Grandpa's Shotgun

I never got to know my Grandpa well.  He died before I turned three years old.  My only memory of him, apart from a few photographs, is his giving me a spanking in the bathroom of his home in Northern Kentucky.  As a boy, I enjoyed staying at that home with my saintly widowed grandmother. 

I was in my mid-teens when Grandma had to break up housekeeping and move in with my parents.  Actually, Grandma had two rooms, one at our house and a second at my aunt and uncle’s home in Ohio.  My dad and my aunt shuttled Grandma back and forth between their homes every two or three months for the final 10 years of her life. 

When Grandma moved out of her home that she had shared with Grandpa, my brother James and I helped dad move load after load of furniture and possessions.  Some things came to our home in Kentucky.  Other things went to my aunt. 

Among Grandma’s possessions was a shotgun that had belonged to Grandpa.  Grandma opened a cherished ancient tin box labeled “Sucrets” to reveal trinkets and treasures.  She lifted a slug of scared lead, and informed me that this slug had been fired from Grandpa’s shotgun when he killed a deer in some ancient hunt.  Curiosity and wonder filled my young mind as I felt the weight of the lead slug in my hand. 

There were two old firearms that belonged to Grandpa, an H & R 12 gauge shotgun, and a 22 revolver.  Dad informed James and me that these two treasures were our bequests from Grandpa, our memory, our connection to an ancestor we would never really know. 

James and I cherished our guns.  I laid claim to the shotgun, and James laid claim to the revolver.  I shot my first squirrel with that shotgun.  I blasted cans and glass jars with it. 

When James was about 13, he took the shotgun out into the Appalachian foothills that we called home.  He had spotted a lone domesticated goose whose ownership was unknown.  The goose was wandering the river bottom farm land along the North Fork of the Kentucky River.  James helped work on that farm.  The goose proved to be an irresistible target to a 13 year old boy with a shotgun and a pocket full of shells.

James brought the goose home to Mom and asked her to cook it!  The tough old bird surprised our teenage teeth.  The longer we chewed, the bigger that goose meat grew in our mouths.  The only thing that James got out of the goose, besides a good story, was a nickname, “Goose,” and he bore that moniker throughout his early high school years.

James and I thought that the old gun needed a makeover.  Someone suggested to us that the barrel needed “blued.”  We found the supplies at the local Maloney’s discount store, stripped down the shotgun in Dad’s shop, and set about an ambitious project as gunsmiths.  Carefully following the directions, we cleaned the barrel of its bluing.  We sanded the wooden stock, removing the ancient varnish.  We re-blued the steel pieces of the shotgun, put a fresh finish of varnish on the stock, and admired our restoration of Grandpa’s cherished shotgun.

James decided that the newly refinished shotgun needed a trial run in the woods.  We had discovered a loose firing pin in our restoration project.  If not handled carefully, the firing pin would fall out of the gun when the hammer was cocked.  After that trip to the woods, we never found the firing pin again.  Now, the old gun was simply a useless piece of décor, a sad reminder of a grandfather we would never get to know. 

It was twenty years before I discovered a friend with incredible handyman skills.  Among those skills were metal work and machining.  I told him about my grandfather’s old shotgun.  The gun had followed me from youth to marriage and fatherhood.  The gun had been stored in one closet after another in different homes in which I had lived.  Suddenly, there was hope that it might fire again.  My friend Jim expertly held the old gun.  He studied the firing mechanism.  He said that he thought he could make a firing pin!

I watched as Jim took a heat-tempered drill bit and cut it to size.  He placed it upon a metal lathe and began shaping.  Once shaped, he fit it perfectly in its rest in the firing mechanism.  We just needed a spring.  A spring from an ink pen would do!  Hope was birthed that the old treasured shotgun would fire again.  It did.  I inserted a shell, locked it into place, pulled back the hammer, and the 12 gauge roared to life!

A few years later, my wife and I bought a little cabin in our Appalachian hills.  One of the rooms in the cabin became the cowboy room.  I made a log bed out of limbs from an old beech tree.  Lariats, horseshoes, worn out cowboy boots, hats, and bandanas graced the décor.  And there, above the window, grandpa’s shotgun graced the room from its rest in a couple of horseshoe hooks.  I pulled the shotgun down at Christmas to shoot some mistletoe out of a black gum tree.  Apart from an occasional firing, it enjoyed its slumber.

After 10 years in the old shotgun’s place of honor, my wife and I moved from Kentucky to Mississippi.  We rented the cabin in the hills to vacationers.  In preparation for renting the cabin, we removed our most cherished possessions, including the shotgun, which found its temporary home in the bottom of an old cedar chest.  That bothered me.  I was bothered that I did not have a place to display the old gun. 

At Thanksgiving, our family always gets together in the hills of Kentucky.  My sisters come home from Florida.  My brother, James, lives in the Bluegrass.  My wife and I make the pilgrimage to our homeland.  We have a Thanksgiving feast, followed by an early Christmas gift exchange.  One year, my sister said, “Next year, let’s not spend any money on gifts.  Let’s just bring something from our homes.  It may be a useful something that we give.  It may be a family heirloom that we share with one another.”

I knew what my gift must be.  The shotgun.  And I knew whom I wanted to have it.  My brother, James.  I placed the shotgun in two large gift bags.  No one knew the contents of the oddly shaped package.  It was overlooked by one family member after another.  Finally, it came James’ turn to pick.  I urged him toward the package.  He moved that direction, and lifted the awkward weight.  Seated, he began to open it.  He knew the contents immediately.  Tears glistened in James’ eyes as he caressed the smooth stock and broke open the barrel.  Memories flooded his mind and mine.  A look of understanding passed between us. 

Cherished stories of youth filled the next moments, and continued to flood my mind.  As children, my closest sibling in age was my brother, James, as we are separated by a mere 20 months.  Sibling rivalry, competing, rooming together, fighting, living, and loving had been a part of our youth.  Now, as graying, middle-aged executives, we were bound together yet again by family, Christmas, shared experiences, a cherished old shotgun, a grandfather we never really knew, and a legacy of love—brothers.

At this Christmas Season, give.  Give generously.