Jean Shepherd had his B-B guns confused.

I read "A Christmas Story" when it appeared in the December issue of Playboy, 1965, under the title of Red Ryder Meets the Hammond Kid (or something like that). I really liked his description of the department store window with all the toys as he identified many of them: Charlie McCarthy, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, etc. His description was so vivid that I could see it in my mind's eye which is the essence of good writing. The Red Ryder Air Rifle however was incorrectly described as having a sundial and a compass in the stock. No date was given in the original story as to the year, but I checked with the Daisy Air Rifle company in Rogers, Arkansas (they had moved from Plymouth Michigan) and using the serial number of a air rifle I had in my collection, I learned that Daisy's biggest year was the Red Ryder air rifle was 1946. They may have come out with the gun prior to the war, but the popularity came from the comic book ads and the movies which didn't start until the mid Forties. Jean Shepherd would have been a little old for an air rifle in 1940, but he could have had a Buck Jones air rifle which came out in the early Thirties and did have the compass and the sun dial. But because the Red Ryder air rifle was so popular, that is probably why he chose it to tell about in the story.