Shooting in the good old days.

I first became interested in guns in the early 80’s. It was probably the Don Pendleton series of action adventure books or a stray issue of Solider of fortune that gave me the gun bug. It didn’t hurt that my head was full of tales of the M60, my father and SouthEast Asia.
My mother was pretty anti gun so I was kept away from toy guns except what I could get off the neighborhood cap gun black market. In May of 1982 my dad owned an auto repair shop and took a Winchester 94 as a trade For some front end work. My eyes lit up when I saw him walk in the door with that gun. The first thing he said to me was " If I ever catch you playing with this gun when I’m not around I will kick your ass". That was sufficient incentive for me to keep my curiosity in check.

One Saturday morning when my mother was out, he grabbed the rifle and told me we were going out to the desert to shoot the Winchester. First stop was an old gun shop off the highway. The old timers (old to me) were all sitting around having coffee, smokes and shooting the shit. They were indeed annoyed by early morning customers. My dad asked for a box of 30-30 and the owner gruffly shoved them across the counter. I was too excited to care that my first gunshop experience was less than friendly.

After driving into the desert in our old pickup (resurrected out of about seven others), we came to a spot where we could take some shots at some old antifreeze jugs. I noticed as I watched my dad load the 30-30 that the bullets were sharply pointed. Although at the time it wasn’t much more than a passing observation. I lifted the gun for the first time, tucked it into my shoulder and squeezed the trigger. It slammed into my shoulder with a painful jolt and I saw dust kick up about 4 feet in front of my target. I threw the lever and chambered another round and fired close enough that time to throw the jug a few yards. I was hooked! I was also proud of the purple oval on my shoulder. The 20 shells went too fast for my liking. Being being 12 years old I didn’t have the 10.99 for another box. I had to be happy with what I got.

When we got home, my mom used her psychic powers to figure out where we had been. (must have been my perma-grin) and she promptly made my dad sell the gun.

That summer I went up to Missouri to spend the summer with my grandparents (as was the custom back then) and was pleased to find my uncle back from the Navy with a New Walther PPKS .380. He showed it off and then took me out to the raildoad tracks To shoot at cans. The recoil was punishing and I didn’t hit anything but now I was doubly hooked. Again, the 12 or so rounds he had was not nearly enough of a fix for this new gun junkie. All I could think about was the next time I could go to the range.

I used every dime of my allowance that summer to buy gun magazines, Mack Bolan books and to mail off for gun catalogs from the ads in the magazines. The next few years all I could do is shoot the occasional BB gun in the neighborhood and read about guns. There was a class 3 weapons dealer in the strip center close to my house. They were usually cool about letting me oogle the uzi’s mac 10’s and MP5’s as long as I kept my sweaty palms and drool off the display case. I’m sure they were tired of seeing me in there every other day.

When my parents divorced in 85 It was the perfect opportunity to talk my dad into buying my first gun. It was a Ruger MKII .22 auto. We bought it from the shop that had been been letting me fog up their automatic weapons case for the last 2 years. Shooting ranges were far away and too expensive so we bought a brick of .22 and found a dry creek off the highway where we could shoot the trash that washed up from the infrequent rain storms. It was heaven. and I was starting to get good at shooting small toys, pennies skipping rounds off standing water. What a blast! Even loading the single 10 round mag it didn’t take us long to blow through the entire brick of ammo. My dad was having as much fun as I was and he sure never missed his turn.

That Christmas We picked up a Ruger 10/22 with a folding stock and 2 ramline 25 round mags. Now we were shooting 2 bricks of ammo a week spraying long lines of soda cans as fast as we could pull the trigger. Those days were the greatest.