My shooting experience was limited to my Crossman BB gun before we moved to Greensburg. I was 11 and completely obsessed with fishing, and even though I had spent my life to that point living in large urban areas, I had a strong attraction to hunting. I read every hunting magazine I could get my hands on, and I was mesmerized by my granddad’s stories of hunting in Kansas and Colorado. Moving to a small town in southcentral Kansas opened the door to hunting for me.
A part of that move was Mom and Dad coming home. Mom had been born in Greensburg and Dad was born in Haviland. Dad’s family still owned land south of Haviland, and when he reconnected with the abandoned homestead where he had lived as a boy, we found a perfect place to plink. I still remember putting my first holes in a tin can with a .22 rifle.The old bolt-action .22 had always been in my dad’s closet next to the canvas and leather case that held his shotgun. The .22’s wood stock was stripped bare of stain and varnish – a refinish job Dad hadn’t completed. That first winter in Greensburg, I proposed to Dad that refinishing the stock would be a good seventh-grade woodshop project.
“That’s a great idea. If you do a good job finishing that stock, the gun will be yours,” Dad said.
He then went on to tell me that Granddad had given him the gun. Even back then, that old Wards Westerfield had some age on it, but it was the best rifle in the world as far as I was concerned. Much later in life, I learned that my granddad’s brother had given him the gun sometime in the late 1920s to make up for breaking Granddad’s eye glasses. I don’t know where Granddad’s brother got the gun.
I spent what seemed like half a semester sanding the bare wood in shop class. Each time I would take it to Mr. Moore, our shop teacher, for approval, he’d slide his hands over the wood, pull a mechanical pencil from the pocket of his coveralls, then make some pencil marks where it needed more work. Mr. Moore discovered a small crack near the grip, and he showed me how to work wood glue into it before we clamped it tightly together .
Finally, I stained the white pine with a dark walnut stain. Then I spread a satin wax finish over it and polished it. When I showed it to Dad, he seemed impressed. We reassembled the stock to the barrel and action, and he handed me “my” gun, commenting on how smooth the finish was. I was proud.
I still have the gun. I’ve hunted some rabbits and squirrels with it over the years, but mostly I just get it out of the gun safe from time to time to remember. I’ll notice dust on the scope lenses and wipe them clean before shouldering the rifle. As I peer through scope, I remember my twelfth Christmas. I can actually remember opening that long, narrow present to uncover a Weaver box holding a variable power scope and rings. It wasn’t really a surprise. I had asked for a scope, but I was blissfully happy. We had to take the gun to a gunsmith just outside of Rozel so he could machine grooves into the barrel and install the scope. He must have known what he was doing because 40 years later that gun will still drive tacks.
It’s one of those old guns that has no market value to speak of. It was built by Mossberg for Montgomery Wards, and it was not an expensive gun at the time. The barrel shows evidence of rust from many years ago, and the crack in the stock still shows. The wood still holds my junior high woodshop class stain and wax, but the bolt action still works smoothly. I’m stuck with it for sentimental reasons, and I’ll always treasure it as part of my own hunting heritage.
