisioned the idea and produced a little wood air gun in 1886. And they took it up to Chicago. Now, in our museum, we have an example of this gun.

And if you look at it, it's a slat of wood, much like would be a stave from a barrel, only it's not bent. And they've inserted a little brass barrel in it, and it's a break action gun. So they were just toying with the idea of producing this. They took it up to a show in Chicago, and there was a distributor there that said we want exclusive rights to this gun, but you have to name it the Chicago. So they were by two years later producing about 100 guns a day, and they actually built a new factory totally dedicated to their air rifle business. The Plymouth Air Rifle Company was owned by a gentleman named Clarence Hamilton, who was a prolific inventor of lots of things and repairers of lots of things.

And if you ever search USPatentsAndTrademarks.gov, you'll find lots of patents by Clarence J. Hamilton. And in 1882, he founded another company called the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company. Most windmills back then were made out of wood. And the blades were made out of wood, and they had a vein like a tail to them that would orient the face of the windmill into the wind. Mr. Hamilton's windmill was, he called it the iron windmill, it was all iron and steel. And these were used for, today we think of windmills as producing energy, and wind the energy for electricity. No electricity in 1882, so this was to pump water for stock at the farm. And so he invents this windmill, it has a rudder instead of a tail, and it has a counterbalance weight. And those two things not only would orient the windmill into the wind, but at different wind speeds, the blades of the windmill would actually can't, or turn a little bit as an airplane propeller does at different speeds, in order to more efficiently turn the wind into a pumping motion energy. So the windmill company was in business and selling this steel windmill.

They hired a salesman who would ride out about a 100-mile radius territory to try to sell the windmill to farmers. At the same time, Hamilton, the inventor of the windmill, had built a little wooden gun similar to Markham's gun. And he was only selling about 50 guns a day. Much like when he produced the windmill, windmills were all made out of wood, he made a steel one because he thought it would be better. He looked at the wooden Markham guns and he thought, I can make a better one out of steel.

So he made a little steel what's now referred to as a wire stock or a wire frame gun in that the stock of the gun was just a piece of wire bent into the shape of a gun stock. And then he realized he really didn't have the capability to produce those, certainly not hundreds of them a day. So he took it to the general manager of the windmill company, a man by the name of Lewis Cass Huff, and he says, Lewis, I made this in my garage, I can't produce them to the capacity I think I should have to do. But the windmill company could produce this gun for us.

And this would be a good product diversification. By 1888, the time at which he made this little all-steel BB gun, air rifle, the windmill company was struggling. They realized that the windmill literally weighed a ton and that they could only distribute in about a 100-mile radius.

So they're very limited in their marketing territory. Most farmers had a windmill, so it's a better windmill. But do you need a better windmill when you have one that's working that's made out of wood? So they actually had a board meeting in which they polled all the officers of the board whether or not they should file bankruptcy.

And we, Daisy Manufacturing today, are very thankful that it failed by one vote, that of the general manager. So when Clarence took this little gun to the general manager of the windmill company and said we could diversify, he was actually trying to save his own company also. So Mr. Lewis casts huff, takes the gun, fires it into his wastebasket, he likes it.

Takes it outside, he puts a little shingle up against the stump, and he fires the BB into the shingle, it splits the shingle. And he turns to Clarence and he wants to tell him how much he likes the gun. I love having young people in the museum and asking them, what would you tell me if I handed you something you really liked and you wanted to express that to me? And they say, it's cool, that gun's cool, that gun's radical, that gun's awesome.

And I tell them we could be the awesome, radical, sick air gun company today. But the colloquialism that dates back to as early as 1880 was, it's a daisy. If you liked it, it's a daisy.

So there are two recordings of that statement. One is, boy, it's a daisy. One is, Clarence, it's a daisy. Frankly, I don't know that it matters, but the idea was the gun was exceptional, he liked it, he called it a daisy. And so the first guns, they are embossed with the words, Plymouth Iron Windmill Co., Plymouth Misch, because we used four letters back then to abbreviate states, patent applied for, and daisy. And daisy was simply the name of the gun.

It wasn't the name of the company at all. And you're listening to Joe Murfin telling the story of a super brand, a real super brand. Daisy Airgun History continues after these commercial messages. And we're back with our American stories and our story on Daisy, the iconic manufacturer of BB guns in America. When we last left off, Joe Murfin, the chairman of the board at the Daisy Airgun Museum in beautiful Rogers, Arkansas. I urge anyone who's ever in that area to visit.

It's one of the most beautiful parts of this country. He was telling us about how Daisy, then a product of a windmill company in Plymouth, Michigan, got its name. He was also telling us about these three companies in Plymouth, Markham Manufacturing, the aforementioned Plymouth Iron Windmill Company, and the Plymouth Air Rifle Company.

Soon these three companies would come together. Let's continue with the story. That's really the Daisy story of how it came to be and how it came to be named. Now the salesman told the story some 40 years later that he personally would buy the BB guns for 75 cents apiece. He would take them out and run his route with his horse and buggy, and he had a small reproduction model of the steel windmill that he took with him, a sample. And when he met with the farmer, he would offer him the windmill. He would present the gun for $2 apiece, trying to make his money. But he said he was authorized to sell the gun for $1 if the farmer would put him up, give him room and board for himself and his horse in the barn over the weekend so that he didn't have to ride the 100 miles back to his hometown.

So the company changed its name to Daisy Manufacturing in 1895. And Clarence Hamilton, when he gave that gun to his windmill company, because he was the one that founded the windmill company and organized the local business people, he and his son continued making Plymouth air rifle guns, and they also then continued to make 22 firearms. But shortly after he gave that gun to the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company, he said, you can have the patent of this gun and have the rights to produce and sell this gun if you remain profitable. If the company doesn't remain profitable, I'm taking my gun back.

Don't know that he could have legally done so, but that was the agreement they had. Well, in 1899, a customer approached the Markham Company. Remember the Markham Company was making buckets and then started making air guns. This is how these companies were all interrelated. And they challenged Markham to make an air gun, but it had to be an all steel air gun.

They'd seen the Plymouth air rifle air gun. So Daisy agreed to make two guns for the Markham Company. So now they're making guns for their competitor. One of the board members on Markham's board had been the person to take this opportunity to Daisy Manufacture and saying, you guys were making steel windmills, you're making steel guns, you can make this gun that we need made for our customer. Phil Markham, the founder of the Markham Company, due to a family situation, decides that he's going to take his small fortune and move to California in 1912. By 1916, he has sold all of his stock to two executives at Daisy.

So two executives working for Daisy now own the majority of stock, or all of the stock, in the Markham Company. But during the Great Depression, these two executives decided that they could no longer personally own the stock in Markham, and so they sold the stock of Markham to the Daisy Manufacturing Company, and that's how Daisy and Markham became one company. Since Markham made their first gun in 1886, Daisy began saying, we've been in the air gun business since 1886. That first little gun that Lewis Cassuff shot into the shingle was made in 1888, but because they required Markham, they started using the line since 1886. When I joined the company, I found that a bit difficult to say, that we've been in the business, no, we acquired a business that's been in the business, but who was I to change history at that point?

So from 1889, when Daisy made the first patented Daisy BB Gun S, Plymouth Iron Windmill Company, to 1895, when they became Daisy Manufacturing Company, then by 1915, we know that the company grew exponentially. They went from one two-story building to a dozen buildings. They occupied everything in Plymouth, Michigan, between the railroad line and the switcher line, and winters were tough in Michigan, and still are today. Originally, the buildings at the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company and then the buildings at Daisy Manufacturing weren't even connected with each other. Imagine, as a manufacturer, that you're doing different processes to your products in different buildings, and then you have to go outside to take them to the next building.

That had to bring some challenges during the winter, I'm sure. And of course Detroit was known, and of course Plymouth was very close to Detroit, and they were known as the Motortown, Motown. They were known as the headquarters of the big three automakers, Ford, GM, and Chrysler. Those were the big companies to work for. So if you held a job with Daisy and you learned the trade, and you became a specialist at some machinery or something, then your ultimate goal was to go to the big three auto workers and make more money.

You could make more money building a $450 car than you could make building a $1.5 BB gun. So by 1958, Cass Huff, who was the grandson of Lewis Cass Huff, who had said the words, Clarence, it's a daisy. Now Cass is vice president of the company. His father, Edward, is president, but Cass is a young man, and he's on the track to become president. He's been a pilot in World War II. He flew P-38s, and he builds a couple airplanes, and he holds one of Michigan's first pilot licenses, which he got as a teenager. So he's quite the pilot. He loves flying. He flies all over the country. He has a job that allows him to and requires him to fly a lot.

And Daisy has its own corporate airplane. And so he's flying on a trip to the south. He stops the refuel in Rogers, Arkansas. There's not much in Rogers, Arkansas in 1958. Today we're a town approaching 70,000 in a metropolitan area that's much larger than that. We're bordered by Bentonville, Walmart's headquarters.

But in 1958, Rogers was more of a separate small town with 6,000 people. Mr. Cass Huff, he comes here. He lands at the grass strip at the airport. He likes the people, and he announces that I would bring my company here, but I won't land on a dirt runway anymore.

You've got to pave this runway. And the city of Rogers took him seriously, and they began to court Daisy. And so he declared he would bring his company here, and he did. Of the 700 employees, he offered all of them to keep their jobs if they wanted to move to Arkansas. They didn't know much about Arkansas, and people weren't as transient as we are today.

They didn't leave their families and their history of their family just to go take a job somewhere. So 100 families took him up on the offer of moving to Rogers, and he brought them down here a few at a time on the airplane. But imagine a town of 6,000 people, and just accept my math that that was probably 1,500 homes in Rogers, Arkansas. And all of a sudden, you need 100 more homes. That's a large percentage overnight growth.

And so in 1958, a lot of good growth happened because of Daisy moving 100 families here overnight. Things that make us a superbrand, I think, are multigenerational. Certainly people that have a Daisy air gun today, their parents probably had one. Their grandparents have always had one. It's the type of thing that you hand down as a rite of passage within your family.

A lot of people own the BB gun that belonged to their grandfather or their great-grandmother. And they value those things, and they pass it down. And therefore, the brand becomes important to them. In my experience with Daisy in marketing and public relations, I often said that our brand isn't what we think it is. It's what others think it is.

And it's a very personal thing. And that's when a brand becomes a brand, and it's not just a logo or a name that somebody can throw out. It's something that you have a heartfelt identity with that it means something to you. So it's the most valuable thing that the company carries on its balance sheet is the goodwill of the Daisy brand name, the historic value of it, and the part that it's played in the heritage of our country. If you look back to the days when Daisy was founded as a windmill company back in the 1880s and how the country has changed and how the company has progressed over the years, that's what makes it ingrained in people's minds. And a terrific job by Katrina Hein for collecting the audio and the story. And a great job, as always, by Monty Montgomery on the editing and the production. The story of the Daisy Airgun, here on Our American Stories.