Antiques R Me

 

 My father and mother were, respectively, an Oakie and a West Virginia hillbilly. 

They both lived outside the cities as children, and learned to shoot early on.

When I was a boy, my father owned a couple .22 rifles, a 16-gauge shotgun, and later, two .22 handguns, both of which, oddly enough, he won in raffles.

My grandfather, Perry, had a .22 rifle, a shotgun, and a Colt .38 Special revolver. He gave the handgun to my grandmother, but unbeknownst to her, removed the firing pin, because he was worried she might shoot him some night when he got home late from working on the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

I learned to shoot with a single-shot .22 rifle, a generic Sears or Monkey Ward gun that belonged to my father as a boy; with his .22 lever-action Marlin M 39, and the handguns, an Iver-Johnson revolver and a High-Standard pistol. The shotgun, a Browning, when I was about twelve, as I recall -- it was too long for me to shoulder when I was younger.

My grandfather taught me how to use his rifle, a semi-automatic Browning SA-22.

Eventually, I got the .22 bolt-action single-shot, and my brother the lever-action rifle.

When my father sank deeper into dementia, my mother found him in her walk-in clothes closet, rummaging around. 

What are you doing? she asked.

Looking for my gun.

So my mother had my brother-in-law come by and remove the guns still there from the house. I wound up with the Iver-Johnson revolver, which I passed on to my son. 

Feeling nostalgic, I went looking for what those old rifles were going for these days.

Lord, the Marlin, the Browning .22’s, and the Browning shotgun run more than ten times what they cost when my father and grandfather bought them new …

If I could go back in time and tell my younger self to hide the comic books I had from my Grandma and to keep all the guns I’d ever buy wrapped up in oily rags in a safe? I’d be rich now.