Reflection

[Ace_of_Hearts]

I was just thinking back this evening and pondering my youth as I looked at the 1500 or so rounds of shotgun hunting ammo piled on the shelf in my reloading room. And the several thousand rounds of 22 lr ammo and over 20000 rounds of cowboy ammo.

As a boy growing up in the Virginia woodlands of the east coast, I use to by my ammo at the corner store about a mile away. Shotgun shells were 10 cents each and 22 lr were a penny each. Very seldom did I have the finances to purchase a whole box of either. My single shot 22 rifle took many a squirrel from atop a loblolly pine tree and I learned not to let the sound of a covey of bobwhite quail bursting from cover upset my composure as I waited for two to cross each other in flight to get a twofer with my J C Higgins bolt action shotgun.

Surely if I were the boy again I would look at all that ammo and ponder how rich I am.

Our party line telephone ring was 2 longs and a short. When you answered you could always hear 2 or three clicks as others on the line picked up after you had answered.

Our black and white TV had a plastic stick on (static cling) color tinted coating. Blue on top, kind of a pale orange in the middle, and green on the bottom coloring. I remember watching the first color TV broadcast on TV, Disney's Wonderful World of color like this.

 

That boy had his pick of most any breed of dog, as my mother ran a kennel. I always chose a Springer Spaniel as my number one choice. Many have shared my life.

This is a picture of my current best male friend.

 

I'm done pondering now.

 

 

[Widder, SASS #59054]

Howdy ACE.

I also have great childhood memories similar to those you mentioned.   

I didn't have a SG but the neighborhood grocery store kept ammo behind the meat counter.

A whole box of Winchester .22 ammo (if I remember correctly, they were Super X in a yellow box),

was only about 25-cents per box.

 

Our big game animal was the pigeons that roosted on top of our homes, especially the neighbors house.

 

..........Widder

 

[Mud Marine,SASS#54686 Life]

Muskrats at a our dam number 4 for a nickel each with my 2-1'2 barrelled revolver with .22 shorts.

 

I remember whining to my mom to get me another brick when she drove the 60 miles to the highway and another 50 to the trading post.

[Choctaw Jack]

Ace,

Growing up in Northern New Mexico,the boys in my neighborhood (3 sets of brothers) used to pick up soda bottles to cash in at the local store to buy our .22 ammo..22 longs were 50 cents a box,so our daily minimum was 10 bottles each to support our shooting habits,at the princely rate of 5 cents per bottle.

Then add in another 25 cents for a quart of ice cold A&W root beer meant we had to really hustle to make our quota.

I don't remember not having the required cash very often.

Wish it was that affordable now.

[Smiling Wolf]

Hello Ace, When I was in high school I had a Springer Spaniel that looked a lot like your best friend, he had a lot of black spots on his nose so I named him Pepper,I still think of him and miss him.

 

  S.W.

[Pat Riot]

My wife and I have been discussing retiring to Pennsylvania, where are both from. I have been reminiscing about my hometown and all the fun I used to have there.
My Dad wouldn’t allow us to have guns, but I was fascinated by them. My friends had guns. 22 rifles and my friend Joe has black powder guns. He had a flintlock and a percussion rifle. My friends would let me shoot their guns on occasion. We would head to the woods and plink. In my friend Joe’s case we would shoot a lot of blanks as he was “practicing” to become a civil war reenactor. We did hunt rabbits with his long guns, which was good for us and the rabbits. We never killed a rabbits but we got to carry around really cool guns and shoot them occasionally at the blur that looked like it might be a rabbit. 
My Dad has a couple hunting rifles but he never let us shoot them, well, rarely. He took me with him to sight in rifles just before deer season when I was 7 years old. All his friends came along. My Dad was a terrible shot so it took a lot of “sighting in” for him to hit the target. They had some paper targets tacked to a tree about 100-125 yards away. 
I kept pestering to be allowed to shoot so my Dad let me shoot the largest double barrel 12 gauge in the world. I could barely hold it up. My Dad sternly told me “Whatever you do, do not drop that shotgun!” It was his friend’s gun. 
I held it up, aimed and pulled the trigger. That thing bucked, hurt my shoulder like crazy and made the most horrific noise and I stumbled and fell on my butt, sitting up but still holding that shotgun. It never touched the ground.
My Dad and all his friends laughed as they all seemed to help me up and the same time and dust the snow off me. 
Then the most glorious thing happened. My Dad’s friend Virgil invited me to shoot his hunting rifle. I believe it was a Winchester 70 in .308. I remember the cartridges were smaller than my Dad’s rifle and he always swore by the 30.06. 
I got to fire two rounds with Virgil’s coaching. One round missed the target but the other hit in the black. I was ecstatic. 
That was a wonderful day. 
 

 

 

[Sixgun Sheridan]

I used to buy .22 ammo at the hardware store where I worked at age 18, and IIRC it was usually around $1.99 on sale for a 100-round pack of Remington Golden Bullets. I'd then go burn it up in the woods beside my folks' house on the weekend. This was back in the mid 1980s.

[Three Foot Johnson]

Ah, reflections...

My grandparents homestead east of East Helena, where I grew up. Every building had a name and a purpose: wood shed, coal shed, chicken house, sheep shed, barn, carpenter shed, machine shop, oil shed, combine shed, blacksmith shed, etc. Single pane windows in the house and virtually no insulation - there would be frost a half inch thick creeping up the glass in the winter, and a cup of coffee or water left in a window sill overnight would have a film of ice on top in the morning. The place was sold decades ago, and a new house built, but four of the original buildings are still standing. 

I had a Remington M12 pump .22, an old double barrel 12g, horses, and a couple thousand acres to roam about, hunting gophers and rabbits, fishing for brookies and cutthroats in the streams, and shooting ducks & geese with the old Crescent Arms shotgun. The bus stop was 1.6 miles from the house, uphill, and when the bus dropped me off, it was another 1.6 miles home, also uphill.  I can vaguely remember my folks still using a big ol' oak crank phone on the wall - whirrr, whirrr, whirrr... Martha? This is Bob Johnson... yes, we're doing just fine, how's Bill doing? That's good, say Martha, can you put me through to the Bullock place? Thank you." My li'l sis still has the phone hanging in her living room in Missoula. Our first television came along in 1964, a monstrous thing that got one channel pretty good, and two others that you had to use your imagination somewhat. 

 

I still live on a few hundred acres only a couple miles away, and life is so much better - I don't know why we look back with such yearning and nostalgia. I still have the old Remington M12, and my nephew has the old Crescent SxS.