WVGunman
Member
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2014
- Messages
- 380
On his deathbed, my paternal grandfather told one of my uncles he wanted me to have his old .22 rifle.
I was 17, and I thought that was real cool of old grandad, even though I had never known him well. We lived in different states, and my own father, grandpa's youngest child, died when I was young. But I knew grandpa well enough to skip my senior prom and ride a Greyhound bus for 9 hours to be a pall bearer at the funeral.
One day years later I got curious, and looked up the gun. I knew it was kinda old, but I got a bit of an education. Turns out grandpa's "old .22 rifle" was a Winchester Model 61 pump take down made in 1948, valued anywhere from $900-$1,200.
I was never going to sell it anyway (my uncle explicitly asked me not to, a request that wasn't even necessary) but it was cool to know it wasn't just pot metal grandpa gave me. That Winchester doesn't get shot too much, even though it works just fine...like a Swiss watch, actually. But every now and then I pull it out and just look at it, to remind me of what guns were like back when they were meant to be inherited. Even without the history that infuses it, that gun remains a thing of industrial beauty. It has an elegance of artfully blended form and function firearms rarely possess anymore.
R.I.P. Grandpa, 1908-1994.
I was 17, and I thought that was real cool of old grandad, even though I had never known him well. We lived in different states, and my own father, grandpa's youngest child, died when I was young. But I knew grandpa well enough to skip my senior prom and ride a Greyhound bus for 9 hours to be a pall bearer at the funeral.
One day years later I got curious, and looked up the gun. I knew it was kinda old, but I got a bit of an education. Turns out grandpa's "old .22 rifle" was a Winchester Model 61 pump take down made in 1948, valued anywhere from $900-$1,200.
I was never going to sell it anyway (my uncle explicitly asked me not to, a request that wasn't even necessary) but it was cool to know it wasn't just pot metal grandpa gave me. That Winchester doesn't get shot too much, even though it works just fine...like a Swiss watch, actually. But every now and then I pull it out and just look at it, to remind me of what guns were like back when they were meant to be inherited. Even without the history that infuses it, that gun remains a thing of industrial beauty. It has an elegance of artfully blended form and function firearms rarely possess anymore.
R.I.P. Grandpa, 1908-1994.
Last edited:
