The BB gun

GIVEAWAY

This week I’m giving away a copy of Wildsam’s Gulf Coast Guide. I’ve loved Wildsam’s Field Guides since their inception — concise and artful, they glean the best of cities and regions, packaging it honorably in pocket sized booklets. Take it from them:

Inside Wildsam Gulf Coast, you'll find stories from prize-winning writers, past and present; a detailed road trip plan and profiles of 10 idyllic towns; interviews with historians, mermaid performers, fishing guides and photographers; delightful miscellany from the archives, selective recommendations about authentic Gulf Coast experiences and a deep dive into the work, culture and recipes revolving around seafood.

More information about how you can win your own Wildsam Gulf Coast Guide Book at the end of this newsletter.

Last Fourth of July, we gathered in the backyard to shoot at beer cans with a BB gun that my sister Callie wound up with at our family’s ‘White Elephant’ — one of those very unserious holiday gift exchanges inherited when all the cousins grow up, and the actual investment of real gifts feels too vulnerable.

When we brought home the gun, I’d guess it was to be stashed in a closet or the pantry and then duly forgotten. We didn’t grow up with guns around; I’ve never even been hunting. My experience with guns is basically limited to a variety of boyhood airsoft and paintball outings that I wasn’t particularly inclined to anyway. So it was kind of funny – in an ironic way – that we were doing this at all: outside and shirtless, shooting a BB gun in a context and manner that implied the ease of something handed down.

This Fourth of July we brought out the gun again, partly because I thought it seemed like a quirky and enjoyable tradition. It’s funny the way that something new can feel like it never was so.

So we emptied beers into the bellies upon which we laid like snipers, each of us (read: just me) coveting the unspoken and annual prize of Best-Bad-Shoota-on-Bayou-Chinchuba. To my absolute pride and pleasure, I was able to match the lore of my sister Grace who, sharpshooter she is, once shot a brewski right out the air.

Afterwards, my dad made a Facebook post, picturing me and Grace “Preparing to defend our small piece of the USA,” which I thought amusing, because my parents live in a gated subdivision in the suburbs.

I clicked on the picture of me, eyeing my thinning crown of colorless hair, when my eyes drifted rightward across the screen and I saw it: a comment deriding my less-than-impeccable form.

“need to lower that right elbow and then it will at least look like you have shot a gun before!!” Thanks, Lynn. Thank you very much.

Lynn’s stand-up aside, Now, trailing my quest to manufacture tradition, buzzed this feeling of familiar fragility — like it was all a performance, or worse, a stand-in for the sensitivities of natural-born customs and quality time.

Our gun, the little white elephant in the room, returned to its corner assuming the posture I wish I’d known sooner, straight-spined and resolute, unafraid and harmless.

Here are some photos from July 4, 2025. Please now imagine and immerse yourself in the soundtrack of our target practice: Bad Bunny, American citizen.

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I’ll send the winner a message on Wednesday! And then send off the Guide Book, announcing our winner in next week’s newsletter.