Just Remembering...

I was sitting here thinking about things that don't matter to anyone except me and I remembered something that happened once a long time ago.
The good thing (the only good thing) about growing old is remembering things that happened in times past.

Now I don't mean to imply I am out of the business of making things happen to me and mine but I am forced to acknowledge there is nowhere near as much time for new and interesting (or dull) things to happen from now till the end of my life as has already gone by.(;)(t) Therefore, I am in a much better position to extoll on past e and un e-vents than to contemplate future events and store them for telling at some later date. I guess I could make something up but it would be pretty obvious it was made up when I spoke of something I did on November the eleventh of this year. (For you folks in Rio Linda, this is only January the thirteenth of this year; November comes later)...-No, Rush, don't thank me...

Let's see now, where did I get off the subject?..Oh, yeah, there isn't one yet.

I spoke once about a guy I worked with in Pueblo, Colorado, when I was driving truck for the E L Farmer Trucking Company, hauling pipe from that city to Texas and other places in the oil patch.
This guy was a kleptomaniac. He stole something every time he went into a store and he never got caught. But otherwise, he was a nice guy and I liked him. I just never went into a store with him.

We used to go hunting Jackrabbits together. He had a 22 rifle and a 45 automatic pistol and he was a very good shot with either of them.I saw him shoot a soaring hawk out of the sky once with the 45. I'll tell about it in a while.

When we went hunting, we drove either his or my car out some dirt road and then across a field. There were thousands of Jackrabbits around Pueblo.

On one occassion we went in my car. I had just traded a french WAC 32 automatic that I had bought to carry in my truck for an Iver-Johnson 9 shot revolver and this was to be the first time I would use it since I bought it. It was in the glove box of the 1939 Chrysler Royal 4 door and when I told him it was in the glove box, he opened the glove box and reached in and pulled it out and shot a hole in the dash board of my 1939 Chrysler Royal 4 door.

I yelped and stopped the car and said, "It's loaded!" He answered, "I notice." He told me it wasn't a good idea to keep a loaded gun in the glove box and I told him an empty gun wasn't much good for anything. He said I could always load it after I took it out of the glove box and I told him I might not have time to load it.

Anyhow, we chatted a bit and then I started the car back up and we went to where we were going to hunt Jackrabbits.

When we got there, I stopped and (I'm gonna call him, 'Joe') Joe got on the right front fender of the car and I started driving. We jumped a Jackrabbit out every couple hundred yards or so and Joe shot at them. After he had shot abour three out of ten or so, we stopped to trade places.

I told him I figured he could shoot better than that. (He had bragged about what a good shot he was) About that time a hawk came soaring toward us and Joe took out his 45 and said, "Watch this." We waited for a second until the hawk got as close as he would and Joe took aim and shot the hawk out of the sky.

Up until then, I hadn't even fired my 22 so I got it out of the car and Joe and I started over to where the hawk had fallen which wasn't very far. I was holding the Iver Johnson 9 shot in my right hand and aften we had walked about thirty feet, a jackrabbit jumped up from behind a clump of brush and, without thinking about it, I raised the pistol and snapped off a shot and God directed the slug to the head of the rabbit.

Joe said, what a shot! That's as good as I did!
I told him I didn't think so; the rabbit wasn't flying; it was nothing.

When we found the hawk, we saw it was a pretty big bird and Joe wanted to take it home with him. I reminded him it was against the law to shoot hawks.
He said he wanted me to have my turn shooting rabbits but I said we'd better go now if he wanted to keep the hawk because someone might come and see the bird. Besides, we had enough rabbits.

Joe will go to his grave (if he hasn't already) thinking I am one of the best shots he ever saw. I'm glad now I can't remember his name because I'm feeling a little guilty about not telling him it was a lucky shot and now that I'm older and wiser, I might try to find him on the People Search and, if I did, I'd have to fess up.

Joe, wherever you are, if you read this, I was just kidding about it being a lucky shot. I could do it again anytime. Call me!

Later...