Friday, May 29, 2009

Hardware

When my father was in the hospital with pneumonia, he got disoriented and combative -- kept seeing things, pulling his IV out, taking apart the cardiac monitor -- being an engineer and all.

I got worried that he might be off the beam once he got home, so I called my sister and asked her to see if there were still any guns in the house.

Most of the rifles and shotguns and even handguns, he had given away. He'd kept one, loaded, in the closet, and my mother found and moved it.

I brought it home, so that if paranoia flared, nobody would get shot accidentally.

The revolver, an Iver Johnson .22 target model, was one my mother won at a raffle more than fifty years ago. It's an eight-shot, not much gun, and even in great condition, not worth much. But it was the first handgun I had a chance to shoot, that and a .22 High Standard semi-auto pistol that now belongs to my nephew, who also got the 16-gauge Browning.

Sometime in the near future, I'm going to take the oldest two grandsons out to the range to shoot Pop's gun. Seems appropriate, somehow ...

4 comments:

Craig B. said...

That's a squirrel pistol! Nice.

Dave Huss said...

Hi there Steve,
That pistol is an Iver Johnson Mdl 55 8 shot revolver, made around 1955. They sold then for $27.75
According to my 2007 Standard, it is worth $100-$150 in good condition. IJ always did pander to the low end of the price spectrum. Weird side note way off the topic, they invented the trigger safety almost 80 years before Glock made it popular.
Isn't history fun?

Nataraj Hauser said...

Hmmm, could this be the very gun that two young lovers (with nothing better to do) were using when one of them discovered that he was a natural with firearms?

Steve Perry said...

Similar, but not the same -- that piece, from The 97th Step, was a Colt six-shooter, a scaled-down and nickel -plated version of the old Peacemaker design.