Kids And Guns

Marilyn, Marna, Doug, Wayne & David With Make Believe Guns

When I was about 12 years old in the dairy barn on Hubbard Hill,  I came within a heartbeat of shooting my brother Doug with a deer slug from a 12 gauge double-barrelled shotgun my father owned. 

Before that, when we lived in the house down in Gilboa in probably 1948, my brother LaVerne, came within a hairs breadth of shooting my mother with a single-barrel 12 gauge shotgun loaded with number 4 bird shot.
 
Shotguns and rifles were always around where we grew up, standing in the corners of various rooms, carried in the trunks of cars and bodies of pickups.  I remember double and single barrel shotguns, pump, bolt-action and semi automatic rifles and shotguns in the homes of my uncles, family friends and our own house.  We started shooting and hunting at eight or nine years old and I shot my first deer when I was fourteen.  I remember playing with shotgun shells and .30-30 cartridges pretending they were artillery shells in make-believe war games when I was probably about  eight years old.

Sometimes, we would cut the shot or slug off the end of a shotgun shell so just the wadding would come out when the gun fired.  The was kinda like a loud cap gun and we would play war and cowboys and Indians with the guns.  Cap guns were a very popular Christmas present for many kids at the time.

In the barn with Doug, I got the idea of after cutting the slug out of the shell, that I would roll the slug back down the barrel and that when I shot it, the slug would just roll out the end of the barrel.
The original plan was for Doug to stand in front of the gun while I fired but for some reason I decided to test it first by firing at a cast iron support post about four inches in diameter from about three feet away.  

To my shock and amazement, there was a tremendous blast from the 12 gauge shotgun and the slug almost penetrated the cast iron post leaving a large dent about an inch and a half in diameter.  The shot would of have killed Doug where he stood with a massive wound to his mid-section.
Until the barn was torn down, just about every time I went up on the hill,  I would go in the barn, take a look at that dent and contemplate what would have happened had I not test fired first and how incredibly lucky I and Doug were that I had not killed him.

The incident with LaVerne and my mother also sticks in my mind.  My mother was hanging clothes on the line to dry at the Gilboa house when LaVerne pulled down on her kiddingly  with the twelve gauge.   I remember Mom scolding LaVerne about pointing the gun and how dangerous it was and LaVerne insisting that the gun was not loaded.  For some reason, he did not fire and decided to show Mom the gun was empty.  When he opened it up, it was loaded.

I also heard of some wild boys holding .22 cartridges with pliers and hitting them with another hard object to make them fire and of other boys playing cowboys and Indians with .22s and firing live ammo at each other.  Our family did not do that.

“Isn’t that dangerous?”  “You damn betcha” replied the old grizzled Texas Ranger when asked about the loaded and cocked six-gun he carried on his hip.
 
And it was and it still is.  And we were lucky to live through it....