(begin ital) I was born and raised way out west
But the thing I love 'bout livin' here best
It ain't the mountains, the valleys, the hats, or the boots
It's having plenty of guns and something to shoot
—Chris Wall(END ITAL)
LONGVIEW, Texas —"I love to blow stuff up," my friend said as a row of soft drink bottles and cans propped on a rusty barrel disintegrated with a single pull of a .410 shotgun.
"Yeah, me too," I replied. I took the shotgun, yelled, "Pull" and fired at a plastic bottle tossed into the air. I missed, of course. I'm out of practice. Besides, actual clay pigeons give a bit more lead time than a plastic bottle tossed underhand. At least that's my excuse for such poor marksmanship.
We sipped our beers. Eight-ounce cans are perfect, since on hot days they rapidly provide more shooting material. Neither one of us has any interest in shooting anything living, unless it's a poisonous snake or a wild hog. When it comes to snakes or hogs, I'm firmly ensconced in the "shoot first" school. But deer, birds and even squirrels are safe. Though I still bear a grudge against those blasted tree rats raiding the backyard bird feeders.
Our Saturday afternoon excursion, which I dubbed the "Send Lawyers, Guns and Money Road Trip" — in a hat-tip to that great Warren Zevon song — was a mental health restoration session, East Texas style. We are both gun-toting liberals struggling with considerable personal challenges lately. So we decided to load up all manner of weaponry and drive an hour away to a farm out in the boonies. Out there, the sound of gunfire is not startling but indeed expected.
My history of blowing stuff up harkens to Allenstown Elementary School, in New Hampshire in the mid-1960s. A science teacher with a decidedly militaristic bent encouraged a group of us boys to make our own gunpowder out of saltpeter, charcoal and sulphur. We were trying to build our own model rocket instead of using an Estes model rocket kit. If memory serves, the fire department was summoned — effectively ending the science experiment, though not my fascination with guns and explosives.
You can't get away with encouraging students to mix their own gunpowder these days. There are too many lawyers and liability issues.
For my birthday a few weeks ago, my friend bought me a target system, which consists of five chili pepper red metal discs that hang down off a rack. If you are successful in shooting a disc, it flips up and stops. Once all five are up, you aim at the lone silver disc at the top. If you plink it successfully, all five red discs fall back down. You start again.
The directions said the target should only be fired upon with a .22 caliber weapon, at no closer than 30 yards. Well, my goodness. I don't own a .22 rifle, just a pistol of that caliber. I have a better chance of dunking a basketball than hitting a disc the size of a McDonald's sausage biscuit at 90 feet with my Taurus .22 nine-shot revolver. We ended up halving the distance. After a few more beers, my aim improved considerably. (Note to concerned readers: I am hyper-safety conscious when it comes to weapons. I have a concealed-carry permit and a lifelong familiarity and respect of weapons. So don't worry about the beer and bullets thing. Really.)
My friend became frustrated with missing and at one point discussed using the .410 to send all the targets to, well, you know. (Told you we were in a bad mood.) I protested that this was my birthday present and would like to enjoy it at least until Thanksgiving. My friend reluctantly acquiesced and started blasting away at plastic bottles with the shotgun.
Then another friend arrived with a .22 rifle with a scope and a clip that held 25 rounds or so. We instantly became expert marksmen. Our mood rose considerably. My birthday present is dotted with bullet pings.
Part of the charm of firing hundreds of rounds at inanimate objects is the aftermath: cleaning guns. This appeals to the obsessive-compulsive-disorder facet of my personality. I love hanging out in the shop, shoving the nitro solvent through the barrel and cartridge cylinders of my revolver, coating the gun's metal in oil when done, all the while listening to NPR.
So the next day we cleaned our guns with solvent, oiled the barrels and reloaded. My friend drove away with a newly planted Obama sticker on the back of the SUV. I'm not politically active, given my job description. We two gun-toting liberals felt a bit more at ease, after an afternoon of firing weaponry.
I love the smell of gunpowder on a summer afternoon.
Gary Borders is publisher of the Longview News-Journal. His e-mail address is gborders AT coxlnj.com
