Chapter 4: First Gun

There was a time not all so many years ago, when a boy was presented with his first gun he somehow, magically became more mature and looked on himself as being right on the brink of manhood. I was not yet years old by a few months when my pa gave me the greatest surprise present of my life, my very first gun. Here is how it happened...

We were out in the barn one morning just getting ready to start the first chores of the day. Pa reached into a horse stall and withdrew something. I didn't really notice what it was until he spoke. "Here, Davy, you want this?" Pa asked the question in such an offhand way it took a moment to register what "this" was. He was holding in his right hand a twenty-two caliber single shot Remington rifle with an octagonal barrel. To my eyes it was the most beautiful sight in the world.

I blinked in surprise and started to grin so hard my jaws ached. I opened my mouth wide and took in a deep breath and held it for the longest time before I let it out again. It felt like there was a whole swarm of butterflies in my stomach right then. All this was because Pa asked me the most unnecessary question any normal boy of the time could be asked, "Well, Davy, do you want it or not?" He stood there, all straight and tall, a small half smile flickering at the corners of his mouth, "Well?"

"Ah ... oooh!" I exclaimed. My tongue seemed unable to help my lips say words. I tried again, "Oh wow!"

"Well, Son, if you don't want it I can probably give it to some boy in town." He stood there waiting, still smiling.

"Oh, Pa!" I almost yelled at him, "Don't you dare give this gun away to no ... It's beautiful, so beautiful." I could feel tears of excitement forming in my eyes as I held out my hand to receive it.

As I accepted this most wonderful gift Pa said the magic words, "I think you're ready, Son."

I held it at arm's length so I could look at it and take in the whole wonderful sight. Suddenly, all at once Pa's training kicked in and I opened the breech and checked. Sure enough there was a shell in the chamber. I jacked the gun all the way open and caught the shell as it came flying out. It was not a live round. I realized then Pa was testing me. He wanted to make certain I would practice the gun safety he had been drilling in me since I was six years old and permitted to shoot his big twenty-two for the first time. He nodded and smiled.

Suddenly I handed the gun back to him. "Here, Pa," I said and handed him the gun. He looked at me in surprised confusion as he accepted it from me. I think he was feeling a little hurt because he thought I was refusing the gift.

I ran outside and screamed at the top of my lungs, "Hooowaaa! Yahoo! My Gun! My twenty-two! Yaaay! The split second I hit the barn door I started running in a great circle. I yelled and screamed my joy. Ma came hurrying out of the house and to the barn to see what was happening.

"Oh Ma!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Woo Hoo, I ... I..." I couldn't say any more. I waved her to follow me back into the barn. The second I entered the barn I slowed down. Two places I was not permitted to run were the house and the barn. I reached out and took the gun again from Pa. He handed it over with a big laugh at my antics. "Thank you, Pa.," I said very formally, trying to be adult about the whole thing.

"You're welcome, Son," he said just as formally. His smile bespoke all the love he had put into buying me my first gun.

I was still so excited inside I felt like I was going to burst. "I'll take real good care of it, Pa, real good care."

"I know you will, Son," as he squeezed my shoulder. "Let's go hunting."

Now I realize how times have changed and there are all sorts of controversies raging about guns and gun ownership and what the proper age when a young person may own a gun is. But back then we grew up around guns. We learned about guns about the time we stopped nursing. It was a part of our culture. This was especially true in rural areas.

There were coyotes, bobcats and other wild predators we had to protect our stock from. A gun was a tool as much as a hammer or a saw and was seen as such by just about everybody. One more thing to consider is simply we learned about being responsible for our actions and deeds at a very early age. Learning personal responsibility so young is one reason there are so many more "incidents" today than there were in years gone by, whether it was guns or gangs or senseless violence.

Ma watched with love, her first look of concern easing off her face as she saw me treat the gun properly. I hadn't even seen her come up. "Very well, Walter, you were right. My little boy is growing up and I guess I just want him to be a baby for a while longer. She patted my shoulder and I looked up at her and smiled.

"This is a real gun, Ma," I told her.

"Yes, Davy, I can see it is," was her smiling reply.

"It's my gun," I told her. She nodded and smiled some more.

This most marvelous of all guns in the whole world was a model 12 Remington octagonal barrel twenty-two chambered for long rifle and shorts both. It was a single shot that had seen many rounds unloaded through it. But it was better than a brand new sixteen shot Winchester in the Monky Ward catalog because it was mine.

"You mean go hunting right now?" He nodded

I grinned and, taking my new gun, went to get my shoes on. Boys and girls mostly went barefoot up until the age of twelve or thereabouts in those days. At least we did between spring thaw and late fall. There were two reasons for this. We didn't need shoes on our feet in warm weather and shoes cost money. One of the few exceptions to this was when hunting in snake country, or where there were known to be sharp rocks.

Snakes were something I never worried all too very much about. It was just second nature to be continuously on the watch out for them. Sharp rocks though were a different matter. We were going up to the old gravel quarry and there were sharp rocks galore. So I wore my high top "clod hoppers," as such shoes were called in those days, uncomfortable as they were.

Ma handed me a lunch bag for Pa and I and a quart jar of well water to wash the roast beef sandwiches down with. No fancy restaurant today can make food as delicious as a roast beef sandwich seasoned with salt, pepper and two slices of pickle and a smear of mustard. Not when a boy was as hungry as I was going to be in a couple of hours. I carried the lunch bag and the water out to our old Model T Ford and returned for my new gun. I carried it out to the old truck oh-so-carefully.

Pa set the spark lever and turned the crank. The engine's exhaust made a loud bang once and settled down to the clatter, clatter of the Ford engine sound. My rifle was lain in the bed of the truck on an old horse blanket beside my Pa's twenty-two fifteen shots in the tube Winchester. I folded the horse blanket carefully over the two firearms, grinning and shuddering in my delight. Then I got in beside him and off we went.

The ride took the better part of an hour to go the few miles from our house to the old rock quarry. Between our cats and my forked rubber slingshot, the rabbit population on our farm was pretty sparse. Some time back Pa had suggested I not bring so many rabbits home. "We need to let the cats have some, Son," he told me. Pa had a very strong sense of conservation. "Never over hunt or over fish an area," he admonished me from time to time. Today, all these self appointed messiahs preach as their own particular brand of wisdom what my Pa took to be a self-evident truth.

When we got to the quarry, I peeled out of the truck and was up in the bed, ready to hand my father his rifle first and then mine to him second to hold till I jumped to the ground. I took mine from him almost as soon as my feet hit the ground and drew the bolt back and waited. He handed me five twenty-two bullets. One went in the gun and four in my pocket. I was expected to kill five rabbits with those five bullets. If I missed once, it was considered as not too good. If I missed twice in those five shots, it was a catastrophe. I knew real men don't miss, ever.

Loaded and ready, the gun was tucked under my arm for instant access as soon as I had a good target to shoot at. "You take the first shot, Davy," Pa told me. Proudly I nodded.

We had walked but a short ways when a fat brown rabbit jumped out and ran a zigzag course away from us. I started and stopped. Even before the rifle was at my shoulder. "Why didn't you take the shot, Son" Pa was looking down at me.

"I do believe it was probably a mamma rabbit. She was just too fat to be a Jack. She either has a litter or will soon. If I kill her, we won't have the others to eat later on."

"By golly, I do believe you're right, boy!" He grinned proudly at me and we walked on. The next one was a big gray buck and the rifle flew to my shoulder. I was sighting, even as the butt was sinking into the hollow of my shoulder and I squeezed off a snap shot, catching him in the back of the head.

"Nice shot," he praised me as he hurried over to pick up the prize and bring it back to me. I took out my razor sharp Barlow folding knife and made a deft cut from crotch to chest and pulled the guts out. The heart and liver were saved in a small patch of oilcloth. We didn't have Baggies and Saran Wrap in those days. The body was dropped in the gunnysack. My kill was first so I got the chore of carrying the burlap container on a loop over my shoulder. It was on my left side and the rifle was tucked under my right arm, waiting to be called into duty again.

A short while after, the next rabbit appeared. "Yours, Pa, I said." He chuckled and shot. Another rabbit bit the dust. I ran after this one, gutted it and saved the giblets. While I was cleaning the second rabbit, I spied a mamma coyote eating the remains of the first rabbit about three hundred feet from us.

"Should I get her?" I asked.

"Why, Son?" he asked me right back.

"Why, because she's a coyote and they are our enemies! They raid our chickens!"

"Well, David, I expect you're right. But she lives way up here at the Quarry. Is she going to harm our chickens when we live over twenty miles away?"

When he or Ma called me David, it was a signal I had better think before answering. So I thought and said, "I don't know, Pa. But it seems the right thing to do."

"Boy, if the mamma coyote was living in closer I would agree with you. And if we could tell the future about where her whelps would be hunting maybe I would go along. But remember she is out here hurting no one and only trying to survive and feed her young. After all, we did take over much of her hunting area when we began farming here. Think about it and then you make your own decision on whether to shoot her or not."