I had a broken Civil War musket when I was very small, something that had belonged to my grandfather, and I persuaded my father to cut it off with a hacksaw so it would be more convenient to play with--and finally it found its way to the junk pile against the stone fence back of the chicken house.
Then as a teenaged trapper I found an old muzzleloader in an abandoned barn, masked by cobwebs and standing in a dark corner with a broken pitchfork, the sort of discovery gun collectors dream of but seldom make any more. In depression times gun collecting seemed a frivolous pastime, and I sold that prize for 50 cents to a young fellow learned in firearms matters. He said he'd study up about it and decide whether to junk it or not but I believe now that his hands shook a little as he handled it.
Years later when the old home farm was sold I went back and looked for the 12-gauge Hopkins & Allen singleshot my father had used for rabbits and the crows that sometimes raided our newly hatched Rhode Island Reds. Its stock had been bolted together because Dad once broke it over an opossum's head. He'd heard a midnight ruckus in the chicken house and had missed a quick shot at an indistinct shadow, but when a pair of gleaming eyes came toward him in the lantern light before he could reload he smashed the invader with the stock. That was the gun which had kicked me off my muddy feet when I first fired it at a sitting duck. But it had disappeared from the old home place and I never found it.
So after a lifetime of wanting and having guns I found the other day that I had no antiques--or even near-antiques. There is some sentiment in the Colt Official Police .38 with which I once won a minor pistol match. It has the old King ventilated rib and the cockeyed hammer installed by the great Bob Chow for times and rapid fire. The trigger pull still goes like breaking glass and the grip shows honest wear--but it would never mean anything to anyone else.
I wish I knew what became of the .45-70 trapdoor Springfield with which I missed the coyote, and I wish I still had the Belgian hammer 12 with the side latch and the graceful straight grip I didn't appreciate when I was 13.
This old Parker had been around and it was out of place among new guns in the little hardware store. The breech was tight but the rust had been there for a long time and one firing pin was broken. It could be repaired, of course, but that would be expensive. Get $35 for it, the owner had said when he left it with his friend the hardware dealer.
So I bought it for $35. No, I told the dealer, I didn't need to know where it came from. I took it home and rubbed off some of the worst rust and smeared a little Linspeed on the dry surface of the stock, bringing a dull glow to the smooth parts and to the deep scratches.
I don't know if it was a pot hunter's gun or if it belonged to a man who swung it quick and smooth and swept back both hammers together in a single click as the barrels came up. But I like to think it was there when the dawns were cold, the decoys chuckled over the eelgrass, and the cattails swished in the north wind. Possibly it pointed across the prairie grass when the wild chickens rose in skeins up ahead and the wagon creaked behind the gunners.
I hope the pointers floated ahead of it, testing the brushy edges and checking the palmetto patches near where the bobwhites had dusted. And plover may have wheeled above it, sparkling as they caught the sun.
When I brought it into the house my wife looked at me a little strangely and must have silently recalled my scorn for "guns I can't shoot." But she mail-ordered some little hooks to hang it with and we put it on a paneled wall in a place where it doesn't show much except on sunny days. It could be seen better in several other spots, she said, but I don't care if anyone else sees it as long as I know where it is.
It has to take the place of the old muzzleloaders, the Hopkins & Allen singleshot, and the .45-70. I am not much of a gun collector.
This story originally appeared in The Part I Remember by Charles F. Waterman. Copyright (c) 1974 by Charles F. Waterman. All rights reserved.
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