Down memory lane now. I am 8 years old, a third grader at Our Lady of Fatima Heights Catholic School. I am slated to serve as altar boy at the midnight mass. I have a fever of 101 degrees from the flu or something. I am forbidden to attend Mass. Secretly, I am thrilled because earlier in the evening we were all allowed to open one present. After a year of begging I received my dream gift. A Marlin .22 caliber bolt action single shot rifle. While everyone was a mass I sat there and dry fired that sucker for two hours. I was so sick and so happy at the same time.
I attended firearm safety school in the basement of the Coronado Club at Sandia Base. It was an NRA school in the days of that organization's emphasis on gun safety. I was a member of the NRA and got their magazine for young kids. I always enjoyed it.
I kept that rifle for years. It was my first gun and I have had numerous others since then. But that little rifle that I shot .22 shorts out of was the best ever. There wasn't an empty beer can or bottle that littered the foothills of the Sandias that survived.
I did not have any assault rifles and have never figured out why anyone needs one other than our military members. But hey, things just went haywire with the NRA.
Have a great Holiday!
3 comments:
That's a nice story, and that's a nice looking rifle.
It's a pity the NRA has gone on to sully the image of gun ownership for many of us.
Back in Michigan my older brother had a single shot 22 rifle along the order of that one, and later when my buddies were ll hunters I got myself a shotgun and I'd go out and murder ducks and geese with it.
After I wearied of murdering ducks and geese I gave that shot gun to my brother in law, a CPA, for doing my taxes one year. He's a damn ditto head Republican and I figured he'd appreciate it. He never even thanked me.
Before that I'd given him a nice little pocket knife for doing my taxes and had inscribed on it "Cut your taxes?" Same thing. No thank you, no kiss my rear end, no nothing.
And the moral of the story is?
I don't know. I just don't know sometimes.
But I'll tell you one thing. Sometimes, if Republicans could fly, I'd go up there and slap my brother in law and take my shotgun back.
Oh, by the way, You probably heard this but some of your readers might like to know that in the wake of California voting down GMO labeling (after agribusiness poured millions into the state to defeat it) Peter Wirth, a Santa Fe Democrat, has introduced a GMO labeling bill into the state legislature.
http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/12/gmo-free-new-mexico-gmo-labeling/
That little piece I came across remarks on the fact that the importance of the chili pepper might give that bill a better chance of surviving Governor Martinez' veto.
When Occupy was getting started here there was a lot of talk on their web sites about GMO chilis, and there were some demonstrations, and as it did in those, the chili pepper transcends all kinds of boundaries here.
It was said that California was so important because it's such a big market. Companies wouldn't want to produce two sets of products so they'd probably just label everything.
But if NM passed this law, companies could make things here and label them, just so they could sell them at co-ops and whole foods markets in the rest of the country, perhaps.
I realize I'm exceeding my comment quota for a given 24 hour period but I intended to wish you a happy holiday, too, in each of those other messages but always forgot, owing to the importance of their subject matter no doubt, whatever it might have been.
I like the kitty picture, too. I was wondering if the knee operation would throw off your sense of visual balance but it obviously hasn't.
Happy Holidays!
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