Dad and the dime

[LawMan Mark, SASS #57095L]

Over the years, I watched my father do many amazing things.  He was an awesome carpenter, cabinet maker, automobile mechanic and great with various other hands on crafts.  He was good with animals, and an amazing shot with any firearm.  

 

One rainy day at a produce farm in south Florida, he was amusing the field hands by shooting progressively smaller targets with a Remington semi auto 22 from under a shed.  He shot oil cans, and snuff can lids, and rotten peppers.  Finally, one of them ran out about 30 yards to a canal bank with a glass coke bottle.  To Dad's surprise, he laid it down, so that Dad's target was the open end of the bottle.  Taking a rest against a post, he squeezed off a shot, thinking all the time he had missed it completely.  The field hand proudly held the bottle up, looking through it.  Dad had shot the bottom of the bottle out through the neck.  

 

Another guy decided to up the game, and dug a quarter out of his pocket.  He stuck it in a fence rail.  Dad shot the quarter off the rail with one shot, and no wood was touched.  The guy dug back into his pocket, and came out with a dime.  But this time, he braced his forearm against a fence post, and held the dime between his thumb and fore finger.  Dad shook his head no and sat the rifle down.  But the guy insisted, and motioned again for Dad to shoot the dime.  Finally, Dad gave in. He braced against the post again, and from about 30 feet this time, squeezed off a shot.  The guy immediately grasped his hand with the other one, and Dad feared the worst.  But what it was is that dad had hit the dime squarely in the middle, but the guy was gripping it so that it burnt his fingers as it was being knocked out of his hand.  

 

 

Dad put the rifle up for the rest of the day. 

[Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619]

That one'll get you kicked off my local range!

[John Kloehr]

I would never take that shot under those conditions... But my dad would have.

[Alpo]

Reminds me of a scene in the 1941 movie Ball of Fire.

 

A couple of bad guys are holding these eight or nine people at gunpoint. One of them - Dan Duryea - starts showing off his amazing marksmanship ability, by shooting the light bulbs out of the chandelier, and like that.

 

The good guys have a plan to take out the bad guys, but it requires them to not move. So one of the good guys says he wants to see some more fancy shooting. "Can you shoot a dime from between my fingers?" He tells Dan that he must sit in that chair back against the wall when making the shot.

 

Then as Dan is about to shoot he says, "Wait, wait. Let's use a quarter."

 

Then as Dan is about to shoot he says, "Or maybe a 50-cent piece?"