Re: What got us started into shooting.
My grandfather was always the handiman that helps my single mom out. When I was a little guy (before I turned 10), I used to play with a lot of toy guns. I was always granpa's little buddy growing up. Always watching him work, eating the same foods he ate, trying to blow out his cigarettes.
He was a Marine in his youth, a BAR man his first few years, then explosives later on.
He was the one who bought me my first 22lr when I was 10. He taught me to shoot it, and I would go to his house on the weekends and spend hours plinking away.
By the time I was 13, I had fired grandpa's M1 Garand a few times, and I was hooked on a centerfire. I couldn't afford an M1, but Dick's sporting goods had surplus SMLE No 4's very cheap and I bought one up.
Of course I was skinny as a rail and could hardly handle the piece. So my grandfather taught me to reload, working up the loads as I grew into the piece.
He worked for a rock quarry, so on some rare weekends we would get to go down into the hole and do some serious shooting. We could pace off any distance we wanted, and he and I would spend the day, me with my 303, and he with his M1. Then we would hit the diner for lunch, and I would listen to his stories about the guys he knew in the service, or the fun he had on the range.
In my late 20's he and I spent a few years restoring an old farmhouse that I have taken over. Everyday we worked on that house. We would talk about guns, and hunting (looking back I am sad that we never found time to hunt together), and those same old service stories.
He is frail now, and no longer shoots. I have his old colt single action army from 1956 that he bought in the service.
To this day, when I get a new gun, the first thing I want to do is run over and show my grandfather.
