MedWheeler
Member
December 19th marks the six anniversary of the day on which my father was found deceased in his isolated home, high in the New Mexico desert. He likely had passed a day before. I had been trying to reach him for two days, as had a neighbor of his (who lived about three miles away) That neighbor had been kept away by a heavy snowfall, but managed to finally get to the property to make the discovery and contact me.
My father and I did not know each other as I was growing up, my parents having divorced when I was very young, and living in different parts of the country. I did spend a few months with him when I was eleven, but did not re-establish a relationship with him until around 1998, when I was 32. One of the things I learned about/from him was that, during the same period in which I worked in law enforcement in Florida (late 80's-early 90s), he had also done so as a deputy in a rural, mountainous county in Colorado.
During the last years of his life, I managed to visit him twice. Though he had owned many before, he was down to two firearms, both of which had served him in that duty. One was a Ruger Police Service Six (circa 1975), and the other a Charter Arms Undercover, circa 1966.
My last trip out there was to bury him, along with his mother, who had died in 2008 and whose ashes had remained in the home, during the Christmas season of 2010. Of course, those two guns are now mine. Today and tomorrow, I set aside the 9mm pistol normally carried and stowed bedside for the Charter on the hip, and the Ruger on the nightstand...
My father and I did not know each other as I was growing up, my parents having divorced when I was very young, and living in different parts of the country. I did spend a few months with him when I was eleven, but did not re-establish a relationship with him until around 1998, when I was 32. One of the things I learned about/from him was that, during the same period in which I worked in law enforcement in Florida (late 80's-early 90s), he had also done so as a deputy in a rural, mountainous county in Colorado.
During the last years of his life, I managed to visit him twice. Though he had owned many before, he was down to two firearms, both of which had served him in that duty. One was a Ruger Police Service Six (circa 1975), and the other a Charter Arms Undercover, circa 1966.
My last trip out there was to bury him, along with his mother, who had died in 2008 and whose ashes had remained in the home, during the Christmas season of 2010. Of course, those two guns are now mine. Today and tomorrow, I set aside the 9mm pistol normally carried and stowed bedside for the Charter on the hip, and the Ruger on the nightstand...