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Bend Oregon Travel
The Special .32
By Charles O. Stevens III
“The big buck and I came face to face in the second growth underbrush,
as if the .32 special was an extension of my arm it instinctively jumped
to my shoulder, “BANG”!”
Dad sat on the brick hearth warming his back to the crackling fire, my
brother and I sitting Indian style eagerly awaiting story after story
like a nest of baby birds begging for the next morsel from mother bird.
The majority of Dads adventures had the .32 special tied in somewhere.
Most guys I know see there old guns sentimentally, like a loyal old dog,
one that if treated slightly well, will never die. Would you sell a dog
like that for any price? Nevertheless circumstance made that rifle the
only one he ever parted with.
I was recently working on a remote ranch house when I discovered a lever
action rifle, long forgotten and hanging in the rafters. Taking it down,
I used the front of my shirt to scrub what looked like a lifetime of
dust that had come to rest on the labeled side that showed make and
model. Looking close and squinting my eyes I read the writing across the
octagon barrel, Marlin .32 special! This was the first one I had ever
seen. Benjamin Franklin once said “necessity never made a bargain.” But
I had to have that gun. So after agreeing to all, but sell myself into
slavery, to do carpentry on the ranch, the gun was mine, intended to
soon be my fathers. Getting it back to New Hampshire was stressful, my
teeth were clenched for a week as I worried its journey all the way back
east. The legal path of travel for a firearm is from gun shop to gun
shop, so I sent it from Bend to a little sporting goods store in
Colebrook, New Hampshire. I am the type of guy who stands at the
microwave staring and tapping my foot wanting the thirty seconds to
reheat my coffee to hurry up. So the trip back East felt like a long
stay in purgatory. Arriving in the town of Colebrook I made it to the
front door of Dukes Sporting Goods and impatiently gave the door a shove
clanging the bell loudly that hung over head. All eyes were now on me,
“Did the .32 special make it?” The gun HAD made it, all that was left to
do now was to hand it unwrapped to my old man. He gave me my first gun,
here is possibly his last. He took the rifle while sitting in his
rocking chair and laid it across his knees, as he stared down at it I
realized that for him this was a return to a beginning. A chance to look
back and reflect on a time measured in good decisions and bad. The nicks
and scratches on the old .32 seemed to go together with the deepening
lines on Dad’s face. Dad and the gun are a little rough, but still very
ready, having both come from a time when character and quality mattered,
they just go on and do there jobs reliably without complaint. I hope to
someday be as sturdy as that special .32, and as well built as my old
man.
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