He had had a tough hardscrabble childhood in the woods of Northern Minnesota. He survived Prohibition
and The Great Depression, built his own house, bought his own farm and successfully raised a family. He was generous to a fault, gentle, kind and very tough at the same time. He gave of himself willingly to whoever was in need. I only knew him a for few years before he died but I remember him and his sayings clearly to this day.
He had a farm with the most glorious woods to hunt. They were thick with Grouse, Squirrel and Deer. He was always happy and had a fund of great stories to share. Woods lore, homespun witticism's and smart-alecy comments flew when he was around. He would have you in stitches within minutes of meeting him. I brought a couple of friends over for deer hunting once and he had them rolling on the floor and sharing their beer with him within minutes of meeting him. For some reason he liked me. Maybe the fact that I was married to his favorite grand daughter and was the father of his favorite great grand child had something to do with it. Shortly after I married my wife, he had a heart attack and my wife moved in with him to take care of him. She was pregnant at the time and my daughter was born while she was living with him. At the time I had a job in Southern Minnesota and made the five hundred mile round trip to see them every weekend. His was a house that I always felt welcome in.
A year or so before he died, he gave me his shotgun.
It was given to him by his father when he was fourteen. He used it to keep his family fed during the Depression and he had lost count of the game he had taken with it.
It is nothing special to look at; this 16 gauge single barreled shotgun.
It has no blue left on it, instead a kind of brownish patina covers the entire barrel.
The wood is scarred and dinged from countless encounters with nature.
Yet it still works flawlessly, as well as the day it left the Riverside Arms factory in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts.
This shotgun, made by a subsidiary of the Stevens Arms Company has little or no monetary value today.
Thousands of them were sold by stores like Sears and Montgomery Wards, then used and discarded.
You can still find them, forgotten, in the used gun racks of many gun stores and buy them by paying about $50 to $80 for a working example of the breed.
Yet, to me this gun has value; immense value.
The fact that he chose to give it to me instead of to any of his children means a lot to me.
I have fired it a few times but sixteen gauge shells are not that easy to come by any more.
I pull it out every so often and hold it.
As I stroke the scarred walnut stock, I remember the sunlight filtering through the woods and on the streams of his land, the sound of the wolves at night from his front porch and his laughter in the background.
Then I wipe it down and put it away again.
