The home “Rec” (Recreation Room) was a 20th-century standard in the United States. Spare rooms and basements got the treatment with new walls, fancy furniture and — gasp — even new color TVs.
Somehow, this never quite got done in the home I grew up in. Nothing was finished down in the basement. There was an extra bathroom that never got enclosed, no new furniture and the normal functions of the workshop and storage remained unchanged. We didn’t recreate down there often.
With one exception: The shooting gallery. Dad was raising his two sons as competent hunters, as he was himself. His standard was set by the National Rifle Association, which we were told emphasized safety in order not to kill each other while prowling the woods with weapons. The NRA magazine had a prominent place on the upstairs coffee table and Dad was a lifetime member of the organization.
The shooting gallery featured a steel contraption that held the target. On the other end of the basement, Dad built a sturdy table from a chunk of an old bowling alley. You laid on top of it, bracing your .22 rifle on a couple of sandbags, aimed and let fly. The twisted lead, assuming you hit the target, wound up in a steel jar.
It seemed to work. We learned how to carry those weapons according to the NRA and I even remember Dad explaining to me why machine guns were illegal for civilians, a policy he appeared to endorse. His 30-40 Winchester, a few other rifles and shotguns were most of his armory. He had a couple of pistols as well, but I don’t recall him ever shooting them. Nothing automatic in that arsenal.
Moving to Guam later wasn’t much of a change regarding guns and hunting. My first New Year’s eve, thanks to Army experience, I recognized M-16 automatic fire along with the fireworks. At a party back then, a co-worker gave me a plate of “mystery meat,” only to be surprised I recognized it as venison. And out of season, I pointed out to his further surprise.
Living on Saipan some years later, my neighbors had plenty of guns and venison in their freezers. In this area, I felt right at home.
But as the years went by, the NRA, an organization founded to improve marksmanship, control crime and for other public purposes, became a lobbying organization, constantly citing the 2nd Amendment as the basis for opposition to any controls on guns or the rights of their owners even as unprovoked mass shootings gradually became an American way of life.
As the NRA’s former president Charlton Heston proclaimed while holding a rifle over his head. You’ll take this only “from my cold dead hands!”
Over the years I had casually read about NRA changes, but didn’t really make any personal connection since I had never contemplated joining the group and did not own so much as a .22. I didn’t expect to ever go hunting again. But on a trip back to Wisconsin that changed.
Out on his farm in Iowa County, Dad put a 30-30 in my hands and in the pre-dawn darkness, stationed me at a deer stand. Half an hour later, the big excitement was when a lost cow came plunging through the underbrush. A very lucky creature that I didn’t suffer from anxiety to bag something out there.
A few minutes later, my brother, truly an experienced deer hunter as is my sister-in-law, showed up and moved me to another spot. Within a few more minutes, I heard shots from where I had been. So did my Dad, who ran about half a mile in the hope that his eldest had, at last, joined the deer hunting fraternity. I am sure he was disappointed, but he didn’t share it with me.
Back home, another family member had news for me: “Did you know that your father quit the NRA?” my mother asked, effectively spilling the beans, though I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t told me about it. As it turned out, the issue was the organization’s recently announced opposition to personal body armor for law enforcers. As the NRA policymakers certainly had to be aware, hundreds of law enforcers don’t make it out of the woods alive every deer season.
In the years before World War II, my father was a Wisconsin game warden.
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