i always considered myself fortunate, because my dad knew about guns. not that he was a big collector or shooting enthusiast; raising five children and six long hard days a week as an agricultural tire salesman to provide for those kids pretty much precluded any expensive hobbies for him...i really only remember him owning three guns; my earliest memories before mill strikes and lockouts forced the family to move from middle tennessee where i was born in '54 to palm beach county, fla. when i was four, were of an old double barrel standing in the closet and a big revolver that i later learned was a .45 long colt army model...but after months of walking the picket line, the mill closed for good and the guns had to be sold along with the house, the new chevy, dad's tools, and everything else that six years of hard work as a union knitting mill operator had provided for his young family. my brother jerry was six and about to start school, i was four, and baby brother don was just six months old when we headed south in a secondhand car over icy mountain roads with just the four of us and what possessions the car could hold, to the promised land of sunshine and plentiful jobs...
except that five years, five houses, and four schools later in the rundown neighborhoods of west palm beach, the family had grown by one girl with another one due, and the family was breaking down under the financial strain; a series of hard jobs, delivering ice cream to stores, working in a gas station, and my mom working the counter at night at the a&w root beer stand, was not enough to provide for a big and growing family and mom and dad started fighting all the time...
then dad heard about another palm beach county; thirty miles inland, the half of the county that bordered the east side of lake okeechobee was the largest, most fertile black soil agricultural region in the nation...truly like another world from the beehive of growth and activity along the palm beach coastline, here the farming communities of canal point, pahokee, and belle glade featured sugar cane fields, corn, beans, radishes, celery, and more, as the "winter vegatable capital of the world" stretched as far as the eye could see...and the small town atmosphere and family oriented activities in the towns seemed like a dream come true...and in many ways it was, because the ag tire job that would become his life's work and provide a solid middle class upbringing for his five kids, also put my dad on the cutting edge of transforming the transportation of the sprawling region's crops to the mills and packing houses by converting track bulldozers to high-speed mini train engines mounted on big aircraft-style flotation tires capable of pulling a train of ten big wagonloads of sugarcane or produce across the across the soft muck fields...
so that's how we ended up out there along highway 98 three miles out of canal point, and surrounded by those cane fields that provided such a rich .22 plinking and learning environment...my dad did finally get another gun; he won a big tire sales contest in the mid '60's and took home first prize of a brand new winchester 12 gauge autoloader...he was proud of that gun, although i used it more than he did and he made sure that it went to me when he died fifteen years ago...so when i say he knew about guns, and that i felt lucky, it's more that he knew about the power and the importance of the gun, what it represents, the rights and sacrifices that make owning them possible for the common man, and the great responsibility that owning and using them carries...it's the very basis of my belief in and defense of the Constitution and it's provisions.
so anyway, we kids were dad's hobby, and my interest in shooting, sparked by a gem of a canal point elementary school library book (i started there toward the end of third grade, there was just one class for each of grades one through eight in that old schoolhouse, and coming from a city school i was shocked and delighted that half the kids went barefoot, and the other half was barefoot too after recess), the book was "a boy and his gun"; reading it, feeling it, loving it resulted in my badgering dad unmercifully as i progressed through the bb gun phase until on Christmas morning when i was nine, the most beautiful little marlin single shot .22 appeared beneath the tree.
i, my dad, and older brother jerry (he liked my rifle so much he spent his Christmas money the next week on an identical one, paying the enormous sum of $15 at the western auto store in nearby clewiston, fl) spent many days and nights wandering around those sugar cane fields near our home, plinking away, and unbeknown to my brother and me, learning safety, proper handling, and life lessons, all along the way...
one big lesson was making each shot count; for one thing the little marlins required opening the bolt, dropping in your cartridge, closing the bolt, pulling back the spring loaded hammer knob, and sliding off the safety before you were ready to take aim, so forget about popping off successive shots...
and of course we had to listen to the "make every shot count" backstory whereby my dad and his brother during the 1930's depression each got one bullet, and if they didn't bring back a rabbit or squirrel from that woodlot in middle tennessee (about where the saturn car plant now stands) they didn't have meat for dinner that night...and speaking of squirrel, the story transcended ordinary accuracy and marksmanship by virtue of what he called "barkin'" the squirrel; in other words shooting the tree bark under the squirrel, knocking him stunned to the ground rather than tearing up the meat with a direct hit...i kinda filed that one away along with the two-mile each way walk to school through four-foot drifts...but the old man was a pretty tight shot, so i never really knew for sure.
anyway, that old stuff had a lasting effect on me; to this day i instinctively drop a long gun into the crook of my elbow with the barrel aiming at only the ground anytime i'm walking with one...i don't know if this stuff helped lead me into a thirty year career as a gun dealer, or made me a better, safer gun handler...but it sure gives me fond memories, and an appreciation of what is real and good and important in this world; and memories and lessons like this are something that i'm afraid are going to be sadly lacking as subsequent generations reach middle age...and that to me is truly a sad thing.
jtc
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