I thought the best way to start this part is to tell about the very first event in my life that I can remember. My age at this time would have been about five years old. There are things I remember from an earlier age, but my memory of those things is more like looking at a photograph, this is like watching a movie.
Our home was about 2 ½ miles outside a town of 500 and some people. If you were standing on the front porch and started walking south, in about 50 or 60 yards you would come to the barn. If you then turned about 30 degrees left and continued walking for another 200 yards, you would come to a fence line where rocks that had been cleared from the fields had been piled. I’d guess the pile as 25 yards long by 6 feet wide and containing rocks from about the size of a baseball on up to my “cracking Rock,” a rock maybe 4 or 5 feet long and a couple feet high.
One of my hobbies was going down to those rocks and cracking open the flints and agates that I thought would be pretty inside. It kind of seems like I might have been told not to go down there by myself, but I’m not real clear on that part. With the smaller rocks I would simply lay them on a bigger rock, then smack them with another big rock, but the real big ones I would throw against my cracking rock.
On the day I am about to tell about, I had found a rather large rock that I just had to crack. It seems like I may have already thrown it onto the cracking rock a couple times, and was perhaps getting impatient to see some results. This time I took the rock in my hand, moved in a little closer to the cracking rock, took aim and gave it the mightiest toss I could muster. Well, perhaps the rock had grown tired of the way it was being treated, because it flew straight back at me and glanced off my forehead with a resounding thud. Shortly thereafter I found myself seated on the ground, where I had previously been standing.
The next thing I remember is being back at the barn, and scared to go to the house because I figured I’d be in trouble. By now I had a pretty big lump on my forehead, and it had bled a bit. I guess my mother had noticed I was missing, and shortly came looking for me. I remember her rounding the corner of the barn and seeing me. She did one of those gasp, hands over mouth things that women like to do, looked at me for a few seconds, and took me to the house. I’m still not sure if I got in trouble or not.
I’m going to get through the next 13 years pretty fast. At about 10 I got my first BB gun, and I’m sorry to say I hunted everything that could be hunted with it. At 12 I was old enough to buy a small game license, and my brother-in-law gave me his old J.C. Higgins .22 automatic with 4 power scope. Not long after that I bought a beat up 20 gauge bolt action shotgun, but it was choked to tight for the kind of brush hunting I wanted it for, and I soon traded it for a 12 gauge break action with improved cylinder choke. I started smoking at 13 and drinking shortly after that. By age 14 I had worked a couple summers and I bought my first hi powered rifle, a 7.65 Argentine Mauser that had been “sporterized.” The best thing about that rifle was the very cheap WWII surplus ammo. I out grew that pretty fast, and bought a 30-06 that had been built on a Mauser 98 action. It had a heavy, non tapered target barrel, and peep sights. I added a scope not long after. I did not have the ’06 long before I realized that shooting the surplus ammo in that was not good…and the factory stuff was super expensive, to expensive to shoot enough to get good with it, so I went out and bought a Lyman reloading press and all the supplies I needed to hand load my own ammunition, keep in mind I was still only 14 years old. I bought my first car, a 1950 Ford with a Flathead V8, right after my 15th birthday. Got laid for the first time when I was 15 too, in the back seat of my fathers ’54 Chevy 4 door…..4 doors are good for something’s. I took my driving test 3 days after my 16th birthday, in a snow storm, in my Fathers ’62 Impala SS, and passed. Although I had started working summers when I was 12, picking strawberries, and later trimming Christmas trees, it was after I turned 17 that I got my first real job. That summer I started working in an all night gas station. I worked the 3 to 11 shift most of the time, but occasionally was on the 11 to 7 shift, in the first year I worked there we were held up once, at gun point. When school started that fall, I continued working the same shifts, I was about a half hour late when on 3 to 11 though, because I had to get out of school and get to work. I did that all my senior year. Needless to say, my already poor grades suffered even more, and in April of my Senior year I found out I could not graduate, I think I was less than a credit short, but had no way to make it up that year. I was already 18, already an adult, and wasn’t about to go back to High School for another year, so, since I could not graduate anyway, I just never went back. By this time I had accomplished few things, but I was a fair mechanic, a pretty good driver, and deadly accurate with a rifle.
Our home was about 2 ½ miles outside a town of 500 and some people. If you were standing on the front porch and started walking south, in about 50 or 60 yards you would come to the barn. If you then turned about 30 degrees left and continued walking for another 200 yards, you would come to a fence line where rocks that had been cleared from the fields had been piled. I’d guess the pile as 25 yards long by 6 feet wide and containing rocks from about the size of a baseball on up to my “cracking Rock,” a rock maybe 4 or 5 feet long and a couple feet high.
One of my hobbies was going down to those rocks and cracking open the flints and agates that I thought would be pretty inside. It kind of seems like I might have been told not to go down there by myself, but I’m not real clear on that part. With the smaller rocks I would simply lay them on a bigger rock, then smack them with another big rock, but the real big ones I would throw against my cracking rock.
On the day I am about to tell about, I had found a rather large rock that I just had to crack. It seems like I may have already thrown it onto the cracking rock a couple times, and was perhaps getting impatient to see some results. This time I took the rock in my hand, moved in a little closer to the cracking rock, took aim and gave it the mightiest toss I could muster. Well, perhaps the rock had grown tired of the way it was being treated, because it flew straight back at me and glanced off my forehead with a resounding thud. Shortly thereafter I found myself seated on the ground, where I had previously been standing.
The next thing I remember is being back at the barn, and scared to go to the house because I figured I’d be in trouble. By now I had a pretty big lump on my forehead, and it had bled a bit. I guess my mother had noticed I was missing, and shortly came looking for me. I remember her rounding the corner of the barn and seeing me. She did one of those gasp, hands over mouth things that women like to do, looked at me for a few seconds, and took me to the house. I’m still not sure if I got in trouble or not.
I’m going to get through the next 13 years pretty fast. At about 10 I got my first BB gun, and I’m sorry to say I hunted everything that could be hunted with it. At 12 I was old enough to buy a small game license, and my brother-in-law gave me his old J.C. Higgins .22 automatic with 4 power scope. Not long after that I bought a beat up 20 gauge bolt action shotgun, but it was choked to tight for the kind of brush hunting I wanted it for, and I soon traded it for a 12 gauge break action with improved cylinder choke. I started smoking at 13 and drinking shortly after that. By age 14 I had worked a couple summers and I bought my first hi powered rifle, a 7.65 Argentine Mauser that had been “sporterized.” The best thing about that rifle was the very cheap WWII surplus ammo. I out grew that pretty fast, and bought a 30-06 that had been built on a Mauser 98 action. It had a heavy, non tapered target barrel, and peep sights. I added a scope not long after. I did not have the ’06 long before I realized that shooting the surplus ammo in that was not good…and the factory stuff was super expensive, to expensive to shoot enough to get good with it, so I went out and bought a Lyman reloading press and all the supplies I needed to hand load my own ammunition, keep in mind I was still only 14 years old. I bought my first car, a 1950 Ford with a Flathead V8, right after my 15th birthday. Got laid for the first time when I was 15 too, in the back seat of my fathers ’54 Chevy 4 door…..4 doors are good for something’s. I took my driving test 3 days after my 16th birthday, in a snow storm, in my Fathers ’62 Impala SS, and passed. Although I had started working summers when I was 12, picking strawberries, and later trimming Christmas trees, it was after I turned 17 that I got my first real job. That summer I started working in an all night gas station. I worked the 3 to 11 shift most of the time, but occasionally was on the 11 to 7 shift, in the first year I worked there we were held up once, at gun point. When school started that fall, I continued working the same shifts, I was about a half hour late when on 3 to 11 though, because I had to get out of school and get to work. I did that all my senior year. Needless to say, my already poor grades suffered even more, and in April of my Senior year I found out I could not graduate, I think I was less than a credit short, but had no way to make it up that year. I was already 18, already an adult, and wasn’t about to go back to High School for another year, so, since I could not graduate anyway, I just never went back. By this time I had accomplished few things, but I was a fair mechanic, a pretty good driver, and deadly accurate with a rifle.
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