Change in a Generation

[tobenheim]

I recently received this in an email from my father-in-law. I was shocked at how things had changed since he was a high school student and thought you all might get something out of it as well.

***

I graduated from Calvin Coolidge High School, Washington D.C. in 1964. Every entering 10th grade boy in the D.C. public high schools were required to be in the Cadet Corps. After that it was optional, but I stayed in all three years. I was Regimental Commander my senior year, drilling in uniform every Monday morning with the Corps who all carried M-1 Gerand rifles, albeit with no firing pins.

I was part of the cadet honor guard for the Christmas 1963 lighting of the National Christmas tree by President Johnson, as well as the1964 Memorial Day wreath laying on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington. For those occasions, I didn’t carry a rifle, but a dress sabre that is now hanging on my office wall. I later carried this same saber in the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets.

I was on the city’s championship rifle team my junior and senior years. Every school had a 5-lane, indoor 50 ft rifle range in the basement, and as a senior, I drove my father’s 1951 Chevy around the city with our team packing our rifles and ammunition in & out of every high school for competition matches. In fact, the reason our high school team was so good was that our Boy Scout & Explorer Post 33 had Wednesday night rifle practice at the University of Maryland’s 20-lane rifle range in College Park, and three of our five team members had started shooting when in junior high school, and we were already NRA Distinguished Expert riflemen. Every Wednesday afternoon, I walked home about 6 blocks from Coolidge wearing my shooting jacket with the school’s 22 caliber Winchester Model 52 target rifle slung over my left shoulder. After dinner, I would carry it 2 more blocks up to Takoma Park Presbyterian church where we met for the drive out to College Park. I then reversed the rifle carrying on Thursday morning back to school.

I’d love to remind Congress (who govern Washington, D.C.) of this history. Yes, guns don’t kill people, hate-filled people kill people.

And, yes we did start each school day with the Pledge of Allegiance over the school’s intercom

***

Tobenheim

 

[PT92]

Thanks for sharing that!

I am a "sucker" for all things nostalgic and that really illustrates how "crazy" IMO our society has turned.

 

[Skribs]

And nowadays we argue about whether we should OC because of what people will think.

 

[morcey2]

I grew up in a small town in Central Utah. When I was in high school (late 80's), we had quite a few guys who kept shotguns in their lockers between September and February. I remember my 11th grade English teacher asking one of my friends if he could borrow some shells for goose hunting since he forgot his and by the time he would have gotten back from home, it would have been dark. We walked over to his locker and my friend handed him a box of shells. Let's see that happen today.

The school was built in the early 60's and had a rifle range, although it had been decommissioned and re-purposed at that point into random storage and a dark-room.

I used to sit in the room in the library that had all of the back issues of Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, and Field and Stream and I think I read every single one of them over my 4 years in high school. We also had a very large firearms, hunting, and shooting section of books in the library. My friends and I used to lustfully go through Gun Digest. To my knowledge right now, most public high schools don't have any gun-related-anything available in the library. I know for a fact that most gun manufacturer websites are blocked at my kids high school. But you can get to Planned Parenthood!?!?!

<jump forward 25 years>

My son drew a picture of a gun (his Winchester 1300 that he got for Christmas last year) on a notebook earlier this year. One of his teachers sent him to the principle's office. The vice-principle thought it was as stupid as I did, but that's the school district's policy. My daughter accidentally grabbed one of my reloading manuals, complete with printed pages from Hodgdon, Accurate, Ramshot and other web sites hanging out, instead of her math book a couple of weeks ago. When her math teacher saw it, she started to freak out and told her she needed to hide it so she wouldn't get in trouble. The irony? The teacher's last name matched the name of the reloading company. :banghead:

Matt

 

[leftym4]

And nowadays we argue about whether we should OC because of what people will think.

Back then there was no need to open carry as there were not a bunch of nut bags out to ruin your life.

 

[Grassman]

And I use to have a shotgun in my truck in the school parking lot, so we could go dove hunting after school. Not that long ago,as I'm only 41.

 

[Fred in Wisc]

I'm 42 and remember taking hunter safety at my high school (after hours) and shooting rifles on the indoor range. Also shot trap in a natural resources class right on school grounds. Teacher had a few of us bring shotguns to school on the bus (that felt a little wired I will admit).

What a change.

 

[Isaac-1]

Yeah, I too graduated High School in the mid - late 1980's, for me it was in a town in Louisiana, gun racks with guns in them were a common site in the student parking lot. We even had a guy bring a 38 revolver to school and shoot it out the back door of the boy's locker room on a dare, he ended up being suspended for a week over the matter, last I heard he went on to become a city cop in the same town.

I get the feeling things were much the same everywhere, even Hollywood's idea of guns in schools was different back then , just go watch the 1985 hit, The Breakfast Club, better yet show it to your kids, for those that don't remember Anthony Michael Hall's character was in Saturday detention for having a flare gun go off in his locker.

 

[Skribs]

We even had a guy bring a 38 revolver to school and shoot it out the back door of the boy's locker room on a dare, he ended up being suspended for a week over the matter, last I heard he went on to become a city cop in the same town.

Yeah even in a good gun cultured school, I'd have suspended him.

I don't think the Breakfast Club necessarily showed guns in a positive or negative light. They just kind of had the flare gun there.

 

[Reloadron]

I was Class of '68 and yes, we had a school rifle team and yes, we had a 50 foot or so little rifle range in the school basement. The last page of boy's life magazine always featured the latest and greatest .22 rifle from Winchester, Remington, Savage or some other manufacturer. It wasn't unusual for any of us to have a .22 rifle in the car to show off including a few teachers. Yes, times have changed and unfortunately not for the better.

Ron

 

[Isaac-1]

Perhaps not positive or negative, but it clearly shows the change in attitude in less than 30 years which can be good to demonstrate to younger people as they tend to have a static view of the world.

Ike

p.s. one of the strange things I find is the relative acceptance of concealed carry in my state since the 1980's, back then it was rare to find someone with a concealed permit, and the few people that had them tended to have need, like carrying large bank deposits, etc. Also the permits were on a parish by parish basis (county) not state wide.

 

[Steel Horse Rider]

My son got his hunter safety certificate in Jr High PE class in 1987 in Ft Collins Colorado. Today in the same system they lock down the schools if a Jr High kid speaks out loud about guns......

 

[W.E.G.]

I received permission to bring my gun collection to school for "show-and-tell" (yes, that's actually what it was called) in the sixth grade in 1971.

two or three air rifles, a .22 (Winchester 190), and a single-barrel 12 gauge (a Sears-branded Savage)

I killed everybody in the class.
I BORED them to death.

Guns just didn't come off as anything titillating or scary in those parts in those days.

Still have three of the five from that day.

Seals are shot on the 760


The 190 is still running fine.
(I can remember how chagrined my dad was when he discovered the powder-burns on the vinyl-top roof of his Thunderbird after he used the roof as a rest on one of our plinking outings.)


The varnish or whatever it is on the Sears shotgun is pretty well degraded.
The forend likes to pop loose on recoil, hence the wrap of electrical tape.
Still does everything you could want a full-choked, 5.5# single-shot 12 gauge to do.

 

[HankR]

In elementary school every boy had a pocket knife in his pocket, and teachers would occasionally borrow them. In middle school you could get suspended for having a condom. Now they give you condoms and suspend you for having a pocket knife. (Apologies to Art's Grammaw if my language above is inappropriate. Feel free to moderate it away if it offends. My Grammaw may be a little rougher than Art's)

About half of the boys made a rifle stock for the 7th grade shop project. This meant rifles were carried back and forth on the school bus for fitting and final grading. I can clearly recall the bus driver calling back to ask the boys in the back of the bus to "make sure those things aren't loaded".

 

[Shawn Dodson]

I took an SKS to school for show & tell in my 4th grade class (1971). I hand carried it from home to school & back. It was recovered from the Vietnam battlefield where my father earned his Purple Heart.

 

[BSA1]

Less nut cases in the late 50's and 60's. Here is a partial lsit;

Charles Raymond Starkweather – 1958
Caril Ann Fugate – 1958
Our Lady of the Angels School Fire (boy age 10) - 1958
Richard Hickock – 1959
Perry Smith – 1959
Julian A. Frank - 1960
Thomas G. Doty - 1962
Lee Harvey Oswald – 1963
Francisco Paula Gonzales - 1964
Charles Whitman – 1966
Richard Speck – 1966
Huey Newton – 1967
Bobby Hutton – 1968
Eldridge Cleaver - 1968
Sirhan Sirhan – 1968
James Earl Ray – 1968
Manson clan - 1969


My point is maybe todays society really isn't more violent just better and more widespread news reporting makes it seem so.

 

[razorback2003]

About the only thing that is positive is that it is easier for people to legally carry a handgun. Of course it may have been technically illegal in a lot of places, many police looked the other way. Good luck with that now.