Guns-n-roses - Campfire Tales

Guns Magazine, Nov, 2003 by John Taffin

It's time to come out of the closet. I confess. I'm an addict. I took that first no turning back step in 1956. That was the year I bought my first sixgun and started that total decline into dependency.

In those pre-plastic cards and trust-everyone days, a teenager could open a charge account at Boyle's Gun Shop. The owner kept track of the accounts on simple index cards in a small metal box. No computers. No interest. No carrying charges. No limit. I've had an ongoing gun bill ever since.

Perhaps it would've been possible to have been cured in those early days had it not been for an 18 year-old blonde by the name of the Dorothy--Dot for short. Maybe it was my own fault. Our first date was not to a movie or even a drive-in for hamburgers and a shake. Instead of such normal teenage activities I picked her up in my '53 Merc hardtop and we drove to the gun shop to pick up my custom Arvo Ojala rig.

Forty-five years later, I still have the Ojala rig and its $49.95 price has now escalated to a value of over $1,000. More importantly. Dot is still with me, and that 52 investment for a marriage license less than three months after the first date has proven to be of incalculable worth.

When we met, Diamond Dot, as she is now known (and that name may give you some clue to her own addiction), had never even held a sixgun much less fired one. With such a first date she had every opportunity to run away, however, instead she has become both an enabler and an active and willing participant.

When I was actively selling firearms, I would always run into men who would tell me not to call the house when the gun came in as they did not want their wife to know about it. Two things struck me about this situation. First, how could anyone live this way, and if so why let anyone else know about it? Secondly, I always had to wonder what in the world they talked about before they got married!

Dot knew exactly what she was getting into and not only chose not to fight it hut to actually encourage it. That has been both a great blessing on one hand and an inescapable curse on the other. The latter refers to the fact that there is no doubt I will go to my grave still having a sixgun charge account.

Our first Christmas together Dot added fuel to my sixgun fire by presenting me with a 6.5-inch S&W .44 Special 1950 Target. That was a very special sixgun for several reasons, one of which was now having the perfect revolver to shoot with Elmer Keith's .44 Special loads. By this time I already had a Ruger .44 Magnum but running .44 Special loads through it was not the same as having my own .44 Special,

Four years later, we had three very young kids, I was in college, and there was not enough money to both pay tuition and buy groceries, Three guns, one of which was that .44 Special, had to be sold. As we came out of the gun shop, Dot looked up at me and sobbing said: "You will never have to do that again!" Fortunately, she was right. Not only have we never had to do that again, I have lost track of the number of guns she personally has purchased.

Earlier this year our local shooting club held the first practice Levergun Silhouette Match. This was designed for prospective participants to come out, check out the targets, sight in their leverguns, and be ready to go the following month. We went together so we could sight for each other just as we had done in long-range handgun silhouetting 20 years ago. However something went wrong.

Every lime it was my turn to shoot and Dot was supposed to sight for me, I couldn't find her. As I looked around she was off somewhere talking to this guy and that guy. Since we were celebrating our 44th anniversary later that same month there were no thoughts of jealousy, but I could not under stand what in the world she was doing.

When we got home I went to cleaning both the rifles and myself while she went shopping. As she returned I was summoned to come help her carry several bags, In they came, I placed them on the counter, and proceeded to go about my business.

"Didn't one of those bags feel a little heavy to you?"

It hadn't, so she pointed me in the right direction. What I found stunned me with both surprise and amazement. While she was talking to all the men that morning she was actually asking them if they knew of a .44 sixgun for sale unlike anything I already had. She actually found one.

As I reached in the bag my hands felt an unfamiliar shape as I pulled out a S&W Double Action Frontier Model. Chambered in .44-40 and manufactured in the early 1880s, this sixgun had an absolutely pristine barrel and cylinder, was mechanically perfect, as were the grips, and the lock-up of the cylinder revealed absolutely minimum play. The nickel plating showed slight flaking and oxidation in a few small areas.

I asked her where she found it but to this day, four months later, I have not asked how much it cost, nor do I ever intend to. She had done her homework and actually found a .44 that I not only did not have, I had also never even experienced. At my age some new experiences, very few, are totally welcome.