Good-bye To An Old Friend

I said good bye to an old friend today.

The first time I saw this friend it was behind my Dad's bedroom door.  Not exactly hiding.  He was hidden.  No Dad was not holding some one captured.  This friend was made of wood and steal.  It was a Remington Modal 32, Single Shot, Bolt Action .22 chambered for short, longs, and long rifles.

He was old when I met him, Dad having bought him back in 1940 from an old wino for $14.  There were dents, scratches, dings, and character all over the stock.  Smooth wood darkened by time and hands of four brothers.  I think that the rifle was the first firearm any of us ever fired.  I know it was in my case.  I can't speak for my brothers for I was the last of the four and was not there for their first shot.

It served all of us well.  Dad used it for varmint control around the chicken house.  Skunks, opossums, raccoons, snakes, snapping turtles, bullfrogs, and at least one fox.  Birds and squirrels aplenty.  In fact my first ever squirrel was taken with that rifle.  A ground squirrel.  Commonly known as a Chipmunk.  Yeah, I killed Alvin.  Well not really.  I guess you  could say a distant cousin of his.

Getting back to the point.  I would carry that rifle to the woods and have grand adventures chasing away pirates and rooting out Indians from their hiding places.  Mostly it was there so that I could feel closer to my brothers when they were all gone from the house, away at college, or in a place called Viet Nam.

Years later, when my parents started getting older and somewhat feebler, I took the rifle home with me from my Dad's house.  It was covered in a thin film of rust over all of the metal parts.  The ammo he had for it was, well lets just say I was nervous picking it up as I didn't know if it was stable or not.  Have you ever seen rust on lead?  I took the rifle home and cleaned it for the first time in a very long time.  The rust coming off, the wood cleaned up, parts cleaned and oiled, seem to breath life into an inanimate object.  It seemed to know that some one was caring for it one more time.

It took me a long time to bring myself to shoot it again.  A couple of years as a matter of fact.  When I did it still had the same old magic.  The sights settled, the firing pin dropped, the bullet fired and on target, just like it had been all those times long ago out in the pasture behind the house.  Over the last few years I have looked at it on a daily basis and remembered.  It had become a touch stone to my past, one that I will miss, even as I know it is the right thing that I do now.

Today I gave him another good cleaning.  The last that I will give him.  With all that is going on with me, I decided, with the help of my brothers, to put it in my oldest brother's care for now to be passed on to his son, when it is time, and to his son when that time comes.  I also left a note with it.  Not a long one and not eloquent because I was too emotional to make too much sense I am afraid, but none the less a short note about the rifle that I hope will be added too by my brothers, to be kept with the rifle so when, in a generation or two, when another Crownover male comes into possession of it, he will know of the generations leading to him and how the rifle shaped us, taught us, and helped mold us into the men that we are and were.

Good bye my friend.  You have a lot of teaching left to do.  Do it well.